The next meeting of the Genre Reading Group will be Tuesday,
January 28, 2020 at 6:30pm in the Library’s Conference Room. The topic up for discussion will be classic
novels. Movie adaptations of those novels are allowed!
GRG met this week for one of our biannual Salon Discussions,
which are reader’s choice meetings with no assigned topic.
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
(amazon) There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of
Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does
not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence
with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.
When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious
new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried
are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past―both the
green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.
Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo
(amazon) A prizewinning and word of mouth literary sensation
in France, Animalia is an extraordinary epic that retraces the
history of a modest French peasant family over the twentieth century as they
develop their small plot of land into an industrial pig farm, a visceral,
chilling tale of man and beast
The small village of Puy-Larroque, southwest France, 1898.
Éléonore is a child living with her father, a pig farmer whose terminal illness
leaves him unable to work, and her God-fearing mother, who runs both farm and
family with an iron hand. Éléonore passes her childhood with little heat and no
running water, sharing a small room with her cousin Marcel, who does most of
the physical labor on the farm. When World War I breaks out and the village
empties, Éléonore gets a taste of the changes that will transform her world as
the twentieth-century rolls on.
As the reader moves into the second part of the
novel, which takes place in the 1980s, the untamed world of Puy-Larroque seems
gone forever. Now, Éléonore has herself aged into the role of matriarch, and
the family is running a large industrial pig farm, where thousands of pigs
churn daily through cycles of birth, growth, and death. Moments of sublime
beauty and powerful emotion mix with the thoughtless brutality waged against
animals that makes the old horrors of death and disease seem like simpler
times.
A dramatic and chilling tale of man and beast that recalls the naturalism of writers like Émile Zola, Animalia traverses the twentieth century as it examines man’s quest to conquer nature, critiques the legacy of modernity and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next, and questions whether we can hold out hope for redemption in this brutal world.
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
(amazon) NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Real
Simple • Good Housekeeping • Town & Country
When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?
This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.
Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.
When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?
This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.
Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.
Prune: A Cookbook by Gabrielle Hamilton
(amazon) NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS
WEEKLY
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE SEASON BY
Time • O: The Oprah Magazine • Bon Appétit • Eater
A self-trained cook turned James Beard Award–winning chef, Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune on New York’s Lower East Side fifteen years ago to great acclaim and lines down the block, both of which continue today. A deeply personal and gracious restaurant, in both menu and philosophy, Prune uses the elements of home cooking and elevates them in unexpected ways. The result is delicious food that satisfies on many levels.
Highly original in concept, execution, look, and feel, the Prune cookbook is an inspired replica of the restaurant’s kitchen binders. It is written to Gabrielle’s cooks in her distinctive voice, with as much instruction, encouragement, information, and scolding as you would find if you actually came to work at Prune as a line cook. The recipes have been tried, tasted, and tested dozens if not hundreds of times. Intended for the home cook as well as the kitchen professional, the instructions offer a range of signals for cooks—a head’s up on when you have gone too far, things to watch out for that could trip you up, suggestions on how to traverse certain uncomfortable parts of the journey to ultimately help get you to the final destination, an amazing dish.
Complete with more than with more than 250 recipes and 250 color photographs, home cooks will find Prune’s most requested recipes—Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter, Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad, Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg, Roasted Capon on Garlic Crouton, Prune’s famous Bloody Mary (and all 10 variations). Plus, among other items, a chapter entitled “Garbage”—smart ways to repurpose foods that might have hit the garbage or stockpot in other restaurant kitchens but are turned into appetizing bites and notions at Prune.
Featured here are the recipes, approach, philosophy, evolution, and nuances that make them distinctively Prune’s. Unconventional and honest, in both tone and content, this book is a welcome expression of the cookbook as we know it.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE SEASON BY
Time • O: The Oprah Magazine • Bon Appétit • Eater
A self-trained cook turned James Beard Award–winning chef, Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune on New York’s Lower East Side fifteen years ago to great acclaim and lines down the block, both of which continue today. A deeply personal and gracious restaurant, in both menu and philosophy, Prune uses the elements of home cooking and elevates them in unexpected ways. The result is delicious food that satisfies on many levels.
