2010(1)

Welcome!

We are back after missing one issue earlier this year as we sorted out our distribution system, trying to find the best, most efficient way to let you know when a new issue of FEAST is ready. We have moved a long way in that direction, but we still want to keep working to improve it. If you receive more than one notice and it bugs you, please let us know so we can fix it. We don’t send the issue itself out because of all the images—they might cause a problem with your system. By sending you only the link, you can choose when you want to see our entire list of suggestions and recommendations about books, art, food, film, and travel. You don’t have to remember not to delete it in your email program—you only have to remember that it’s always waiting for you at http://www.FEASTofBooks.com.

This issue, we once again bring you a wide range of exciting books, places, films, and writers to choose from, including an engaging guest review by Lala Corriere of a new cookbook, Walnut Wine and Truffle Groves. We feel pretty certain there’ll be something you might not have discovered otherwise—something special or unique to enrich your cultural life. Here at FEAST, we deeply believe in the importance of seeking daily beauty, joy, knowledge, and cultural enlightenment as a counterpoint to all that worries, saddens, or frightens us in contemporary life.

Don’t miss the last, lengthier book review of the issue, about Stephanie Seldana’s The Bread of Angels. It’s tucked away at the bottom of the page and you may want to scroll down and read it first.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. If, for any reason, you do not want to continue on our distribution list, just let us know. We want you to be happy to see us in your inbox!

-- Rosemary Carstens
Editor

PS: Don't forget, you can get updates in between issues of FEAST at our blog: http://www.snaxonline.com, FACEBOOK, and through TWITTER at @tweets2go . Want to contact us? Just click here: COMMENTS. Join us!

ShareThis  

FICTION THAT BLEW MY HAIR BACK:

The Willow Field, William Kittredge. Knopf 2006. William Kittredge’s epic first novel spans the twentieth century and uses the personal story of one cowboy and his family to discuss a conflict that continues today: The struggles of everyday people to make a living, figure out who they are and what they stand for, raise their children, and manage some sort of ethical stance—versus the efforts of the money holders, the corporations, and the politicians. It’s a big book that ranges from settlers’ experiences, the plight of Native Americans and cowboys, to gamblers, whores, and ordinary men and women. It’s the story of the old West told with grit, in plain language. It explores love and marriage, the ravages of war, depression, McCarthyism, land development and destruction of natural resources, urban riots, and assassinations. Kittredge knows this Montana land he writes about—its dust has settled deep into his own skin and soul and he brings it to life for his readers.

An interview with the author about this book: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/five_questions_for_william_kittredge/C39/L39/

Shanghai Girls, Lisa See. Random House 2009. Author Lisa See is well known for her critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain, as well as for her carefully researched historical novels centered on Chinese ethnicity, history, and diaspora. This tale of two privileged sisters growing up in Shanghai in the 1930s, adored by their parents, known for their beauty and highly sought after as calendar models presents a frightening story of what happened when the Japanese invaded. Eventually ending up in the United States, settled in Los Angeles after enduring incredible physical and emotional hardships, See details life for Chinese Americans during this period in a compelling, heart-rending account of family, immigration, and labor—as two sisters find that, regardless of differences, their ties are unbreakable.

To read a sample chapter: http://www.lisasee.com/shanghaigirls/shanghai1.php

One Amazing Thing, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Hyperion 2009. Divakaruni knows how to weave a story out of disparate threads, drawing them together in an intelligent and compassionate human tapestry. In this latest book, the well-regarded author of Sister of my Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, creates a cast of nine characters spending a long, tiring afternoon in a passport and visa office. Each has their reason for going to India, and each holds him or herself privately away from the others, focusing inward as they wait. When a violent earthquake rips through their building and traps them, the nine must struggle together for survival. As hopes for rescue seem to dim, each shares the story of a most compelling moment in their lives—something that shaped and molded them into who they are today. Divakaruni portrays her characters with such clarity that readers quickly relate to them. As in our own lives, each character has a secret grief and loss, joys and pleasures; each has experienced the indifferent cruelty unintentionally visited upon everyone; and each, when life is squeezed down to survival mode, often realizes what they value most.

