My Classics Club List

A number of the bloggers I follow are members of The Classics Club. I have actually wanted to join for a while, but found the idea of putting together a list of 50 books to read in 5 years very daunting. On the one hand, there are so many books to read. On the other hand, where to begin?

Feeling like I was missing a party I really wanted to attend, I finally hit on a two-part strategy. The first part of my list came from my existing TBR on Goodreads. That part of the list contains “classic” classics (if that’s a thing) that I just haven’t found time for – a.k.a., I wasn’t assigned – like Eliot’s Middlemarch and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.

The second part came from an imprint that I absolutely love, and wanted to explore more thoroughly, NYRB Classics. I love this imprint because of its broad range: history, biography, memoir, mystery, humor, and romance are all represented. Because of the nature of the list, these books are more international in nature, decidedly modern, and maybe a bit more obscure, including titles such as Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel and Nancy Mitford’s Voltaire in Love.

There are no re-reads on my list, which is a bit scary. A majority of the authors are completely new to me as well. But I feel like I will have accomplished something when I finally get through the list. Hopefully, that will be before August 5, 2018!

Col Reads’ Classic 50

1. Baker, Dorothy: Cassandra at the Wedding

2. Bengtsson, Frans G.: The Long Ships

3. Borges, Jorge Luis: Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi

4. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth: Lady Audley’s Secret

5. Cather, Willa: Death Comes for the Archbishop

6. Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre: Dangerous Liaisons

7. Collette: The Pure and Impure

8. Collodi, Carlo: Pinocchio

9. De Balzac, Honore: The Unknown Masterpiece

10. De Maupassant, Guy: Alien Hearts

11. Dundy, Elaine: The Dud Avocado

12. Edwards, G.B.: The Book of Ebeneezer Le Page

13. Eliot, George: Middlemarch

14. Eliot, T.S.: Murder in the Cathedral

15. Fearing, Kenneth: The Big Clock

16. Fermor, Patrick Leigh: The Traveller’s Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands

17. Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones

18. Finley, F.I.: The World of Odysseus

19. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby

20. Gadda, Carlo Emilio: That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana

21. Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South

22. Gogol, Nikolay: Dead Souls

23. Grossman, Vasily: An Armenian Sketchbook

24. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Blithedale Romance

25. Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast

26. Hughes, Richard: A High Wind in Jamaica

27. Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God

28. Inoue, Yasushi: Tun-Huang

29. Ishiguro, Kazuo: The Remains of the Day

30. Jansson, Tove: The True Deceiver

31. Kerouac, Jack: On the Road

32. Malory, Sir Thomas: Le Morte d’Arthur

33. Mitford, Jessica: Hons and Rebels

34. Mitford, Nancy: Voltaire in Love

35. Murakami, Haruki: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

36. Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita

37. Pepys, Samuel: Diary of Samuel Pepys

38. Pirandello, Luigi: The Late Mattia Pascal

39. Pym, Barbara: Excellent Women

40. Sabbatini, Rafael: Scaramouche

41. Simenon, Georges: Act of Passion

42. Sorokin, Vladimir: The Queue

43. Taylor, Elizabeth: Angel

44. Twain, Mark: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

45. Van Vechten, Carl: The Tiger in the House

46. Von Arnim, Elizabeth: The Enchanted April

47. Warner, Rex: Men and Gods

48. Wharton, Edith: Ghost Stories

49. White, T.H.: The Once and the Future King

50. Zola, Emile: The Belly of Paris

I'll be tracking my progress on a separate blog page. Right now the 0/50 has me pretty motivated to get moving on some classics!

NIGELLA EXPRESS by Nigella Lawson

I had never seen Nigella Lawson on television until I went to England and Wales this summer. Exhausted from a conference – oh, and from running around London with a tween looking for Harry Potter filming locations – we were thrilled we could “veg out” in the evening with the Food Network UK. (Ah, the comfort. Ah, the bacon!) Our schedule (and jet lag) introduced us to two new-to-us shows: Nigella Kitchen and Bitchin’ Kitchen. Back home, I looked for accompanying cookbooks because my daughter had enjoyed the shows so much, and Nigella Express was the first one I saw. Which is why Nigella has the (dubious) distinction of being my first Rent Before Buying review.