Highly original in concept, execution, look, and feel, the Prune cookbook is an inspired replica of the restaurant’s kitchen binders. It is written to Gabrielle’s cooks in her distinctive voice, with as much instruction, encouragement, information, and scolding as you would find if you actually came to work at Prune as a line cook. The recipes have been tried, tasted, and tested dozens if not hundreds of times. Intended for the home cook as well as the kitchen professional, the instructions offer a range of signals for cooks—a head’s up on when you have gone too far, things to watch out for that could trip you up, suggestions on how to traverse certain uncomfortable parts of the journey to ultimately help get you to the final destination, an amazing dish.
Complete with more than with more than 250 recipes and 250 color photographs, home cooks will find Prune’s most requested recipes—Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter, Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad, Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg, Roasted Capon on Garlic Crouton, Prune’s famous Bloody Mary (and all 10 variations). Plus, among other items, a chapter entitled “Garbage”—smart ways to repurpose foods that might have hit the garbage or stockpot in other restaurant kitchens but are turned into appetizing bites and notions at Prune.
Featured here are the recipes, approach, philosophy, evolution, and nuances that make them distinctively Prune’s. Unconventional and honest, in both tone and content, this book is a welcome expression of the cookbook as we know it.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
(amazon) Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who
points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his
bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse.
People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just
because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Fredrik Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. “If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’ this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down” (Booklist, starred review).
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Fredrik Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. “If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’ this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down” (Booklist, starred review).
(rottentomatoes) Director Yves Simoneau explores the plight
of the American Indian in the later half of the 19th century in this docudrama
exploring the effects of westward expansion and based on the book by Dee Brown.
As a Gentleman Would Say: Responses to Life’s Important (And Sometimes Awkward) Situations by John Bridges and Bryan Curtis
(amazon) This easily accessible book focuses on those
moments when knowing exactly what to say is an absolutely necessary challenge.
From the light-hearted "how to react when someone turns you down for a
date" or "what to say when you notice someone's fly is open" to
the more serious "what to say to a co-worker who has had a miscarriage or
to a friend who has suffered the sudden death of a parent," As A
Gentleman Would Say differs from other etiquette books in that it not only
offers suggestions for the correct thing to say in more than 100 social
situations-it also gives examples of the wrong thing to say!
The Soul of Wine: Savoring the Goodness of God by Gisela H.
Kreglinger
(amazon) Wine is a wonderful, lavish, and mysterious gift
from God. Gisela Kreglinger, the daughter of a vintner and trained as a
theologian, invites us to discover wine as part of a more full-bodied Christian
spirituality. She shows us how the soulful savoring of wine is God's way of
wooing us back into a great love affair. Indeed, Jesus' first miracle was
turning water into wine at a wedding. Along with bread, wine is the gift we
receive at the table of communion. Through these gifts we experience God's
glorious and loving presence among us, feeding and nurturing us in body, soul,
and spirit. Wine was never meant just for a small and elite group of well-to-do
people but is for us all. Wine can re-enchant the world and help us fall in love
with it all over again. Come and savor its goodness. A wine tasting and book
discussion guide is also included.
Babette’s Feast (film)
(rottentomatoes) The Danish/French Babette's Feast is based
on a story by Isak Dinesen, also the source of the very different Out of Africa
(1985). Stephane Audran plays Babette, a 19th century Parisian political
refugee who seeks shelter in a rough Danish coastal town. Philippa (Bodil Kjer)
and Martina (Birgitte Federspiel), the elderly daughters of the town's
long-dead minister, take Babette in.
As revealed in flashback, Philippa and
Martina were once beautiful young women (played by Hanne Stensgaard and Vibeke
Hastrup), who'd forsaken their chances at romance and fame, taking hollow
refuge in religion. Babette holds a secret that may very well allow the older
ladies to have a second chance at life. This is one of the great movies about
food, but there are way too many surprises in Babette's Feast to allow us to
reveal anything else at this point (except that Ingmar Bergman
"regulars" Bibi Andersson and Jarl Kulle have significant cameo
roles).. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague by David K. Randall
(amazon) For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in
San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would
have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn’t noticed a swollen black
lymph node on his groin―a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist
pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined
Wong’s tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not
contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak
that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide.
To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such
a possibility was inconceivable―or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to
obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists
in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to
save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for
sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San
Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the
fate of the entire country at risk.