Author’s website: http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/
Her blog: http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/blog/

See a video interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi_-ZYmt28U

The Eleventh Man, Ivan Doig. Harcourt 2008. Doig is best known for This House of Sky and The Whistling Season, and I’ve enjoyed a number of his books. He turns once again to his Montana homeground in this story about a group of boys who played football together at State University and became small-town heroes in an undefeated season. Then comes WWII and each joins up—any choice other than joining the military was highly suspect in those days. Each of the eleven is scattered across the globe to his own piece of the war, except for Ben Reinking. Having grown up in his father’s small newspaper business, he is yanked out of pilot training by a military propaganda machine and assigned to write about the course of events for the other ten. He sees action, sees more death than anyone ought to, and struggles to make sense of it all. The backdrop of major battles in both Europe and the Pacific Basin makes for interesting reading about history, especially as contrasted with present-day fighting in the Middle East. It’s a powerful story about men, their women, their moral fiber, and their friendships with one another.

For a readers’ guide: http://www.ivandoig.com/elevenths.html

Italian Shoes, Henning Mankell. Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson. The New Press, in English 2009. A unique and special book. There is some fine writing coming out of Sweden, some fresh yet often universal perspectives. In this book, Frederik Welin, a man well past middle age, lives on a tiny Swedish island surrounded by ice three feet thick, alone except for his equally aged cat and dog. Each day, just to prove to himself that he is still alive, Frederik hacks through the ice to the sea and jumps naked into the hole. Haunted by memories of a terrible mistake in his past, he lives in a sort of suspended animation in a small house that belonged to his grandparents. One day a woman he abandoned forty years earlier appears suddenly on his island and the protection from the outside world he has so carefully assembled begins to crumble. A fascinating story about how we need others even when they drive us crazy. Beautifully written and translated.

A biography of this fascinating author: http://www.henningmankell.com/Author/Biography

Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín. Scribner 2009. This is a story about the mystery of sojourning, of immigration, of how we define ourselves in relation to “home.” Eilis Lacey grows up in a small town in Ireland. After WWII, there is no work; the Irish economy forces many to move away and create new lives in other countries. Sponsored by an Irish priest from Brooklyn, Eilis travels to the United States to work and live, leaving her fragile mother and stylish, charismatic sister Rose behind. Tóibín uses his main character to explore the indecision and conflict that abound in a person’s decision to emigrate, to live in another country, another culture, for even a relatively short while. Solid portrayal of setting and historic period.

Author’s biography: http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth6

Home Safe, Elizabeth Berg. Random House 2009. You can always count on EB for a good story. Helen Ames—recently widowed, coping with extreme changes in her life—is suffering from writer’s block and unable to seek solace in the work she’s always loved. This is the story of a woman who had a happy, long married life before her husband died suddenly—a woman who did not remain independent but depended on her husband to do all the things she didn’t want to do or found difficult, which he gladly did. For such a woman, it’s a double shock to become a widow and realize all of the everyday things someone else provided that she must now resolve on her own. Helen becomes way too involved in her adult daughter’s life and tries to lean on her in place of her husband. Her journey to a new life and her growing acceptance and recognition of her daughter’s need for the freedom to live hers in her own way is an engaging story that many will identify with. Author’s website: http://www.elizabeth-berg.net/

Benny & Shrimp, Katarina Mazetti. Translated from Swedish by Sarah Death. Penguin 2009. A delightful small book with some big wisdom packed into it. Two lonely people meet in a cemetery and find themselves deeply attracted to one another. The author moves back and forth between the two points of view and deftly reveals the miscommunications and confusion of two good people from two different worlds, unable to bridge them in spite of love and chemistry.
Author’s website: http://www.katarinamazetti.com/inenglish001.html

The Help, Kathryn Stockett. G. P. Putnam 2009. A debut novel that proves the idea that first novels can be wonderful stories—I often find special books among them. This is a tale of what is often referred to as the “old South”—it takes place in the sixties when “things they are a’changin’”—in a small town in Mississippi, where whites are served by blacks and whites are certain it’s the natural order of things. It’s a book that delves deeply into feelings of suppressed anger, humiliation, and love in the midst of segregation, told from the points of view of one young, white, hope-to-be journalist, and two black maids. It’s powerful and told in voices that resonate with truth. It’s a complicated time in history and the emotions on both sides of the color line run high and wide. This is a good discussion book for bookclubs. There are readers’ guides on the author’s website: http://www.kathrynstockett.com/