Who is Nigella Lawson? Self-proclaimed “Domestic Goddess,” daughter of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer of Great Britain, and until this week the wife of the advertising-made bazillionaire Charles Saatchi. She is a self-taught cook, and her curvaceous appearance and flirtatious delivery helped to define what media critics refer to a “food porn.” Lawson is an icon in the UK, with a string of successful cookbooks and cooking series to her credit.

Take on Cooking: Nigella Express is Lawson’s ode to the busy working mom – someone she knows more than a little bit about, what with running a media empire and being a mother of three! It’s all about giving yourself a break and getting good tasting food on the table fast.

The Delicious Parts: The book is beautifully photographed, and Lawson’s personal stories make it an entertaining read. She comes across as down-to-earth but just a little bit edgy– kind of like the Anti-Martha Stewart. And Lawson has a real talent for putting together flavors that work well together. There’s plenty of spices and seasonings, with some unexpected combinations.

Not Quite To My Taste: The “express” part of the title comes with some shortcuts that we don’t usually use, including a lot of processed products –mixing jarred spaghetti sauce, broth and pasta for minestrone seems a bit too express, if you get my drift. Also, the “comfort food” aspect of the book meant that a lot of the recipes were very fatty. So I wound up adding steps and substituting ingredients to make meals for my family. The book is dessert heavy, because sweets are definitely Lawson’s thing – but we aren’t habitual dessert eaters, so a lot of the recipes would go unused (although I’m pretty sure my daughter would be happy if I used them).

Recommedation? Devour, Split, Send it Back to the Kitchen? For me, it’s a definite split—it’s going back to the library, and I don’t have to purchase it. But I can see why others would devour it, especially dessert lovers, and those looking for one cookbook with a broad set of recipes! I could see this as a great shower gift or new parent gift – perfect for someone not used to getting a meal together every night.

One Great Recipe: Nigella Lawson’s Curry in a Hurry

2 T. canola or other oil

3 T. finely chopped scallions

3-4 T. green Thai curry paste

2 ¼ lbs. chicken thigh fillets, cut into strips about 1 ½ inches by ¾ inch (I used considerably less, only about a pound, and for the four of us the proportions were fine)

1 14-oz can coconut milk

1 cup boiling water + enough chicken bouillon or concentrate to make 2 cups (I used veggie broth)

1 T. fish sauce

1 ½ cup frozen peas

1 ½ cup frozen edamame

1 ½ cup frozen slender beans (I used fresh because they are in season)

3 T. fresh cilantro

Cooked rice or noodles (I served this with a spicy chili rice)

Lime wedges

1) Heat the oil in a large saucepan, on that owns a lid, and drop in the scallions. Cook, stirring for a minute of two, and then add the curry paste.

2) Add the chicken pieces and keep turning over heat for 2 minutes before adding the coconut milk, stock, and fish sauce, and then the frozen peas and soybeans.

3) Simmer for 10 minutes, then add the frozen green beans and cook for 3-5 minutes.

4) Serve with rice or noodles, as wished, sprinkling over the cilantro as you do so. Put a plate of lime wedges for people to squeeze over as they eat.

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!

FTC disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of this book for review.

MY FRIEND MAIGRET by Georges Simenon

There is something very comforting about a classic police procedural. A corpse shows up at the beginning of the mystery – often accompanied by an exotic murder weapon or ornate crime scheme – and by the end the murderer is delivered to justice by either the keen intellect or daring intuition of some hardworking police detective. Writers as diverse as Ngaio Marsh (New Zealand), Erle Stanley Gardner (USA), Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Sweden), and Peter Robinson (UK) have all delivered on the same concept for more than a century, all adding something unique to the formula – often in the understanding of how very different the legal systems in which the detectives operate actually are.

It makes sense that the French would have a unique take on the genre. And by some accounts, Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret remains the quintessential French police detective, even though he made his debut in the 1930s. My Friend Maigret was my second novel in the series (both read completely out of order). I enjoyed this one, not because the mystery was so fantastic, but because it gave me a great deal of insight into some of the inherent differences between the French and British legal systems. This was because Maigret spends the book being shadowed by Mr. Pyke of Scotland Yard, who has been sent to study Maigret’s crime solving “methods.”

In this case, Maigret gets a call from Inspector Lechat on Île de Porquerolles indicating that a local ne’er-do-well has been murdered on the same night he was overheard bragging in a bar about his “good friend,” the famous inspector Maigret. The Inspector does indeed remember Marcellin, a man who he put away for taking part in an inveigling scheme – and his TB-ridden accomplice, Ginette, whom Maigret took pity on, and sent to a sanatorium. At one point, Maigret discusses the relationships that develop between habitual criminals and the police with Pyke:

“I wrote to him, I recall. I don’t know how you deal with them in your country.

