COOKED by Michael Pollan

Cooked by Michael Pollan has had me thinking about my food very seriously. I listened to the audiobook on a car trip the Midwest, driving through acres and acres of soybeans and corn – no doubt genetically modified, and almost all of it, apparently, meant for animals, not people. And even though it’s been almost two weeks since I finished it, I still keep going back to it as I’m wandering through the grocery store, packing my daughter’s lunch or planning our weekly dinner menu. Its implications really are that far-reaching.

The book is divided into four parts, representing both the four elements and the four food “transformations” he associates with them: fire (barbecue); water (braising); air (bread making); and earth (fermentation). The book isn’t a cookbook, although there are recipes. Rather, the book takes an ethno-biological look at human development, coming down on the side of humans not only being able to cook, but actually having developed the way we have because we cook. Seriously, you’ll never look at a loaf of store-bought bread the same way after reading this book. And that rule about hot food when traveling, especially to tropical destinations? There’s definitely a reason for that!

I have to admit, by the end of the barbecue section, I was wondering if I could ever enjoy meat (particularly pork) again – so little of it seems to be raised in the healthful way that Pollan says is possible. But my family is unwilling to give up meat completely. Luckily, we are blessed with a number of local, organic farmers in our area, and since reading the book I have been dealing with them exclusively for meat. The flavor is fantastic, but there is a definite downside. The costs are really high -- $30 for a large lamb shoulder yesterday, but I will no doubt get two meals from it. At those prices, meat will likely become a tiny portion of our weekly diet – another thing I wouldn’t call bad at all. And I’m sure Pollan wouldn’t either. I guess that’s the point.

Michael Pollan narrated the book. I liked his voice and his passion for the subject matter, which definitely comes through. But after listening, it’s easy to understand why he gets labeled an “elitist” so often. Seriously, my husband and I looked at each other blankly after he riffed for about 10 minutes on the drudgery of chopping onions. Really? That’s your big problem? You write for a living and have the time to spend a whole day perfecting your braising technique – not to mention kneading loaves of bread – and you’re complaining about chopping onions? I admit it – we just couldn’t help laughing at Pollan’s “First World” problems more than once while listening. But that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book or the importance of its message.

Many thanks to JoAnn at Lakeside Musing for her review – and for sharing this audiobook with me! We enjoyed it thoroughly – and it really made a loooong car trip far more enjoyable than it might have been.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Book Review: Pamela Haag's MARRIAGE CONFIDENTIAL

I was looking for a non-fiction title when I got this book description for review for Pamela Haag’s Marriage Confidential:

With bracing candor, Marriage Confidential take us inside a world where romantic ideas have given way to a “post-romantic” mood and a fair number of marriages end up “semi-happy.” It’s a world where the husbands of “workhorse wives” pursue the Having It All dream that married women have abandoned; where children have migrated from the children’s table to the centerpiece; and where technology, demography, and economy place unprecedented stresses on marital fidelity. Among other examples of marriage trailblazers, Haag even presents a case for how updated ideas of non-monogamy might be an option for the future.

Uniquely weaving together cultural commentary, memoir, storytelling, history, and research, Marriage Confidential gives us a riveting glimpse of what the future of marriage might look like.

Well, looking at my 21st wedding anniversary, I figured I was the target market for the book. But it turns out I was utterly wrong. I just wasn’t prepared for Haag’s general level of negativity about marriage.

I don’t think of myself as either Puritan or a marriage apologist, but I found the author’s premise shocking: If you’re not 100%, head-over-heels in “romance” with your spouse absolutely all the time, you’re being cheated. Monogamy, Haag suggests, is a trap for the soul. And the antidote for the marital doldrums? It pretty much boils down to this: “Have an affair.”

Having admitted that “having it all,” has morphed into “doing it all” for modern wives, the author still seems to want it all. Seriously.

Haag realizes that many people will see her thesis as “whining.” And she’s right, that was my first reaction. She has a husband who loves her, a kid she adores, a good job. Really, is life so bad? Is a marriage that doesn’t play out like the final scene from a Jane Austen novel every day just “semi-happy,” as the author puts it? I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her poor husband—that would be a lot to live up to.

But then I realized maybe that’s not entirely fair. I consider myself happily married, so I don’t really buy the premise that modern marriage is a broken institution. And I think that’s why the book simply didn’t work for me. Still, lots of people have loved this book, so I guess it’s tapping into some kind of cultural anxiety. It’s just not one I happen to share.

I read this book as part of a TLC Book Tour, and received a free copy of the book in return for my honest opinion. You can find links to other opinions here.

Book Review: Elliot O’Donnell’s Scottish Ghost Stories

One of the most dangerous things about a Kindle is the “immediate gratification” apect of it: you find a review for a book, it looks interesting, and in less than a minute it’s on your device. And the money is out of your bank account. Ouch! Which is why it’s fun to scroll through the free and $0.99 titles for e-book readers – a lot of classics are available that way, and while I’ll admit the typesetting sometimes suffers for the price, it’s way better than having a to borrow the same classic from the library—and deal with the mold and mildew that often plagues old books.

That’s how I came across Elliott O’Donnell’s classic horror volume, Scottish Ghost Stories. Turns out that O’Donnell was a turn-of-the-last-century ghost hunter, and quite a celebrity in his time. He even had a radio show about paranormal phenomenon at one point. The R.I.P. VI Challenge, hosted by Carl V. at Stainless Steel Droppings, was looming, and I wanted to include something aside from mysteries in my list this year, so I downloaded it on impulse. It wound up being an enjoyable read, but probably not for the reasons that O’Donnell intended.

Scottish Ghost Stories purports to be a collection of true hauntings, either experienced by O’Donnell himself or relayed to him by reliable sources, all taking place in Scotland. The book was written in 1911, and has a real Victorian sensibility, very descriptive and melodramatic:

And soon there stole upon me a sensation to which I had been hitherto an utter stranger – I became afraid. An irrepressible tremor pervaded my frame, my teeth chattered, my blood froze. Obeying an impulse – an impulse I could not resist, I lifted myself up from the pillows, and, peering fearfully into the shadowy glow that lay directly in front of me – listened. Why I listened I do not know, saving that an instinctive spirit prompted me. At first I could hear nothing, and then, from a direction I could not define, there came a noise, low, instinctive, uninterpretative…Dreading to think what it might be, and seized with a wild sentiment of self-preservation, I made frantic endeavours to get out of bed and barricade my door. My limbs, however, refused to move. I was paralysed.Kindle Location 1775 of 1905

It suddenly struck me while reading it that O’Donnell’s book represents the Victorian equivalent of reality TV! Like the producers of shows like “Paranormal State,” O’Donnell’s narrative makes it clear that ghosts can be found in the most unlikely places – and the reader may well be the next victim! There are some great period touches in that regard. For example, in most cases O’Donnell only gives the neighborhood of the occurrences he’s detailing, not the actual addresses of them, presumably to protect the current property owners who may be trying to foist their ghostly tenants on some other unsuspecting homebuyers – quite an interesting touch, I thought. There are also routines associated with the haunting, such as the forcing of the haunted to act against their will, and paralysis of victims that make it impossible to flee the terrifying apparitions they describe later, that recur in the stories.