In Hovering Flight, Joyce Hinnefeld. Unbridled Books 2009. Joyce Hinnefeld writes a highly original book about long-term love, a life devoted to the study and preservation of birds, and negative environmental impacts on our planet and its species. This is a realistic story about how love changes through the years between husband and wife, parent and child, and among close friends. It is about the ties that bind and how they can reverberate in the larger world around us.
Author’s website: http://www.inhoveringflight.com/

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, Rebecca Wells. Harper 2009. By the author of the bestseller Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Why is it that books like this are often denigrated by those who consider themselves monitors of “literature”? To me, stories with characters that capture your heart, who we can care about and identify with as we continue to read, have a huge place in our reading and should be valued simply for what they bring into our emotional lives. Are some parts of this story unlikely in real life? Perhaps. But does it carry within it a wonderful nugget of life’s ups and downs, written with humor and deep understanding of what is most meaningful to all of us, what hurts the most and what touches us most profoundly? Absolutely. I laughed, I cried, I yearned to know these people, to dance with them, share their Louisiana cooking—and I grieved with them when events turned dark. Calla Lily Ponder provides a magic carpet, under a Lady Moon, that embodies dreams and hopes and reiterates the importance of human connection.

A fun YouTube vid by the author: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYRQy_8Oplc

Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger. Scribner 2009. This mysterious, otherworldly novel is set in London’s famous Highgate Cemetery, resting place of such notables as Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, and Karl Marx. Many years ago, a set of twins deceived a man, who then married one of them and moved to the United States. Twenty years later, the couple’s own set of twins receive a solicitor’s letter saying they have inherited everything from an aunt they’ve never met, but with one condition. They must live in the London flat that is part of the estate for one year before everything becomes theirs. When the twins go off to claim their inheritance, the stage is set for some very bizarre happenings that take this story out of the realm of the ordinary and into the world that Niffenegger occupies so well—science fiction light. The story is fun even without the kinks, so give this a chance even if you are not a hardcore Sci Fi fan.

Author video and biography: http://audreyniffenegger.com/her-fearful-symmetry

Baking Cakes in Kigali, Gaile Parkin. Delacourt Press 2009. Parkin has created a unique voice in Angel Tungaraza—mother, cake baker, keeper of secrets, matchmaker—in her debut novel. She lures you into the heart of modern-day Rwanda with the amazing sweets Angel bakes daily and you are soon hooked by the lives of a people who have endured unimaginable heartbreak in their history yet found ways to survive, to thrive, to love again. Families broken by years of war and ethnic cleansing re-form in untraditional ways and find happiness. At the center of the story is Angel, moving through her days as a “professional somebody,” weaving together the stories her clients tell her in magical ways as she searches to heal her own broken heart. Parkin tell this story lightly and entertainingly, filled with details that bring Kigali to life—yet it floats like crème fraîche on the depth that lies below.

For more about the author and this book: http://www.christinegreen.co.uk/gaile.html

JUST THE CAPTIVATING FACTS - RECOMMENDED NONFICTION:

Picking Cotton, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton, with Erin Torneo. St. Martin’s Press 2009. You may have seen this story on TV. It’s heart rending and moving on many levels. Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She managed to survive and positively identified Ronald Cotton as her rapist. Cotton always insisted he was innocent, but he was convicted based on her ID. Eleven years into his sentence, Ronald took a DNA test that ultimately proved his innocence and released him from prison. Two years later the Thompson and Cotton met and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both their lives. This is an amazing true story that challenges the accuracy of eyewitness memory and turns some aspects of our so-called justice system on its ear.

For more on the key people involved in this book: http://www.pickingcottonbook.com/about.html

The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. Broadway Books 2009. The authors of the bestseller The Power of Nice have brought out a new book every one of us can profit from. Attacking conventional wisdom that big is where the power is, Thaler and Koval, creators of pop-culture icons like the Aflac duck, write in an easy, accessible manner, using myriad stories to illustrate their ideas. They are saying, in essence, DO sweat the small stuff—that paying attention to details, measuring twice and cutting once, makes all the difference. They draw on examples that will surprise you, well-known situations where a behind-the-scenes detail was the difference in outcome in sports, business, and personal achievement.

