February Books of the Month

March 20, 2020 by Christina

February feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? I know it was a busy month for me because my calendar is packed with book club meetings, dinner plans with friends, and an introduction to quilting class on Sundays. Yet, from the vantage point of mid-March, it feels unimaginably footloose and fancy free. What did I do when I could go and do whatever I wanted? Well, what I did was read an astonishing 17 books during this month thanks in […]

Categories: 2020 Reads, Amish, Animals, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Book Club, Canada, Caribbean, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Juvenile, LGBTQA+, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, Persephone Books, ReadDiverse, Religion, Travel, United Kingdom, United States, Women's Prize • Tags: A. J. Finn, Adam Darlin, Audre Lorde, Becky Ohlsen, Brendan Sainsbury, Catherine Bodry, Chris Chalk, Christopher Ketcham, Coco Morante, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward, Jia Tolentino, John Lee, Jon Krakauer, Kamila Shamsie, Kevin Harrison Jr, L. M. Montgomery, Linda Castillo, Marghanita Laski, Richard Thomas, Rutina Wesley, Shelly Frasier, Steven Higashide, Susan O'Malley, Sy Montgomery

Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll

October 14, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Persephone Books, 2009. Originally published 1922. 264 pgs. Purchased. First published in The Times during the 1920s, this collection of essays presents the proper setting and occasion for different recipes. There are essays for particular events – the wedding breakfast, the Sunday luncheon, and the country hunt – as well as for certain people – the too thin, the too fat, and the bachelor. I follow a handful of food blogs as I’m always on the hunt […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Food, Nonfiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Agnes Jekyll

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

September 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Grover Gardner. Blackstone Audio, 2011. Originally published 1906. 13 hours, 17 minutes. Purchased. Immigrating from Lithuanian to Chicago, Jergis Rudkus is eager to live out his own American dream with his wife, Ona, and her stepmother and stepsiblings. Jergis takes a job at Brown’s slaughterhouse in Chicago, expecting to make enough to support his wife and their extended family. But the family, including the children, are all sent out to find work as the family […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, AP Literature, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, Food, North America, United States • Tags: Upton Sinclair

Kings of the Yukon by Adam Weymouth

May 10, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2018. 288 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “One Summer Paddling Across the Far North”, Weymouth’s memoir covers the fourth months he spent canoeing the Yukon River from Canada’s Yukon Territory through Alaska to the Bering Sea. The Yukon is 2,000 miles long, the longest free-flowing river in the United States and the longest salmon run in the world. Each summer, king salmon (known as Chinook in Canada) migrate the distance of the Yukon to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Canada, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Adam Weymouth

Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell

January 29, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Penguin Press, 2009. 320 pgs. Library copy. Since reading The Millionaire Next Door earlier this month, consumerism has been dominating my thoughts. I’ve been particularly contemplative of how people have rejected of material goods, attracted to articles like one in The Guardian by a man who lives “houseless” in Alaska and contemplating rereading Not Buying It.  In my search for more books on the topic, I was reminded of Shell’s book on consumerism. I borrowed her book from the library in […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Economics, Europe, Food, Nonfiction, North America, Scandinavia, Thailand, United States • Tags: Ellen Ruppel Shell

Gulp by Mary Roach

March 22, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. W.W. Norton, 2013. 348 pgs. Library copy.  Subtitled “Adventures on the Alimentary Canal”, Roach’s book guides readers on the journey of their food — from the saliva generated at the smell of food to the stomach and then onto the colon and the way out. The path isn’t without a few side trips to answer questions like can one survive being swallowed alive, can the gas you pass be set on fire, and can you really eat yourself to […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Book Club, Food, Nonfiction • Tags: Mary Roach

The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz

December 23, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Simon & Schuster, 2014. 480 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet”, Teicholz’s book documents how the low fat diet became the national – and thanks to America’s outsized influence on that global food system, international – nutrition diet nearly sixty years ago. With rates of heart disease skyrocketing, nutritionists and scientists assumed correction meant causation decreeing that fat, especially saturated fat, were to blame. Yet while rates of heart […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Chunkster, Food, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Nina Teicholz

The Coke Machine by Michael Blanding

November 30, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by George K. Wilson. Tantor Media, 2010. 13 hours, 3 minutes. Library copy. I am horribly addicted to Coca Cola. I can easily down six or seven cans (or, their equivalent at a restaurant) without batting an eye, which obviously places me in the “heavy user” category by The Coca Cola Company. I have tried many times over the past six years to kick the habit going cold turkey for ten weeks or ten months until […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Food, Nonfiction, North America, South America, United States • Tags: George K. Wilson, Michael Blanding

Books About Food Politics

November 10, 2014 by Christina

I’ve written two theses on industrial agriculture, food politics, obesity, and American eating habits yet I still do not feel like I can truly call myself an expert. There are still so many books to read on the topic, so many books still to be written. But if there is a topic I constantly find myself suggesting nonfiction books for, it would be food politics (or, the more sinister sounding “Industrial Agriculture”). Most people have heard of The Omnivore’s Dilemma […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Food

My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

October 14, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by Kimberly Farr. Books on Tape, 2006. 11 hours, 17 minutes. Library copy. Child’s memoir was placed on my mental to-read list after the release of the film “Julie and Julia” in 2009, but I was only recently reminded of this when I spied the audiobook read by Kimberly Farr on the shelf at the public library. In the book, Child explains how she fell in love with French food in the fall of 1948 during […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Europe, Food, France, Nonfiction • Tags: Alex Prud'homme, Julia Child, Kimberly Farr

Year-Round Slow Cooker by Dina Cheney

September 6, 2014 by Christina

Can I say what a beautiful invention the slow cooker is? I’m so glad I followed my parents’ suggestion to buy one, and that the round-up of cookbook reviews from last month convinced me to see what cookbooks particularly made for slow cookers my public library had available. I select Cheney’s cookbook because it included a recipe for Hungarian goulash, but I ended up flagging six recipes and making five during the month of August. (I am clearly over summer; […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Food, Nonfiction • Tags: Dina Cheney

Just Married and Cooking by Brooke Parkhurst and Jamie Briscione

August 2, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribner, 2011. 323 pgs. Library copy. I was toying with the idea of sharing my thoughts on cookbooks here for the past few days (I had been taking pictures to send friends and family), but I figured few — if any — people would be interested until I opened up my feed reader and saw several posts contributing to the Cook It Up! Challenge hosted by Trish of Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity. I don’t […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Food, Nonfiction • Tags: Brooke Parkhurst, Jamie Briscione