In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall
spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and
contain its spread―the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from
a gruesome fate.
Holiday Jubilee: Classic & Kitschy Festivities & Fun Party Recipes by Charles Phoenix
(amazon) You're invited to celebrate America’s favorite
seasonal traditions like never before. Ambassador of Americana Charles Phoenix
mixes and mingles spectacular vintage Kodachrome slides of New Year’s,
Valentine’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas
with his eye-popping, original recipes for epic edible centerpieces and party
pleasers from his colorful Test Kitchen―including his legendary Cherpumple
creation! Be prepared for your imagination to be inspired and your holiday
spirit to soar!
The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung
(amazon) From the days of her childhood in the 1950s
Midwest, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who
they seem. As she matures from a girl of rare intelligence into an exceptional
mathematician, traveling to Europe to further her studies, she must face
the most human of problems—who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is
the cost of ambition? These questions grow ever more entangled as
Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and
becomes involved with a brilliant and charismatic professor.
When she embarks on a quest to conquer the Riemann
hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns
to a theorem with a mysterious history that may hold both the lock and the key
to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II. Forced to
confront some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century and
rethink everything she knows of herself, she finds kinship in the stories of
the women who came before her, and discovers how seemingly distant stories,
lives, and ideas are inextricably linked to her own.
The Tenth Muse is a gorgeous, sweeping tale about
legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.
Marley by Jon Clinch
(amazon) “Marley was dead, to begin with,” Charles Dickens
tells us at the beginning of A Christmas Carol. But in Jon Clinch’s
ingenious novel, Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is very
much alive: a rapacious and cunning boy who grows up to be a forger, a
scoundrel, and the man who will be both the making and the undoing of Scrooge.
They meet as youths in the gloomy confines of Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys, where Marley begins their twisted friendship by initiating the innocent Scrooge into the gentle art of extortion. Years later, in the dank heart of London, their shared ambition manifests itself in a fledgling shipping empire. Between Marley’s genius for deception and Scrooge’s brilliance with numbers, they amass a considerable fortune of dubious legality, all rooted in a pitiless commitment to the soon-to-be-outlawed slave trade.
As Marley toys with the affections of Scrooge’s sister, Fan, Scrooge falls under the spell of Fan’s best friend, Belle Fairchild. Now, for the first time, Scrooge and Marley find themselves at cross-purposes. With their business interests inextricably bound together and instincts for secrecy and greed bred in their very bones, the two men engage in a shadowy war of deception, false identities, forged documents, theft, and cold-blooded murder. Marley and Scrooge are destined to clash in an unforgettable reckoning that will echo into the future and set the stage for Marley’s ghostly return.
Meticulously crafted and beguilingly told, Marley revisits and illuminates one of Charles Dickens’s most cherished works to spellbinding effect.
They meet as youths in the gloomy confines of Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys, where Marley begins their twisted friendship by initiating the innocent Scrooge into the gentle art of extortion. Years later, in the dank heart of London, their shared ambition manifests itself in a fledgling shipping empire. Between Marley’s genius for deception and Scrooge’s brilliance with numbers, they amass a considerable fortune of dubious legality, all rooted in a pitiless commitment to the soon-to-be-outlawed slave trade.
As Marley toys with the affections of Scrooge’s sister, Fan, Scrooge falls under the spell of Fan’s best friend, Belle Fairchild. Now, for the first time, Scrooge and Marley find themselves at cross-purposes. With their business interests inextricably bound together and instincts for secrecy and greed bred in their very bones, the two men engage in a shadowy war of deception, false identities, forged documents, theft, and cold-blooded murder. Marley and Scrooge are destined to clash in an unforgettable reckoning that will echo into the future and set the stage for Marley’s ghostly return.
Meticulously crafted and beguilingly told, Marley revisits and illuminates one of Charles Dickens’s most cherished works to spellbinding effect.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The Spirituality of Wine by Gisela H. Kreglinger
Gisela H. Kreglinger’s Wine Pilgrimages (I didn’t find any
info on the contest I thought I remembered)
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World by Lizzie Collingham
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed to World by Laura Spinney
Addicted to Americana: Celebrating Classic & Kitschy American Life & Style by Charles Phoenix
Circe by Madeline Miller
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