Read a chapter excerpt at: http://www.thepowerofsmallbook.com/index.php/pos/chapter

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath, Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2009; paperback March 2010. What a story! This book is a very readable, astounding accomplishment based on ten years of research, thousands and thousands of travel miles, hundreds of interviews, and the support of numerous scholars and ordinary people to bring it to fruition. Most of us have heard about the Bataan Death March, of course, but the details set out here, often using quotes from among the 76,000 US and Filipino captive soldiers that were on the march, tear at the soul.

Don’t think for a moment that this is a one-sided presentation dolled up to make the US look good and Japan look savage. The Normans spent countless hours digging among Japanese archives and interviewing Japanese military survivors so that they could include accounts from that side of the war as well and perhaps comprehend the enemy’s mindset. This book grips like a novel, probably because the authors used the story of one young Montana cowboy, Ben Steele, who survived the march and is one of the few from those days still living, as a vehicle for telling the story of thousands of others. As readers, we connect with Ben—the story becomes so much more than just facts and figures, a bunch of history dates, or military battle reports. Weaving personal recollections of specific people on each side of the conflict helps us to see these historic events through the lenses of individuals. As in all wars there were botched plans and ill-conceived communications, chaos, and personal egos and agendas influencing outcomes. This is the kind of quality journalism we should see more of in the publishing world and this book should be required reading in Washington.

To read more about the book: http://www.tearsinthedarkness.com

Go here to see a 5-part video series of Ben Steele telling his story: http://www.tearsinthedarkness.com/video-book

Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Mark Richardson. Knopf 2008. I was never actually able to finish Persig’s book and couldn’t really “get” some of what was going on. Turns out I’m not the only one; it’s just that those of us who love the road on a motorcycle wanted to get what seemed to be a biking classic road trip story. Richardson decides to follow Persig’s legendary journey to the Pacific, interviewing and talking with people along the way who were a part of it. Richardson has his own family conflicts to work out as he travels west alone to celebrate his 42nd birthday in San Francisco while his wife and two sons are in Europe. I enjoyed this story and gained insight into Persig, a not-so-nice fellow, and connected with a lot of the topics and types of adventure that occur on solo motorcycle rides across the United States. Good book for introspective bikers (yes, they DO exist!).

Check out the Zen and Now website: http://www.zenandnow.org/

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness, Tracy Kidder. Random House 2009. Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes, is a thorough professional and engaging writer of nonfiction. He picks the hard topics and struggles to portray his subjects without bias, to tell their story instead of his—an exceptional quality in times when personal spin has gained greater acceptance in society. This is an astounding story of one survivor of genocide in the small African country of Berundia—against all odds and through providential events—who manages to escape the violence and come to the United States. Kidder explores deeply what horror can do to the human psyche, the struggle to remain human and to achieve a measure of success in spite of one’s past. The story of Deogratias (Thanks to God) puts an individual human face on events so massive, so brutal, as to be nearly incomprehensible. It is, indeed, a story of a people’s terror and loss, but it is also a story of regeneration and of hope that such stories can one day end.

Tracy Kidder interview and video: http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=940

Storm of the i: An Artobiography, Tina Collen. Art Review Press 2010. At FEAST we get really excited when we come across something unique, something completely different in the world of art books. Tina Collen’s mixed-media publication blends memoir with popouts, paintings, drawings, envelopes and fortune cookies, and, when you look even more closely, some delightfully erotic surprises. As Clay Evans of Boulder Colorado’s Daily Camera said recently, “A project 10 years in the making, Collen's clever, refreshingly unpredictable labor of love is like no other book you're likely to read any time soon.”

But it’s not all about erotic wildflowers, stunningly beautiful images, unexpected delights, and witty repartee. This is also a book about transformation, about taking bits and pieces, shards and shrapnel, from one’s own life and creating a fresh new whole that becomes more than its individual parts. Collen has taken her painful search to understand parental rejection and created something better, something more life-enhancing. She has chosen to engage life and passion, to face it head on, to make, if possible, lemonade.

To read excerpts and see examples of the art: http://www.tinacollen.com/excerpts/1-storm-of-the-i-prologue.html

Finding Frida Kahlo: In Mexico, fifty-five years after her death, Barbara Levine with Stephen Jaycox. Princeton Architectural Press 2009. A few years ago, while living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, writer Barbara Levine was contemplating a new project about memory, but had not yet found the right focus for her book. One day a friend suggested they stop by La Buhardilla Anticuarios to visit with the Carlos Noyola family and to see a collection of items they had discovered, purportedly by Frida Kahlo. It was an amazing experience to look through some 1,200 items and to imagine that they had been created by the hand of the famous artist, or owned and handled by her. Levine decided she’d found her project and arranged for the items to be catalogued and photographed.