From the standpoint of the challenge, the book did provide a couple of mildly perilous moments. But the truth is I found it most interesting as an artifact of its time – and a sort of verification that the current fascination with “true crime” and other “reality” genres has historical antecedents. I think lovers of Victorian literature should really consider taking a look at this book, as it represents a very popular genre in its time that we now commonly overlook – non-fiction. But it would also be of interest to those who are interested in the evolution of the horror genre, especially “true horror.” And if you’re kind of wimpy about horror, this is a good introduction – this is definitely not a book of the Stephen King, nightmare inducing kind! I’m certainly glad I happened upon it, and that I finally got to read a ghost story for this year’s R.I.P. VI Challenge. So thanks again to Carl V. for hosting – this is my second R.I.P. Challenge, and I can already see why it’s a highlight of autumn for so many book bloggers!

Book Review: Bossypants

Tina Fey’s Bossypants is very funny.

It’s so funny that I tried to read one particular passage out loud to my husband, and I couldn’t even finish it: I was laughing too hard. I may be wrong, but I don’t think he found this situation anywhere near as amusing as I did. And I don’t think he found the passage as funny either, once I finally did managed to sputter through it. It’s not because it wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t funny out of context. Which is, to be honest, the main challenge in reviewing this kind of book. I’m worried that I won’t be able to do it justice.

While she’s probably best known to Americans as “the woman who played Sarah Palin,” Fey really focuses more on her comedy writing than her acting. Writing for Saturday Night Live and producing 30 Rock seem to be her proudest achievements, which leads to one of the main strengths of the book. As a writer, her greatest talent lies in crystallizing the humor in everyday situations and events. In one particularly hilarious passage, she talks about the absurdity of getting a manicure:

The first few times you go, it can be intimidating. For starters, you may forget that you yourself speak English. You enter, smile, and nod at the manager. “Manicure-pedicure?” “Pick color,” she chirps back in her Korean accent. You pick out a couple of the three hundred shades of off-white. “This for manicure. This feet. Magazine okay?”Why are you talking like that? Now that you have racially embarrassed yourself, you are ready to squeeze into a seat at a tiny table and basically hold hands with a stranger for twenty minutes. (page 112)

I only had one real problem with the book (aside from the cover, that is, which I think is absolutely freakish). Fey’s humor is largely self-deprecating, and I get that. The problem is that she goes out of her way, over and over again, to point out what a really, really, really normal person she is. But come on, is her book on The New York Times Bestseller List because she’s just an average Jane? Of course not. Lots of people are funny. Lots of people were theater geeks as kids. But only a handful of people have Lorne Michaels’ cell phone number of speed dial. And he only picks up for a small portion of them. Lorne Michaels picks up for Tina Fey. That makes her a BIG deal. The “I’m-just-a-regular-girl-from-Philly” thing grated on me after a while.

I was glad that Fey dealt head-on with some of the sexism issues that go along with working in the entertainment business, although I thought she stopped short of calling a few people out, especially when she was discussing her tenure at Second City. Still, this is a very funny, very gutsy book. If Tina Fey makes you laugh, you really ought to read it. But those who love modern memoirs and those who enjoy popular culture will also find a lot to enjoy here.

Here’s another title for Introverted Jen’s Dewey Decimal Challenge. So thanks again for hosting the only challenge I have completed so far this year, Jen!

I’m a Guest Reviewer on Black Sheep Dances! The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

Many of you are already familiar with Black Sheep Dances, a wonderful literary blog that focuses, among other things, on translated works of literary fiction. Amy is hosting The Eastern European Reading Challenge on Black Sheep Dances this year, and I have to admit it’s been a bit tough coming up with titles for an area about which I know absolutely nothing. Then finally I read a book this spring that just screamed, “Amy” to me, plus it was about Russian literature, and Amy said I could write it up as a guest post. So if you’d like to read my review of Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, head on over to Black Sheep Dances! Thanks, Amy, for letting me contribute! It was a lot of fun, and I am inspired to seek out some more translations this summer.

Book Review: Radio Shangri-La

Sometimes a book just speaks to you. For me, Lisa Napoli’s Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth did just that.

Of course, Napoli is a news producer, and she recognizes a good story when she sees one. And her story of helping out a tiny start-up radio station with a quirky cast of characters in the most remote capital city on the planet is a really good one. But what moves this book from really good to great is Napoli’s willingness to share her own fears and confront her own assumptions about culture and authenticity.

Napoli faces down her struggles and successes with equal clarity and frankness – even optimism:

No longer was I some burnt out career journalist with no idea how to escape the grind. No longer would I see myself as a failure as a woman, either, for not having had a successful long-term romantic partnership that yielded a happy home filled with children. This long-crafted definition of myself, of a nice gal who had made a mess of her life, started to melt away. Replacing it now was new vision of me: one part proud Ambassador of the United States, one part curious anthropologist, 100 percent human. pg. 31

Not that Napoli sugarcoats her times in Bhutan. Like the news professional she is she reports – and then contextualizes. For example, a Bhutanese monk, realizing she was a foreigner with means, suggested Napoli needed a puja, a series of ceremonial prayers by monks, to remove the obstacles in her life. The price he quoted was exorbitant – more than a month’s salary. But rather than focusing on how the monk tried to rip her off, she focused instead on how she and her co-workers, Pink and Ngawang, crossed their cultural divide to diffuse the situation gracefully:

“You can think about it,” said Pink sweetly.

“Well, I don’t really have to think about it. That’s quite expensive.”

Rinpoche chattered a response in Dzongkha [the national language of Tibet]. Ngawang relayed, “He says if you pay a hundred dollars, that will be okay.” Her smile told me she was on to the extortionate monk.

