Category Archives: Book Reviews

What I’m Reading Now

I just started a new job on Monday. It’s nothing glamorous (the hiring manager was, in fact, emphatic about that), but it’s with great people and at a company (Cicerone) I am highly interested in. It’s also about an hour away from my house on the bus, so I have had to start contemplating reading material.

Combine that with having had had several folks mention they’d either love to know what I, specifically, am reading (usually due to the things I write about here), or that they, generally, just get a kick out of seeing what anyone else is reading. And a new tag/series on MetaCookbook, “What I’m Reading,” is born.

Currently, I’m reading The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food by Garrett Oliver.… Continue reading →

Relish. Relish Friends. Relish Food. Relish Life.

Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley arrived at my house about two days before my birthday last year, with a gift note saying Rick apologized if he missed my birthday, because he was pretty sure he had.

Obviously, he hadn’t. And I was floored, because I would never have expected a gift from Rick. And not only did I have one, it turned out to be a perfect gift. I didn’t know it at the time. My birthday is the day before Christmas. I sat down Christmas day and picked up this book. I picked up this book in that Christmas moment, after the major festivities are over, dinner’s still awhile away, there’s some sort of delightful, warm beverage in a holiday-themed mug on the coffee table, and all just feels right with the world.… Continue reading →

Book Giveaway: Kindred by Octavia Butler

I love books. Stories, really, but particularly in written form. I don’t know why I have such a preference for reading over watching or hearing, but I do. (My hierarchy is probably reading > hearing > watching, when it comes to fiction.)

Every now and again, a particular story comes along that really moves me. And Octavia Butler’s Kindred is one of them.

This is an old book. Thirty-five years old. It appears it’s been chosen as a school text for many of the years it’s been around. Still, I’d never read it or heard of Butler until this year. And based on what I heard of her, I bought every work of hers I could get my hands on at Powell’s in May.

I haven’t read them all, though I’m working on it.… Continue reading →

Book Review: Coming Home to Eat by Gary Paul Nabhan

I’m sitting in the library as I write this. In my bag is Coming Home to Eat: The Politics and Pleasures of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan, waiting to be returned. On the table next to me is a book I have been unable to read, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. As a direct result of reading Coming Home to Eat, I am resolved to give Kingsolver’s book another shot.

I’m not totally thrilled about this. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is consistently being recommended to me. I know tons of people who personally love it. No one I know personally, except me, has ever had a problem with it. And my interest in food makes it an expected book on the “to read” list.… Continue reading →