This book and the collection itself are at the heart of a heated controversy in the art world as many Frida Kahlo experts have declared the items fake, while the Noyolas, with obviously a great financial stake in the outcome, have provided rather insubstantial “evidence” of their authenticity. The argument goes round and round and was recently the topic of a fascinating symposium at the 2010 Denver Art Fair, with the Noyolas, representatives from Princeton Architectural Press, and some of the world’s top Kahlo experts serving as panelists. What the final determination will be is not yet known, but this book is an engaging one for anyone who is interested in Frida Kahlo specifically, and in art generally, especially as a means of exploring the firestorm of speculation that can surround the appearance of alleged new works by old masters.

For a more detailed discussion of the controversy: http://www.andrewpurcell.net/?p=570

The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue 1957–1965, Sam Stephenson. Knopf 2009. In 1957, W. Eugene Smith, a 38-year-old magazine photographer left his job at Life, and his family, behind and moved to a dilapidated, 5-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue (between 28th and 29th streets) in New York City’s wholesale flower district. The building became the late-night hangout of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz: Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them, as well as countless bizarre underground characters. From 1957 to 1965, Smith exposed almost 1,500 rolls of film taken at his loft, making roughly forty thousand pictures, photographing the nocturnal jazz scene as well as life on the streets as seen from his fourth-floor window. He wired the building like a recording studio and created four thousand hours of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 100 musicians, many legends among them. Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photos and tapes eleven years ago and has spent the last seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for this book, as well as writing its introduction and the text running throughout. For jazz and photography fans alike, this book is fascinating!

Interview with Sam Stephenson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azzNblu3K8U

The Lucky Ones (2008). Three soldiers injured in the Iraq War, two men and a woman, return home only to find that their tour of duty has taken its toll on the home front. This is not a movie about war (in the sense of battles and gung ho scenes of soldiering), but more a story of the effects on personal lives of having gone to war. The three are brought together by coincidental travel circumstances and set out on an unusual cross-country road trip. Colee (Rachel McAdams) seeks to connect with her boyfriend’s family, Cheever (Tim Robbins, played with his usual excellence) needs a big Vegas win, and TK (Michael Peña) tries to regain his confidence.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAGEAzfj3_8

Whatever Works (2009). At first introduction, New York City eccentric and “almost” Nobel prizewinning physicist (Larry David) seems to be a bitter old coot without redeeming qualities. When fate brings a beautiful young southern belle (Rachel Wood) to stay in his dungeon of an apartment, things begin to change and this odd philosopher finds himself caught up in a series of bizarre situations involving the girl’s parents and his own group of Greenwich Village pals. It’s laugh-out-loud funny with your sympathies switched faster than the bean under a magician’s three walnut shells.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vvDhtfil3U

Bliss (2010). Based on the acclaimed novel by Zülfü Livaneli and filmed in some of Turkey’s most beautiful natural settings, Bliss is a riveting tale about love, honor, freedom, and redemption. When 17-year-old Meryem’s virtue is called into question after being found unconscious and disheveled by the side of a lake, the village’s elders demand that the family uphold the ancient moral code and kill her. A distant cousin is ordered to carry out the sentence, but, instead, Meryem and Cemal embark on a surprising journey through traditional and modern Turkey in this poignant, deeply affecting film. Available through http://www.firstrunfeatures.com.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnEMhcaLTuM

Edward James: Builder of Dreams: A documentary film by Avery Danziger. This film takes you on an extraordinary journey into the world of the Surrealists as the life and accomplishments of the surrealist collector, poet, and architect Edward James (1907-1984) unfolds. For the last 20 years of his life, aided by 40 full time laborers and craftmen, he built one of the largest and yet least known architectural monuments of the 20th century—Las Pozas—dedicated to Surrealism and hidden in the jungles of Mexico. He created over 36 extraordinary concrete structures, some over 100 feet high, at a personal cost exceeding 5 million dollars.

Born into extreme wealth and luxury (he was rumored to be the bastard son of King Edward VII), he turned his back on the rigid aristocratic circles of Edwardian England, and befriended, supported, and collaborated with fledgling artists who would become household names in later years. Those artists included Salvador Dali, Leonora Carrington, René Magritte, Kurt Weil, Bertolt Brecht, George Balanchine, Aldous Huxley, Man Ray, and Sigmund Freud.