For a split second, I worried this Rinpoche might pray to the wrong deities if I refused. Make my obstacles more intense. Then I remembered that I didn’t believe in spells. pg. 85

There are funny and sad and frustrating moments in this book, as well as a wealth of information.* I teach a class in International Strategic Communication, and one of the things I talk to my students about is the importance of stepping outside of your own cultural framework. Napoli’s book illustrates all the difficulties of doing just that – and also all of the possibilities once you’ve done it. I’ll be assigning this book the next time I teach this class. And I can’t wait to read it again!

Here's another one for the Dewey Decimal Challenge, so thanks to Jen at The Introverted Reader for hosting that. It's definitely been my most successful challenge of the year. It also counts for the South Asian Reading Challenge. That one is finally coming along as well! Thanks to Swapna at S. Krishna Books for hosting.


*Who knew that UTEP's campus is inspired by Bhutanese architecture? Certainly not me!

Book Review: Pig Perfect

I love micro-histories, and I love food. So when my buddy Jess over at Desperado Penguin suggested Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them as the subject our next simul-blog, I quickly signed on. Pork is a critical ingredient in at least two cuisines I adore* – Spain’s and the American South’s – and I’ve always wondered why the ham in those places just seems to taste better than the stuff I get at home.

Kaminsky explains that little mystery, and many more, in his comprehensive ode to the Ossabaw**, a compendium of all things porcine.

Let’s start with a fair warning: there is no doubt that some animals are necessarily harmed in the making of luscious pork loin and succulent hams. If you are uncomfortable with eating meat at all, and I know many people that are, you should probably avoid this book, not because it is ugly or graphic in any way, but because you have already made decisions that will make the logic of this book less tenable for you. I admire that.

But I should also add a statement of responsibility: the reason that people like Mario Batali and Michael Pollan have enthusiastically recommended this book is because it supports a kind of meat eating that is both sustainable and rare – the kind of meat-eating most likely practiced by humans for millennia. Pig Perfect, at its heart, is a tribute to flexitarianism. It agrees with animal rights activists that the current methods of mass producing animals are heinous, cruel, and environmentally destructive – that humans are simply getting far less out of livestock, energy-wise, than we are putting in. In fact, the environmental disasters that accompany large-scale pig-farming are well documented by Kaminsky.

Instead, Kaminsky looks at the paleo-biological, historical and social roots of humans’ love of pork. He also devotes a fascinating chapter to the pork taboos found in Jewish and Islamic cultures. Ultimately, Kaminsky comes down on the side of moderation, arguing that pigs and humans actually evolved to live together, and makes a compelling argument that Europe’s “primordial” forests were actually products of the human/pig/acorn relationship.

Roaming forest and field is what pigs were born to do. Long-legged pigs are the natural form of this animal, able to move nimbly through woodlands eating acorns and grasses. That they should be raised this way is as self-evident to me as the fact that cattle should be raised on grasslands and not in feedlots on corn and soy. Grazing (as well as rooting, in the case of pigs) is the natural way for these domesticated animals to sustain themselves and us. p. 112

I really liked most of Kaminsky’s message. I can’t say the same for the recipes, which just didn’t look so appetizing to me. And having persuasively advocated for people to be thoughtful consumers of pork products, I really would have appreciated a section on Internet resources for jamón ibérico or Southern hams. Seriously, why create a demand for something, and not help satisfy it? The people who helped him from the book, and might benefit from interest in their products, were poorly served by that omission.

Also, as a strategic communications professor, I was totally put off by his chapter called “The PR Guys,” in which he seemed to be amazed that one of the best studies of the pork industry in the US was produced by a PR firm –to which he attributes negative intentions, without any evidence on his part, even though he finds no fault with the history. It was disappointing to read something so totally biased from someone who prides himself of being a “journalist.” He seemed to miss the fact that half of the people that spoke to him for this book from various companies and farms were probably PR professionals, or performed PR functions in the companies in which they worked – um, that’s why they spoke to him, to get their story out there. Kaminsky seems to subscribe to the notion that it’s “information” when he likes you, and “PR” when he doesn’t. Sorry, he lost credibility with me at that point.

But, in general, I’ll say I agree with his main thesis – and I’ll mention that Kaminsky is not saying anything that Pollan and Mark Bittman haven’t been saying for some time: namely, that we have to be more responsible about what we eat. If we only eat a little meat, we can assure that it is of high quality, and insist that it is treated humanely. I can certainly appreciate that.

Another foodie simul-blog with the Desperado Penguin. Next time we need a title that doesn’t make me so hungry, Jess!

As a non-fiction title, this counts for the Dewey Decimal Challenge. Thanks to Jen at The Introverted Reader for hosting!

*I do share a lot of vegetarian and vegan recipes, but I hope I’ve always made it clear that I do eat a small amount of meat and fish. In fact, since I don’t eat a lot of meat, I go out of my way to enjoy what I do eat, by making sure it’s of high quality (usually organic) and sustainable, which is why this book was so interesting to me.

**An American pig breed that is apparently related to the original pigs left by the Spanish conquistadors and early missionaries. And also apparently, as Alton Brown might say, good eats.

Character Connection: Cleopatra

There are a lot of great reviews of Stacey Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life already. I’ll join the chorus of those who think Schiff did a first-rate job of fitting together pieces of Cleopatra’s life that I didn’t know existed, and explaining along with them the geopolitical realities of the Romans’ Mediterranean world. I didn’t know what else I could actually add to the chorus. That’s why after struggling with this review for about a month, I finally decided to write it as a Character Connection.

Cleopatra, like Eleanor of Aquitaine more than a thousand years later, suffers in historical record for being a powerful woman whose legacy was recorded by men – men who had reason to hate her, to say the least. A bit depressing, isn’t it? Schiff’s biography does what so many other feminist-inspired works are forced to do: it imagines the day-to-day life and the motivations of a woman who was not privileged to tell her own story in her own way. Love the method or hate it, we already know Cleopatra’s story from the dominant, hegemonic vantage point: Vamp. Temptress. Usurper. Schiff reconceptualizes Cleopatra as something far more interesting: a woman. I’d call it a valiant effort.