“Very correctly.”

“I don’t doubt it. Here we sometimes knock them around. We’re not always gentle with them. But the odd thing is that they seldom hold it against us. They know we’re only doing our job. From one interrogation to the next, we get to know each other.”

“This is the one who called himself a friend of yours?”

“I’m convinced he was sincere.”

Kindle location 173/2176

Intrigued by his alleged link to the thug’s death, and relieved to have an interesting case to work on with Pyke, Maigret heads off to beautiful Porquerolles. And meets the colorful locals and strange boating tourists. And drinks white wine. And observes. Actually, it looks like nothing is happening. And then all of a sudden he has the mystery solved. I’m not sure what Pyke learned about his methods, but I know I didn’t learn much. Still the motive was pretty clever – I just didn’t feel like I was gathering the same clues Maigret had in the end.

I said at a dinner party recently that I found murder mysteries very relaxing, and everybody laughed. I wasn’t actually joking. Sure, depending on the era and country in which they operate, these fictional heroes have different constraints, and different social ills with which they contend. Not to mention murder. But to my mind, what ties police procedurals together is a belief that somehow front line civil servants – at least most of them – are trying their hardest to protect the public. My Friend Maigret certainly falls into that category. And while in this case the ending wasn’t as satisfying as usual – either for me, or for Maigret – I still find something very comforting about that.

FTC disclosure: I did not receive a copy of this book for review.

Weekend Cooking Cookbook Review: THE MEAT FREE MONDAY COOKBOOK

This week I thought it was only fair to share a review of one of the books that led to last week’s “Rent Before Buying Cookbook Pledge.” The Meat Free Monday Cookbook: A Full Menu for Every Monday of the Year by the Meat Free Monday Campaign, Annie Riggs and Paul, Stella, & Mary McCartney was a cookbook I looked forward to reading. I admit, without hesitation, that a lot of that enthusiasm came from my fondness for Paul McCartney. He seems like such a nice, colossally rich, nice, vegetarian, nice, enormously talented, nice guy. If he contributed to the book, I reasoned, it must be very nice.

I also love the theory behind Sir Paul’s Meatless Monday campaign: get carnivores to give up meat one day a week. The benefits of this strategy are two-fold. First, it has the effect of immediately reducing meat intake, which is good for health and the environment. Second, and more importantly, it should have the long term effect of convincing carnivores that giving up meat is not really a sacrifice at all – in fact, lots of meals are completely delicious without it!

There is no doubt that the book is beautiful, as one might expect from the influence of the artistic McCartney clan. The presentation is unique -- rather than provide individual breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes for each season, 13 complete daily menus are presented for each season, including “packed lunch” and “lunch” (I assumed to eat at home) and dessert options, taking advantage of produce in season. The first thing I noticed is that there was no definite criteria for the lunches – some of the home lunches appeared simpler than the packed choices.

Another thing I noticed was that some daily menus didn’t provide much dietary diversity. For example, Spring Week 10 offered a packed lunch of Pasta with Spring Herbs and an at home lunch of Crunchy Cauliflower and Macaroni – so far, so good, although the packed lunch is supposed to be heated, and that’s not possible at every office. But then you turn to dinner for the same week, and the recipe is for Stir-Fry with Spring Vegetables and Noodles. Really? When you’re trying to convince carnivores that vegetarian fare is not bland or boring you suggest pasta for 3 meals in the same day? Autumn Week 2 suggested a potato Rosti for at home lunch, followed by dinner – which featured a side of potato salad. I don’t think most of us would plan family meals that way.

I have made some of the recipes from the book – the Rosti was really quite delicious. I wasn’t as successful with the Sicilian Cauliflower Pasta – as written the recipe was far too dry. It was easily saved by a can of diced tomatoes and some wine, but if you’d followed the recipe slavishly, it would have been inedible. One of the biggest disappointments was that some of the celebrity contributions had a “phoned in” feel. Sir Paul, all around nice guy, contributed the Winter Week 12 breakfast offering: Toasted Bagel with Hummus. It may well be his favorite breakfast, but did I really need to pay $20 for that recipe? No.