For more information about Edward James: http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/752-las-pozas-edward-james-fantasy-stands-tall-in-a-jungle-in-mexico

A Note from the Editor: Visiting Las Pozas, A Unique Destination . . .

I visited Las Pozas a few years back on a solo adventure of my own and recommend it and the region. It’s a chance to see some unspoiled “old Mexico.” This part of the country, the Huasteca Potosino, is rich in cultural and scenic attractions, including a remarkable vast cave visited daily by a flocks of green parakeets, mountains, waterfalls, and traditional villages with special market days. For me, a girl who grew up in Southern California visiting beautiful missions built by Franciscan friar Junipero Serra, a highlight of my visit to this region of Mexico was seeing several of the first five small missions he built there in the years following 1750. These five, constructed in a baroque style that blends Spanish and Indian cultures, are like architectural jewels holding within them a historic past. Four of them, in the respective towns of Tancoyol, Tilaco, Landa de Matamoros, and Jalpan, are strung out along or near Highway 120 in the state of Queretaro. The fifth, located in Conca, is reached by turning off in Jalpan onto Highway 69, which is the way to Río Verde. For more information about the missions and other treasures of the region: http://www.xilitla.org/gettingthere.php

We start off our food section this issue with a wonderful GUEST POST by LALA CORRIERE*. This review was originally posted on Vera Badertscher’s “A Traveler’s Library” and is reprinted here for our enjoyment with both Vera and Lala’s permission.

Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves, Kimberley Lovato (http://www.kimberleylovato.com). Running Press 2010. A GUEST POST BY Lala Corriere

The first thing to pop off the pages of the French Cookbook, Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves, is not a recipe, but rather the soulful description of the southwest region of France known as the Dordogne. Outstanding photography enriches the depictive prose.

In the preface, aptly titled “Chasing Fairy Tales,” author Lovato paints us a three-dimensional image of the early morning fog dissipating along the Dordogne River, and as the veil lifts, so do our spirits. Our captivation goes from simmer to a full boil as suddenly we find ourselves ensconced in a fairyland, with a backdrop of both time and tales.

We pace our hearts in tempo with the setting. Slowly. Very slowly. Dotted cottages, perfectly coiffed in architecture and landscape, mimic the stillness of the river. Stately chateaus like the Chateau de Beynac both nestle in and rise up out of the limestone cliffs. Five-hundred-year-old castles vie for our attention while our imaginations are lost in the caves, 50,000 years old and the home of Cro-Magnon.

The history is its own feast, but in this countryside so rich in fairytales and dragon lore nothing has changed much, and much of everything has changed. The bastides, medieval towns built as fortresses to keep enemies at bay, now welcome their guests and their commerce. No iron gates. No remnants of the ravages of war that fell before, except for the lingering sense of homage.

When visiting the Dordogne it might be difficult to sit still for the customary 2–3 hour meal, for that will mean pulling yourself away from the rushing quiet of the Dordogne River, the echoes of the ancient Sarlat Dordogne, and, of course, the opportunity to come across that dragon or the Princess’s carriage. It’s a place where getting lost, and you will, only opens more doors of discovery.

This cookbook brings home the flavor of your travel memories, and for those who haven’t visited, the recipes provide a total immersion into the art of Périgord cooking. (The Perigord is the local name for a region within Dordogne.) The recipes are stand-alone, ingredients are easy to procure thanks to the online resource guide, the index is intelligent, and the directions are easy to understand and follow, even for the novice. You’ll learn what to do with goose fat, walnut infused cheese, raw foie gras, and of course, truffles.

While your dinner simmers, take time to read the text. The author provides short courses on French wines, the keeping of castles, the gentle and amusing reminders of French manners, like keeping your hands on the table lest your dining companions wonder what you are doing with them, and the heartfelt community sentiment, “my chateau is your chateau.” A good guide to outdoor activities, the book lists museums, abbeys, caves and grottoes, ancestral wineries, daily markets, and lodging from castles and chateaus, to bed & breakfasts and gites. You’ll even find a basic Périgord pantry list.