Schiff doesn’t ignore primary accounts, but seeks to contextualize them, giving Cleopatra a complexity impossible to achieve by looking at those texts alone. At one point, she takes issue with Cleopatra’s legendary ability to “bewitch” men:

The consort of two men of voracious sexual appetite and innumerable sexual conquests, Cleopatra would go down in history as the snare, the delusion, the seductress. Citing her sexual prowess was evidently less discomfiting than acknowledging her intellectual gifts. In the same way it is easier to ascribe her power to magic than to love. We have evidence of neither, but the first can at least be explained; with magic one forfeits rather than loses the game. Kindle Location 2604

I read Stacey Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life during the Prince William-Kate Middleton engagement flurry. What struck me most was how William and Kate seemed to be trying so hard to just be like any young couple. The emphasis of the entire public relations campaign – and this royal-commoner engagement represents a massive PR campaign – was on their “love story.” Why? Because a love story is the one thing that royals might have in common with people like us. Sure, making them seem normal might take away some of the monarchy’s mystique – but their PR pros know it also makes them less vulnerable to attack.

In the absence of a personal narrative – even one contrived for public consumption – Cleopatra was easy to vilify. If only Cleopatra had left us her story, others would not have been able to fill the void with venom so easily. I appreciated Schiff’s attempt to give Cleopatra some kind of voice. Like a lawyer making a case, Schiff examines the motives behind the claims made against her. She can’t call her client to the witness stand, so instead she pokes holes in the opposing case. It’s not conclusive in the end, but if posterity is Cleopatra’s jury, Schiff gives it something to ponder. I’d highly recommend this to lovers of history, and for those interested in feminist scholarship. Though well-documented, it is a pretty light read – you certainly don’t have to be a student of history to enjoy reading this book.

Thanks to Jen at the Introverted Reader for hosting Character Connection. And what do you know? She’s also hosting the Dewey Decimal Challenge, which I am currently tearing up, with yet another non-fiction read! So thanks again, Jen.

Book Review: The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

Remember how you felt the first time you read Homer? Stretched and slightly confused, but in a good way? Reading Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony gave me that feeling again – for the first time in a long time.

Calasso’s landmark work is not just a retelling of the Greek myths – although the myths are central to the book. Rather, Calasso puts the myths, and their evolution, into perspective. Starting with Zeus’ rape of Europa, Calasso explores the Greek world’s uneasy relationship with their gods, and thereby tries to explain their relationship to the world.

Calasso finds patterns and subtle differences in familiar stories that I never noticed before. He writes poetically and persuasively. Speaking of the disaster wrought by the necklace given to Harmony by her mother Aphrodite for her wedding, Calasso explains the irony:

What conclusions can we draw? To invite the gods ruins our relationship with them but sets history in motion. A life in which the gods are not invited isn’t worth living. It will be quieter, but there won’t be any stories. And you could suppose that these dangerous invitations were in fact contrived by the gods themselves, because the gods get bored with men who have no stories. (p. 387)

This is a very enjoyable but by no means light read. First, the text assumes a fundamental understanding of ancient Greece’s philosophical terms. For a mythologist, this is just jargon. For me, it required a lot of trips to the dictionary – along with Wikipedia, I must admit. Likewise, even though I have a pretty good background in Classics, there were many myths and characters – especially from the older Greek Pantheon – with which I was unfamiliar. Again, these required a good deal of cross reference to understand Calasso’s arguments. Lastly, there’s the problem of chronology – while the book has numbered chapters, the structure is hard to understand. Some paragraphs seemed to bear no relationship to the paragraphs before or after them. I think this was intentional on the author’s part, hoping to emulate a kind of discussion with the reader. But there were times when I simply found it disorienting.

I would urge anyone with an interest in Classics or Greek mythology to read this book. I read it looking for a non-fiction title about mythology for the Read-A-Myth Challenge, and I would highly recommend it to the other participants in that challenge. I would simply urge readers to be patient – it’s not a book to be devoured in a day or two. I found myself reading a section, reflecting, sometimes re-reading and referencing, and then finally moving on. There’s just so much information here that I think to plow through it would be a disservice to Calasso’s accomplishment. Reading this book really will give you a completely different perspective on myths you thought you knew.

Thanks so much to JoV and Bina for hosting the Read-A-Myth Challenge! If you have room in your challenge schedule, I think you'll learn a lot from this one!

Since Calasso's treatise is about Greek mythology, and not a retelling of myth, I think it also counts for the Dewey Decimal Challenge! Thanks to Jen for hosting.

Book Review: Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography

Many people who know my politics assume my daughter Eleanor is named after a famous American first lady. Far from it. She’s actually named for an infamous duchess: Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Of course, infamous is in the eye of the beholder, and virtually every contemporary account describing Eleanor’s escapades was inked by a man. Which is why I so appreciated reading Marion Meade’s Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, a book that seeks to illuminate this amazing woman, both through painstaking research* and the intuitive piecing together of events that history left unrecorded. Meade’s attempt to see events from Eleanor’s perspective isn’t perfect, but it probably brings the reader closer to the truth than contemporary, male-oriented accounts ever could.

Brilliant, wealthy and impetuous, Eleanor – along with the land’s she herself controlled in Languedoc (now southern France) – represented the dynastic marital jackpot of twelfth century Christendom. Her father’s untimely death on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela prompted her hasty marriage to Louis of France. Meade speculates on the rationale for their marital problems quite extensively – and I think pretty persuasively – based on the very different relationship she maintained with her second husband, Henry of England. Before she managed a divorce from Louis on the well-established grounds of consanguinity (a burden the Pope had already removed), she gave him two daughters, one of whom was Marie of Champagne, patron to Chretien de Troyes.

With her second husband she had many more children, including two kings of England, Richard the Lionhearted and the ignominious John, who eventually was forced by his unhappy nobles to sign the Magna Carta. But it certainly wasn’t a “love” match, and their family feuding eventually took on civil war proportions, with some of the children siding with Eleanor and the king of France against Henry.**

While Eleanor has mostly been framed by the size of her patrimony, the depth of her perfidy and the acts of her progeny, what struck me most in reading Meade’s biography was her prodigious energy! She never seemed to stop moving, covering thousands of miles throughout her realm, even in years when she was pregnant. She represented a gentle touch to her subjects, probably a much needed one, considering Henry’s heavy hand. And she didn’t slow down much over her long life. The woman was crossing the Pyrenees on horseback at close to 80 years old, securing a granddaughter’s marriage and sealing a peace treaty!

Meade paints what I consider a deserving portrait of Eleanor of Aquitaine. To do this, she imagines motives and considers alternatives to “common knowledge.” Since male historians, many of them clerics with axes to grind, are the sources of the “common knowledge” about Eleanor, I can’t see any way around it, although as someone trained in historical method, I can see the potential problems with this strategy. I think anyone interested in medieval history will thoroughly enjoy this book, as well as those interested in history from a feminist perspective.