Bottom line, had I taken this book out from the library first, I wouldn’t have purchased it. Meat Free Mondays is really geared for complete veggie-phobes, something I definitely am not. Or perhaps those who simply don’t know how to cook without meat – but that’s something I do far more often than not. It’s not a total loss – I made both the Rosti recipe and the Glamorgan Sausages more than once, and they are now part of my repertoire. But lesson learned: Rent before Buying!

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!

FTC disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of this book for review.

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YOU DESERVE NOTHING by Alexander Maksik

The one word that comes to mind when I think back on Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing is “rubbernecking.” Reading the book gave me the sensation of being stuck in a traffic jam on a hot evening. One of those epic Long Island traffic jams, where everyone is trying to get home from Jones Beach at the same time. You can see the screaming lights of the police and fire vehicles up ahead, and you know it’s going to be bad when you finally get there – but you still want to get there, so you can go past. You don’t want to look as your car finally inches single file past the disaster. But your eyes are drawn to it, and you crane your neck to see signs of life, to assure yourself that it’s all going to be alright. Unfortunately, you’re left with the empty feeling that sometimes things are not alright after all.

It’s clear from the first pages that ex-pat superteacher William Silver isn’t what he appears to be on the surface. Serene and confident in the classroom, his inner world roils with some kind of agonizing remorse. He manages to hold himself together during the day, making ancient authors come to life for his high school students, infusing their days with idealistic lessons about social justice. He makes them believe they have the power to change society. Some of them feel like they can never measure up. Others believe societal conventions no longer apply to them.

The novel is beautifully written from alternating first-person perspectives: Will’s own, nymphet high schooler Marie’s, and that of a new student at the tony English academy in Paris where he teaches, Gilad. At first I thought the third voice was superfluous. But I realized that Gilad was there to show us the collateral damage caused when adults behave badly. Late in the novel, 17-year-old Gilad wrestles with his inability to protect his mother from his abusive father:

That night I stayed in my room. I pissed out the window into the courtyard below. I read. I walked back and forth. I held the door handle. Imagined opening it. Breaking down their door. Cross the fucking room. Dig down. Push. Go.

But I was a coward. I stayed where I was. I looked out into the night and put it all away. I looked out my window and knew that Silver, somewhere in the city, was in his apartment. He’d be reading. Listening to John Coltrane or something. Or at his desk, grading papers. Writing poems maybe. The light low, a beautiful bare-shouldered woman reading on the couch. There he was living his honorable life. I saw it clear as anything. (p. 196-197)

The novel’s conclusion is clear from a first, fateful phone call. And yet that didn’t stop me from turning the pages, because I was so interested in what the characters would do with the situation. This is a very intense novel, not at all light, but moving and well-crafted. But I would definitely say you need to be in a quiet, contemplative mood to get the most out of it. I’d recommend it for lovers of contemporary literary fiction, but I also think the strong voices of the teenagers would make it a logical choice for young adult readers. My 19-year-old daughter picked it up after me, and said she was enjoying it.

Dealing with my mother’s illness took me out of the blogging loop for a good part of the past year. So I’m finally entering the Europa Editions Reading Challenge at the Ristretto level for 2013, even though I’m hopeful I’ll finish more than 2 titles before December. I continue to be so impressed by the imprint and the fantastic authors they represent that I wouldn’t want to miss the challenge! Thanks so much to Marie of Boston Bibliophile for creating the challenge.

COLD COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons

One of the things about being generally regarded by your friends and family as “well read” is this: you are subject to stares of utter disbelief when you admit to not having read a book that someone else consider “classic.” “YOU haven’t read Kafka on the Shore? I can’t believe it! You went on and on about The Belly of Paris last month, and you haven’t even read Murakami? Even my Cousin Waldo the Luddite has read THAT one!”

It’s kind of hard not to take it personally.

One of the books that I routinely got berated for not reading was Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. English friends in particular could not believe this galling oversight in my reading biography. So needing a 20th Century classic for the Back to the Classics 2013 Challenge over at Sarah Reads Too Much, I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

Finally, I realize why everyone was amazed that I’d waited so long to read this book. There aren’t too many novels I’ve found as absurdly funny as Cold Comfort Farm. And believe me, that’s saying something. Because absurdly funny is one of my favorite things.