For the daring chef, try the Reine Roches’ Pintade (guinea hen), or the Chatteau les Merles Salt-Crusted Chicken & Sautéed Chicory Morel Sauce. The less adventurous of both the kitchen and the palate should consider the simple and elegant Warm Cabécou with Armagnac & Honey-Roasted Apricots, or the Chilled White Asparagus with Champagne Orange Sauce.

Like the food you will experience, take time for this adventure. Go slow. Enjoy. Savor. The Dordogne is a must-see travel destination if you believe in fairytales, or if you need evidence of their sure existence.

For a taste of the treats that await you, try Seared Duck Breasts with Walnuts and Raspberries: Click HERE for the recipe.

*Lala Corriere, a suspense novelist, lives in the Sonoran Desert with her husband, Chuck, and three spoiled cats. Check her out at LaLa Land: http://www.lalacorriere.com

# # # #

My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme. Knopf 2006. Julia Child has become one of my role models for how to live a life. She was enthusiastic, passionate about food and it’s proper preparation, and obsessed with the details she wanted to share with others about French cooking. But it’s not just that she was totally devoted to cooking that inspires me—it is the fire with which she pursued her life: her devotion to her husband and their life together, her adventurous spirit, and the verve with which she strove to become wholly herself, the best that she could be by HER standards and not others. This book has a lot of food details that might not interest everyone—although I loved them—but it provides fascinating accounts of Paris specifically and France generally during her years there, of people she and Paul met and entertained, and craftsmen in their field that took to Julia and told her their secrets. And it’s a love story. It’s well written in an entertaining, sometimes laugh-out-loud style and I thank Meryl Streep and her performance in Julie/Julia for reminding me I hadn’t yet read this.

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, Novella Carpenter. In your wildest dreams, can you imagine to moving to the center of the most down-and-out ghetto in the nearest city and squat-farming on a nearby abandoned lot covered with concrete and trash? That’s exactly what Carpenter and her boyfriend chose to do and she writes about their experiences as “urban farmers” in this hilarious memoir. Since they’d previously raised vegetables and chickens for eggs when they lived in Seattle, that part was easy-peasy as they set about settling into their new surroundings. Then came the meat animals, from chickens to turkeys to ducks and even pigs. While entertainingly written, Carpenter also focuses a spotlight on the waste of food in America, the need for better distribution, and how much can be recycled or repurposed if we’d only try.

Carpenter’s blog, Ghost Town Farm, is a fun way to keep up with the goings-on at their place: http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/

Make It Fast, Cook It Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking, Stephanie O’Dea, Founder, A Year of Slow Cooking. Hyperion 2009. Very useful and handy for the average family cook. This is NOT a book about gourmet cooking with tiny, cleverly arranged dabs of food on a big plate, often sprayed or drizzled with swirls of some sort of exotic liquid for artful effect. This is a great book for us regular cooks who want quality meals with less fuss that can be eaten and enjoyed by all.

In 2008 Stephanie O’Dea vowed to use her slow cooker every single day for a year, reporting highlights and disasters on her blog at http://crockpot365.blogspot.com. This book is the result of her findings. You’ll be amazed at the range of offerings, from beverages, breakfast, baked goods, casseroles, seafood, and meatless mains to snacks and fondue, desserts, and nonfood fun stuff. All recipes are gluten free and have been tested on her own family and friends.

Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source, Terry Walters. Sterling Epicure 2009. Thinking it’s time to break away from processed foods loaded with preservatives and other chemicals? Walters has written an easy-to-follow guide to eating closer to food sources, cooking and preparing meals based on the best and freshest locally grown ingredients. Includes an introduction about various foods to help you understand why choosing organic over conventionally produced foods is more healthful and how even small changes, over time, can make a difference in how you feel. The recipes are the frosting on the cake!

To learn more about Walters: http://www.terryskitchen.net

For a delicious recipe for Roasted Squash with Fennel & Asparagus: http://terrywalters.net/2009/08/roasted-squash-with-fennel-and-asparagus/

Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. Viking 2009. This book about the power of travel to birth spiritual connections and inspire creativity is jointly written by this mother-daughter team, giving us a generational perspective on a series of events they experienced during travel to France and Greece over a period of years. Sue’s journey begins as she approaches her fiftieth birthday and begins to realize she is ending an era as a younger woman and entering a period of transition that will move her toward her eldest years. She finds herself seeking spiritual guidance through feminine symbols and icons, hoping for new directions in her work, greater understanding and closeness to her daughter, and a graceful entry into the next stage of her life. Ann’s journey is also a period of transition, one from loss and rejection that culminates in a search for the work she is meant to do. The icons and symbols that guide her are different from her mother’s, but in their mutual search they discover each other as adult women anew. It’s an inspiring book, thoughtfully written, and one I very much enjoyed. It provides a framework for seeking transitions and destinations for any woman who wants to enhance the meaningfulness of her years.