This book counts for the Dewey Decimal Challenge. My non-fiction kick is tearing that one up, but I'm moving on to a bit of fiction at this point! Thanks to Jen at the Introverted Reader for hosting.

*You know a book is painstakingly researched when your Kindle says you’ve read 86% of the book, and you’ve already arrived at the footnotes!

** Kind of makes the squabbles at your last family gathering seem like a walk in the park, doesn’t it?

Book Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

When I wrote up my goals for the year, I said I’d like to do more short reviews. This is one of those.

I picked up Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress in an airport bookshop where the pickings were pretty thin (unless you happened to be a Danielle Steele or Stephen King fan, which I’m definitely not). The premise was certainly interesting: a worldly college professor, recently dumped by her newly out-of-the-closet husband, goes back to her Mennonite family to convalesce after surgery.

I generally like memoirs, and Janzen’s is both raw and real. It was good – it just wasn’t great. Maybe that’s because the cover design and copy made me think this would be hilarious, and it really wasn’t. There were some funny parts, but the overriding emotion of the memoir was bitterness, not mirth. Maybe she wrote it too soon after her divorce. I could really feel the sting of it, but I found it oddly deflating.

Still, the book demystifies Mennonites, appreciated because I live in an area with a significant Mennonite population, and didn’t really know very much about their traditions and history. I would recommend it to anyone interested in knowing more about the group. It would probably also be appropriate for someone going through a divorce, as it does have a positive message about resilience, and learning to appreciate what you have. Not at all a bad book, it just didn’t fit my life or mood at the moment – thank goodness.

Lessons from the Bog People

If I had to conjure a coherent theme for my Winter Break reading, it would have to be “quirky non-fiction.” Cleopatra, Charlie Chan, and then this: Bog People.

It seems that nineteenth- and twentieth-century peat diggers throughout Northern Europe unearthed bodies so perfectly preserved that the local police were regularly called out to investigate possible murder. As it happens, the victims were ritually murdered – around 2,000 years ago. P.V. Glob’s The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved, written in 1965 and brought back into print by the New York Review Books imprint, was the first comprehensive archaeo-anthropological look at Denmark and Germany’s bog people, and the clues to Iron Age Germani society they provide.

P.V. Glob was Denmark’s Director General of Museums and Antiquities, as well as Director of the National Museum of Copenhagen, which afforded him particular access and insight into that country’s bog people. Some of the black and white photos throughout the book struck me as totally gruesome, but also fascinating in their detail, right down to a perfectly preserved Swabian hair curl, which had been described by Roman chroniclers, but not actually seen. (**Digression: I can’t get my hair to keep a curl for one swanky evening – apparently, some enterprising hairdresser needs to come up with a peat bog treatment for the wavily-challenged.**)

Think of this book as the literary equivalent of a very comprehensive National Geographic special, and you have the idea. Glob starts by describing the individual finds in detail, but by far the most interesting part of the book is the last third, when Glob uses the mummies to piece together the day-to-day life of Denmark’s Iron Age society, as well as speculating very convincingly about the meanings of these particular deaths.

For me, it was the photo of an intricately knit bonnet that really brought the dichotomies of Iron Age society home – it’s impossible to call a society that produced something so beautiful, without a written pattern or a machine, “barbaric.” And yet ritual sacrifice was clearly part of the fabric of their lives. How much have we changed?

The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved is a good, nerdy read. Highly recommended for readers who love anthropology and archaeology, readers who enjoy nonfiction, and who enjoy reading about ancient history. The pictures are pretty graphic, though, so it’s not the kind of thing I’d leave on a table for very sensitive little children to find.

This book counts for the Dewey Decimal Challenge -- if you like reading nonfiction, you should check it out over at The Introverted Reader. Thanks to Jen for hosting!

Charlie Chan history brings a cultural icon into focus

To know forgery, one must have original. ~ Charlie Chan

Maybe, like me, you loved to watch Charlie Chan movies as a kid. You might not have known many Asian or Asian American people – I didn’t – but you thought that if you met them they’d be really honest and smart and likeable, because that’s the kind of guy Charlie Chan was. (I know this is ridiculous now, but that’s how kids think.)

And then maybe, like me, you spent the 80s and 90s feeling guilty about liking those movies, because you found out many Asian Americans found them offensive. You didn’t actually believe you were a bigot for liking that wise family-man of a sleuth, but hey, you weren’t the one being offended. Like me, maybe you hadn’t thought about Charlie Chan in years, unless some controversy brought him back to mind, as when FOX recently caused an uproar by restoring and releasing some of the classic movies from the 30s and 40s.

If this is anything like your experience, Yunte Huang has written a book you’ll probably appreciate as much as I did. Huang, a Chinese-born English scholar with a PhD in Poetics, became fascinated by the love/hate relationship that Americans have with Charlie Chan after reading some of the original Earl Derr Biggers novels while in graduate school at SUNY Buffalo. With Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History, Huang seeks to contextualize Charlie Chan for the modern reader, providing significant background on Hawaiian history, Hollywood race relations, author Biggers, and the larger-than-life, ethnic-Chinese Honolulu Police Department detective who provided some of the inspiration for the honorable detective, Chang Apana, in the process.

Huang’s book provides a solid, critical history of the Charlie Chan phenomenon, from its foundations to its eventual fallout. The book captures the amazing personalities that made Charlie Chan an American cultural icon, including Apana, Biggers, and the non-Asian actors who played Chan on screen, Warner Oland and Sidney Toller. It also examines the differences between Chinese and Chinese-American reaction to the Charlie Chan series. In fact, Huang points out, the Charlie Chan movies were wildly popular in China, and Oland was treated like royalty in Hong Kong when he visited, although his characterization of Charlie Chan has been largely derided by American intellectuals.

Since Huang did not grow up in the US, he adds an interesting, “outsider” perspective to the Charlie Chan debate. Not having lived the “model minority” experience, he sees both the positive and negative aspects of Charlie Chan iconography. I did see that outsider status as problematic at some points of the book, when his arguments lacked subtlety and sophistication. For example, he seems to conflate British and American sentiments through the characters of Dr. Fu Manchu (written by British writer Sax Rohmer) and Charlie Chan (written by Ohio-born Biggers), as if there was some collective “Western” or “Anglo” perspective on race. I simply don’t believe that’s true.