The novel is mostly set in rural Sussex in the early part of the 20th century. Flora Poste, an orphan at 19 and possessing a tiny inheritance and virtually no work ethic, decides her best course of action is to sponge off her distant relatives, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm. The Starkadders agree to take her in because they seem to believe that they have some grave wrong to make up to her – a wrong about which she has absolutely no clue. However, on arrival, she finds her inherent need for tidiness immediately assaulted by the very messy condition of the Starkadders lives, due mostly to the imperious machinations of the formidable matriarch of the family, Aunt Ada Doom. So she immediately sets to work solving the Starkadders various problems.

The novel has a large and sometimes confusing cast of characters, complete with ridiculous and evocative names and neuroses to match. Flora puts her city street smarts to bear on the bucolic chaos, arranging and rearranging marriages, careers and personal habits. Her snarky insights and polite inability to take no for an answer were hilarious – she sort of reminded me of Katherine Hepburn’s character in Bringing Up Baby: ditzy like a fox!

It is Flora’s great strength that she sees clearly who her kin are, and works her fixes for them without ever trying to change their natures. Local gigolo Seth, for example, has fantastic looks, no brains and a desire to be the center of attention. Flora’s solution? Make a matinee idol out of him! So she arranges a meeting between Mr. Neck, the producer, and her wayward cousin:

A silence fell. The young man stood in the warm light of the declining sun, his bare throat and boldly moulded features looking as though they were bathed in gold. His pose was easy and graceful. A superb self-confidence radiated from him, as it does from any healthy animal. He met Mr. Neck’s stare with an impudent stare of his own, his head lowered and slightly forward. He looked exactly what he was, the local sexually successful bounder. Millions of women were to realize, in the next five years, that Seth could be transported in fancy to a Welsh mining village, a shoddy North country seaside town, a raw city the plains of the Middle West, and still remain eternally and unchangeably the local irresistible bounder. (pg. 184)

I loved watching Flora’s plans come together, and laughed out loud at her insights more than once. I did find the dialect that the cousins’ dialogue was written in a bit slow going, but it didn’t detract at all from my enjoyment of the story. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves British comedy. And to anyone tired of the incredulous looks – it’s quite painless to banish them in this case!

Okay, better late than never for the Back to the Classics Challenge. I am finally on the board. Thanks to Sarah for hosting.

FTC disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of this book to review.

The Rent Before Buying Cookbook Pledge

I have to admit it. I have a problem. A cookbook problem, that is. I look at a cookbook, especially one with the delightful pictures and chatty backstories about the recipes, and all I see are endless possibilities. The problem comes in when I actually get the book home, and realize that I’m changing all the recipes anyway, or that it take hours to prepare each one so the book is relegated to weekend cooking or that I just don’t share the taste of the author. And the cookbook, rather than become a source of entertainment and inspiration, becomes a dust collector. Or a paper weight. Or a coaster.

I have found this to be a particular problem with “celebrity chef” cookbooks. I like their shows, and even try some of the recipes. But when I have received their cookbooks, I don’t find I use them very often. Giada’s Family Dinners never excited my family (if you have an herb garden, great. But 3 or four different fresh herbs for every meal really ads up in winter in PA). Mario Batali’s Simple Italian Food was anything but simple, at least in the ingredient department (guanciale is just not as common as you might think outside of Manhattan as Mario thinks). Still, despite the fact that I get three cooking magazines monthly, I love nothing better than to cuddle up with a good cookbook.

What’s a voracious reader to do? Rent!

That’s right. Instead of sneaking a peak at a few of Amazon’s “Look Inside” pages, I am trying a new tactic. Here’s my pledge: I’m not buying a cookbook until I’ve cooked at least three recipes out of it, liked them all without infinite tweaking, and found the types of ingredients used fit my budget, my aesthetics, my area of the country and my time constraints.

Admittedly, I am aided in this challenge by having one of the most amazing library systems in the country at my beck and call. Turns out there is virtually no book I have thought of that at least one university in the increasingly poorly named Big 10 has not purchased already. Nigella Lawson? No problem. Jacques Pepin? Got it. James Beard? Everyone. And it’s not just classics and best sellers. The Hospitality Management (a.k.a. Hotel and Restaurant) programs at the various universities require students to research all kinds of cooking trends. So browsing the catalog I’ve come across The Sriracha Cookbook, The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent, and The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.

This week I’m trying out Nigella Express. And I’m waiting to hear about an interlibrary loan for Chocolate & Zucchini.

The question for Weekend Cooking readers is this: What cookbooks should I rent next? Thanks for any suggestions you can offer!

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!