Authors websites: http://www.suemonkkidd.com and http://www.annkiddtaylor.com/

Long Way Down: An Epic Journey by Motorcycle from Scotland to South Africa, Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman. Atria 2007. Talk about adventure to the max! These two hardy motorcyclists completed what they called the “Long Way Around” in 2004, traveling from London east around the world to New York City. It was challenging, dangerous, and difficult—but apparently not enough to keep them from heading out again, this time traveling 15,000 miles from John O’Groats at the northernmost tip of Scotland to Cape Agulhas on the southernmost tip of South Africa. As the promo says, “Eighteen countries, Five shock absorbers, Two Bikers, One amazing adventure.” They rode some of the toughest terrain in the world and even Charlie Boorman, probably one of the world’s most experienced off-road bikers, went down more than once as they traveled in deep, powdery sand, ruts like canyons, and, at one point, a stretch of over 800 miles of gravel road. Traveling through hostile territory in such places as Libya, some areas of Ethiopia and the Sudan, places they had been warned were extremely dangerous, they were pleased to find that the welcoming people were the highlight of their journey. Makes you want to throw a leg over the saddle, fire up your engine, and roar off to—well, maybe the next town. But this is a great arm chair travel story for biker and dreamer alike.

Catch a bit of the action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRz8HoVV1ao&feature=related

WE END THIS ISSUE WITH ONE MORE BOOK, one that fits under the category of “travel,” but one that also moves far beyond the genre, overflowing into philosophy, culture, and literature generally (although it’s not fiction, but a true story):

The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith, Stephanie Saldaña . Doubleday 2010. Stephanie Saldaña, who now lives and teaches in Jerusalem, spent years traveling the world, partly to escape what she thought of as a “cursed” family history and partly because she was inevitably drawn to see new landscapes and immerse herself in alternative cultures, especially those of the Middle East. A poet herself, Saldaña found herself attracted to the language and poetry of the Arab-speaking world. What she discovered along the way about Islam surprised her and she determined to explore both the language and the religious history of the region more deeply. For two years she prepared by studying Arabic, Eastern Christianity, and Islam at divinity school, reading as much as she could about the history of Islam in Syria, where Muslims and Christians had been living side-by-side for more than a thousand years. In 2004, a Fulbright fellowship took her to Damascus for a year to study the prophet Jesus. She arrived as the United States was solidly boots on the ground in Iraq and the streets of Damascus were filled with Iraqi refugees, while anti-American rhetoric abounded.

Some might say this book is “Eat, Pray, Love” in the Middle East—but I found it to be much more seriously and deeply engaged in examining disparities and similarities between cultures and religion. Saldaña truly seeks to understand how Islam and Christianity intersect and the source of faith; she questions the purpose of her own life and religious beliefs’ place in it. As her friend Frédéric expresses it, “I think that the thirst for something greater than us is human, not Christian . . . I searched for the meaning of my life for many years, but eventually I always hit a wall. But then I felt something on the other side of that wall . . . I guess I call that space God.”

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is its discussion about language. To some, Arabic is the language of romance and poetry, to others it evokes fear of violence. Although I’ve never heard English described as a romantic or poetic language, for some in the world it certainly does evoke fear of violence and domination. In this volume, Saldaña struggles to not only learn the words and grammar of Arabic, but also the nuance, the emotional content. I particularly enjoyed her description of translation: “. . . there is a certain tragedy in translation: the sense of diluting what was once a powerful drink, of tearing a small plant from its roots and trying to place it in a soil and climate where it does not belong.”

In many ways, The Bread of Angels is about words, about stories, “we each meet the text, and who we are and the text together create a unique event. We change for it and it changes for us, the act of reading becoming an essential way of transforming ourselves. We can only bring to the text what is inside ourselves—even if the story is a story of death, if we contain life, we will find life.”

And this is why we read . . .

-- Rosemary Carstens