But for the most part the book was very enjoyable, informative and thought-provoking. Do I think that the US is at a post-racial point where we can rediscover Charlie Chan? Probably not. But l do believe that like Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the popular Charlie Chan novels and movies have something to tell us about the time in which they were conceived. Huang is an academic, and I think media studies and Asian studies scholars will appreciate his work. But it’s not overly scholarly, and I’d also recommend this book to old movie buffs, those who enjoy media history, and mystery lovers.

As Charlie Chan once said, “Trouble, like first love, teach many lessons.” Huang’s book suggests we still have something to learn from the honorable detective.

The Wordy Shipmates: In Defense of Puritan Roots*

Sarah Vowell is about as good a feature writer as anyone in journalism today. I have always enjoyed her essays for PBS’s This American Life, because she has a real knack for tying together history and modern culture. So when I was wandering through Pattee Library’s lovely new leisure reading room at the beginning of November and saw her latest book, The Wordy Shipmates, with its cute little Puritan (definitely not Pilgrim, but more on that later) dolls on the cover, I grabbed it off the easel on impulse for a light Thanksgiving read. Impulse books are always a bit of a risk, but this time I feel like I got pretty lucky.

At the heart of The Wordy Shipmates is John Winthrop’s sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” which was delivered just before his little band of true-believing Puritans lost patience with the slow pace of reforms in the Church of England, and decided they’d rather carve out an existence on a wild, snowy bog – a.k.a. Boston – than endure any more of Archbishop Laud’s “popery.” (Never mind that the Pope hadn’t done much more than ritually excommunicate Englishmen in more than a hundred years – these Calvinists knew “popery” when they saw it – or smelled it, if the incense was burning.) Vowell uses this sermon as a launching pad for discussions on a wide range of topics, including Pilgrim kitsch, separation of Church and State, the Reagan Revolution and women’s healing gardens.

Vowell’s TAL essays generally run the listener through a gamut of emotions, moving almost effortlessly from sadness to amusement to anxiety, and the book’s extended format allows her to develop her ideas at a slower pace than on radio. I found the results here mixed – some of the sidepieces didn’t hold together as well as others. In one of the truly moving portions of the book, Vowell explains how “A Model of Christian Charity” became the focus of her book:

I would never answer with the honest truth. Namely, that in the weeks after two planes crashed into two skyscrapers here on the worst day of our lives, I found comfort in the words of Winthrop. When we were mourning together, when we were suffering together, I often thought of what he said and finally understood what he meant. (page 52)

The juxtaposition of the long past and the recent past is striking, and Vowell does a great job of tracing and clarifying the country’s Puritan roots. She is also quick to point out how far the country has come from those roots, especially in terms of dissent, which in Puritan Massachusetts took the forms of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Frankly, I will never be able to drive on the Hutchinson Parkway again without sticking my figurative tongue out at that big bully Winthrop!

This is a book with a focus on minutia – as Vowell herself points out, 17th century religion was based on tiny differences of interpretation. If you’re yearning to know why a Pilgrim isn’t a Puritan, this is your book. What was missing, to my mind, was the comic relief – and chapters. The comic relief would have thrown the historical and modern portions of the book into sharper contrast, I think. And chapters – well, they might have provided a bit more structure to the essay.

If you need some kind of linearity in your books, this one definitely isn’t for you! However, I’d absolutely recommend this book to history lovers and fans of This American Life. Also, to popular culture observers. It’s enjoyable, and factual without being heavy.

*Yes, this was supposed to be my Thanksgiving post. Didn't happen. Still a good book.

As Always, Julia: A friendship forged on paper

Letters freeze time. Big newsy letters are cultural artifacts. Big newsy letters between two brilliant and engaging women who share a great love of food, France and Democratic politics are ingredients for the best social history I’ve read this year: Joan Reardon’s fabulous As Always, Julia.

As Always, Julia shares the letters of Julia Child and her friend Avis DeVoto, the wife of an author to whom Child happened to send a letter. Avis wrote a response for her busy husband, and a long-distance friendship was born. But DeVoto became way more than a friend to Child – these letters make clear how very instrumental she was to the ultimate publication of the undertaking that became Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

It’s fascinating to watch a friendship develop before the two ever meet, but it’s easy to understand why. Julia’s sense of humor and enthusiasm bubbles off the pages sometimes, like when she inserts in the middle of a lengthy letter, “My for a short note, this ain’t,” (pg. 46) and then jumps back into a detailed discussion of Beurre Blanc. She seems almost giddy– maybe it was all the wonderful sparkling wine she lovingly describes? Whatever it is, it’s contagious – I just couldn’t help smiling as I read some passages, and I could see why DeVoto took an immediate interest in this passionate whirlwind of a woman.

For her part, the letters show that DeVoto was ex-pat Child’s most significant link to the United States, a country that was becoming increasingly “foreign” to Child during her years in Europe. Avis was also tireless in her support of Julia’s work, and ultimately used her connections at Knopf to put Child’s book into the hands of Judith Jones. The rest is history, of course, but this book adds another dimension to the story, illustrating how critical this wonderful friendship was to Child’s success:

“Your generosity in putting us up, wining us, introducing us, talking, sitting, ice-coffee-ing, and just letting us share your life for a while was heaven. And we felt so at home with you. You were exactly, I think, though now I can’t be sure, our “Dear Avis,” perfectly familiar.” (pg. 177)

One of the most interesting things about the book is how it gives us a peak into another world – or at least another lifetime: “What with the boss going out to Springfield and helping with other speeches here, I have to swing a lot of his affairs myself. After a blistering hot summer during which my weight fell to 112 pounds, I could do with some peace and the opportunity to putter around a stove.” (p. 16) I mean, how Mad Men is it to “swing” your boss’ affairs while he’s away? The book is a time capsule!

Through the years, the two women remained devoted to each other, with Julia choosing to move to Cambridge when her husband’s time with the State Department was at an end. They shared life’s sadnesses and joys, as only old friends can. I was sad to think of how lost Child must have felt after DeVoto’s death.

I highly recommend this book to people who love Julia Child, to people who love letters, to people who love memoirs, to people who love food, to people who depend on their girlfriends, to people who rejoice in travel, and especially to people who enjoy social histories. What an awesome find!

Thanks to Elizabeth Anderson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing me a review copy.

Driving Over Lemons, and making lemonade

There’s something intriguing about the guy who might have been the drummer for Genesis shearing sheep and running a farm in Andalucía. Of course if he had stuck with the original job, and not vacated his seat for a guy named Phil Collins, who knows if Genesis would have become Genesis? But I’d think that it would make a person wonder what might have been every once in a while.

Well, not Chris Stewart. Years after leaving the band, Stewart went to Spain, fell in love with the rugged mountains of the Sierra Nevada, and suddenly bought a farm without running water or electricity. And it appears he never looked back.

Driving over Lemons recounts Stewart's early years of raising sheep and oranges at El Valero, a decaying farm on the “wrong” side of a river that separates the farm from civilization at some times during the year. There are the funny bits and quirky characters readers have come to expect from these kinds of cross-cultural memoirs. But like any book with a “different” culture at its heart, this book is ultimately about the author’s own culture, examining which parts of it the author can shed, which parts of it he or she can adapt, and which parts of it are so close to the author’s soul that they can never be left behind. In the case of Chris Stewart that would be: tea.

Seriously, the one thing that this book lacks, compared with the others in its genre, is a coming to grips with the inner turmoil of living outside your culture. For most people it is confusing at first, and sometimes even threatening. But Stewart’s view is decidedly rosy. The author describes himself as an “optimist,” and I definitely would not describe myself as one, so maybe I just don’t understand his perspective. But the book seemed a bit “light” to me, as though Stewart didn’t want to offend anyone. The way he was pushed around by El Valero’s former owner almost made me put the book down – maybe he’s optimistic, maybe he’s just naïve, or maybe he’s naively optimistic. In the end I couldn’t decide.

Having spent some time in Spain, I did appreciate Stewart’s descriptions of the countryside, and his collection of the common wisdom of the local farmers has some funny moments. This is not the kind of book that made me laugh out loud, but it did give me some insight into the joys of veering out of life’s fast lane. I just never identified with Stewart enough to really share in his ups, because I didn’t see any of the downs. Still, the book is highly recommended for someone planning a trip – or a life – in Andalucía, and anyone who loves travel-based memoirs.

Micro-history Monday: The Professor and the Madman

With The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester presents a strange, personal and oddly upbeat history of the relationship between two men that ought never to have met. The first is Professor James Murray, the Scottish-born lexicographer behind what is now known as the Oxford English Dictionary. The second is Dr. W.C. Minor, a brilliant but insane American surgeon who murdered a London man in cold blood in the years after the American Civil War. Minor was consigned to the Broadmoor asylum after he was found not guilty of the crime because of insanity, and ultimately became one of the most significant contributors to the OED’s volunteer efforts. It was only after the first edition of the OED was published, when Murray traveled to Minor’s address to thank him personally for his tireless work, that Murray found out the doctor’s true identity and situation.

The story was bizarre enough to be fodder for the tabloid press on both sides of the Atlantic more than once during the early part of the 20th century, so it’s not surprising that Winchester resurrected the story again at the end of that century for further investigation. But I would argue that the tale of the two men merely provides a “hook” for the book that Winchester actually wanted to write (but which publishers no doubt told him wouldn’t sell), a history of English dictionaries, including his obviously beloved OED. And this is one of my main problems with the book. Winchester’s voice is so effusive in its praise of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, and then the OED, he waxes so poetic on their developments and uses, that he loses the battle for objectivity. My expectation of historians is when they re-approach a subject they will take many perspectives into account. But Winchester sweeps aside any criticisms of the OED – and there are many – in favor of devoted fandom:

There is some occasional carping that the work reflects an elitist, male, British, Victorian tone. Yet even in the admission that, like so many achievements of the era, it did reflect a set of attitudes not wholly harmonic with those prevalent at the end of the twentieth century, none seem to suggest that any other dictionary has ever come close, or will ever come close, to the achievement that it offers.(p. 221)

Winchester constructs the English language as the last vestige of the British Empire. But if it is, it’s worth remembering that it no longer belongs to the Victorian era. For me, the quaint spellings and definitions that make up the OED are an interesting historical artifact, but they give little sense of the dynamism of English in the internet age – for that, you’re better off with Urban Dictionary. So while I understand the importance of the original achievement, I am not as convinced as Winchester that the lexicographical achievement will stand alone in history -- I have more faith in English-speaking humanity than that. And humanity in general.

My second major problem with the book was the “pop psychology” angle on which some of the book's chapters depended. There is endless speculation about the causes of Dr. Minor’s madness (schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and separation anxiety are all proffered as possible explanations), as well as a prurient suggestion that some of the doctor’s later problems might have been caused by an unnatural attraction to the wife of the man Minor murdered – even though there is absolutely no shred of evidence that such an attraction existed. “Why go there?” I kept wondering.

This is a good book, however. The writing style was too flowery for my taste, but the story is told in a compelling way, moving between the two main characters - three if you count the OED - at a lively pace. Winchester did do primary research, and uncovered some letters that expand and enhance the story over previous tabloid versions. The word sleuths out there will definitely find it a treat. Recommended to those who can't start the week without finishing the NYT crossword puzzle, word historians, and anyone else who truly loves language.

That finishes the "What's in a Name 3" challenge - finally. I'm looking forward to next year's categories!

Micro-history Monday: There’s nothing “vanilla” about the ice cream orchid

I like reading about food almost as much as I like cooking food. Food micro-histories aren’t usually page turners, but I love the idea of someone learning everything there is to know about an ingredient or a cuisine –anything, really – and then sharing the information with me. That’s what happens when a micro-history is written well, anyway. And Tim Ecott’s Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid is actually written well.

Ecott traces vanilla’s story from the jungles of the Yucatan to the tiny islands of Reunion and Tahiti –excellent work, if you can get it. Along the way, he focuses on many aspects of the plant’s development and usage, including social justice issues, economics and agriculture. The historiography is well done, shifting seamlessly from Mexico and Central America to England to Madagascar to the Marquesas. It’s clear that Ecott has done a great deal of legwork.

A particularly interesting part of the book revolves around Edmond, the slave who discovered the trick to fertilizing orchid plants with a trick known as le geste d’Edmond. Figuring out the trick was crucial, as the insects that naturally fertilize the vanilla orchids in Mexico and Central America are not found on the Indian Ocean islands from which today’s Bourbon vanilla is largely exported. Ecott uses this section of the book to explore the social history of the French colonial islands, and the lingering racism faced by the Afro-French to this day:

In Tahiti, another former French possession, I met a vanilla grower who laughed when I told him what I knew of the story of Edmond. “Rubbish!” he said with a scowl. “In fact, the boy was just a slave – and it is well known that he hated his owner. If he did fertilize the vanilla flower – it was an accident, not any kind of discovery!”

This despite the fact the slave’s owner documented the discovery at the time, and freely shared the information with other plantation owners. The social history of the islands, as well as the current social aspects of the farmer/curer/importer relationships, are what set this book apart from other micro-histories which shy away from the politics of their subject.

I find it particularly satisfying when a micro-history leaves me with information I would never have had or that I can use in my daily life. Here’s one (among many) to whip out at cocktail parties from Ecott: those little black grains in your “Vanilla Bean” ice cream have NO flavor. That’s right, NONE. According to Ecott, the flavor in your commercially made ice cream comes entirely from extracts, not the beans extracted from the pods as you would do in home ice cream making. What you think are beans are actually the flavorless “dust” left from the extraction process. So why include them? It’s a heuristic, indicating “home-made” and “flavorful,” since in the rest of our life that’s exactly what the pods signify.

I definitely recommend this book to foodies, micro-history lovers and travel readers. At the very least, it will provide some chit-chat at the next ice cream social!

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner: Food as Culture

Bich Minh Nguyen’s Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is a memoir of one Vietnamese refugee’s path to self discovery, oriented around food. Nguyen hardly remembers the time before she lived in America – her father escaped the fall of Saigon with her older sister, her grandmother and two uncles when she was just two. Her life in Grand Rapids, Michigan, continues to be dominated by her outsider status long after she has lost the ability to speak fluent Vietnamese, however. The idea behind the memoir is to reflect on the author’s evolving conceptions of family, cohesion and identity through the one element of culture most accessible to outsiders: food.

A lot of the book focuses on what Nguyen is not: mostly, she is not white. And in her youthful view, white would be better. Conveniently (perhaps too conveniently), her frustration at not being American enough is in direct juxtaposition to the feelings of her 1st generation La Raza stepmother, who eschews everything “white.”

But Rosa didn’t want to be like the Vander Wals next door. She called the Midwestern dinners bland, sticking out her tongue for emphasis.” (p. 52)

As a communications scholar, I was particularly interested in the way media constructed Nguyen’s world. She does share some remembrances of media, but they do more to catalog the television commercials of the late 70s than to illuminate Nguyen’s feelings toward them, for the most part. There are some gems of self-reflection scattered through the text, however:

To me, life in commercials was real. Commercials were instructions; they were news. They showed me what perfection could be: in the right woman’s hands, the layers of a cake would be exactly the same size. In the right woman’s kitchen, a cartoon rabbit would visit the children and show them how to slurp down a tall glass of Nestle Quik with a straw. A shaken cruet would spill a stream of Good Seasons over hills of lettuce leaves. Commercials had a firm definition of motherhood, which almost all of my friends’ mothers had no trouble fulfilling.” (p.125)

That’s the kind of perspective-driven self-reflection I would have liked to have read more about. Instead, I found the food metaphor grew thin, and finally stretched toward incredulity. In trying to present her young self, Nguyen tried to divorce herself from the present, and her current realization of self in a multi-cultural America. But without knowing where she wound up, the memoir had less resonance.

Bottom line: because of my love of both food and culture, I wanted to love this book, but I only liked it. This is a good book. Nguyen is a talented writer. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a personal memoir of contemporary America. I just wish the author had dug a bit deeper, and offered more adult perspective – what does she think of living in the United States now? One hopes her conceptualization of being “white” has evolved as much as her conceptualization of being “American” or “Vietnamese-American,” but Nguyen never deals with anything but the caricatures. Her thesis remains undeveloped. The fact is we can only imagine the children we were. Who we are now seems so much more important.

Garlic & Sapphires: Delicious Deception

Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, is what I’d call a “food voyeur” title. This is a growing genre of memoirs about lives spent in and around the big city restaurant scene – usually in New York. Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential was my introduction to food voyeurism—and I imagine many others’ introduction as well—and it’s still the standard by which I gauge other books of this type, because of its honesty, hilarity and accessibility. (Just thinking about his riff on vegans can still make me chuckle!) Reichl turns the usual formula on its ear – she allows us a glimpse not of the kitchen, but of some of the finest dining rooms in New York City. And in so doing, I think she manages to expand the boundaries of a genre I’ve come to enjoy.

G&S details Reichl’s tenure as the chief restaurant critic for The New York Times, a coveted and significant job in the food world to say the least. Although she’s a native New Yorker, Reichl’s food sensibilities were developed and perfected on the West Coast, and that pushes the boundaries of what she considers great cuisine, causing a rather large rift between her and the previous, Euro-centric chief restaurant critic, which is one of the central tensions of the book.

Reichl shows us the woman’s perspective on what is often thought of as a man’s world. This is partially done through the many disguises she employed to keep her identity secret while she’s working on a restaurant review. The treatment she gets in most restaurants seems linked to the persona she has assumed, and I loved how she used her position to bring attention to the glamor of the dining experience to those who don’t get to dine at great restaurants often – or ever, for that matter.

The woman’s perspective is also clear in the implications of her job – both the credits and the debits – on her husband and son. Eating out sure is fun, but how does a 4- or 5-year old manage so many nights without mom? Or so many late meals with the grownups? Her reflections on these questions – and on her feelings about her duel identities – are deeply reflective and denote a woman who is willing to look critically at her life in order to get the most out of it.

On a personal note, having lived in New York City in the late 80s and early 90s, I loved re-reading her reviews of some of the top restaurants of that era, which brought to mind romantic dinners with my then-fiancé (now husband of nearly 20 years) at places like the Rainbow Room, Cellar in the Sky, Union Pacific, and even – and you’ll have to read the book to see why this is so darned funny – Tavern on the Green. Her witty style really brings the “characters” that make up the front end a restaurant to life – both those that extend diners dignity, and those that do not. Anyone who has ever waited for a table at a trendy restaurant will feel the author’s pain at times; anyone who has unexpectedly gotten the best seat in the house just because the hostess was in the right mood will recognize her exultation. It’s a really fun read, and it goes by too fast.

So as food voyeuristic reads go, put Garlic and Sapphires right up there with Bourdain’s classic exposé, and way ahead of recent entries, such as Heat. That’s book number 5 in the What’s in a Name 3 Challenge: a plant. My last title has to contain a title. I held off on The Professor and the Madman because it also fits into the Goodreads Seasonal Reading Challenge that I’m working on this summer, so that I’ll finish up with that in early June, and then start working on the other two challenges I’ve joined!