|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
…and 4 other surprising facts you may not have known about this FOF icon.
Plus, win a copy of her new memoir, A Natural Woman, when you leave a comment below.
—————————————————————————————————
FOF Carole King has lived a quintessentially FOF life. Born in 1942, in Brooklyn, N.Y., she was a mother of two by age 22, married and living in suburban New Jersey where she cooked, cleaned and even sewed her daughters’ clothing. A classic 1950s housewife. Kind of.
At the same time, she and her husband, Gerry Goffin, were famously writing top-40 songs–including “Up on The Roof,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” and “Natural Woman”–for the decade’s biggest pop stars. In King’s new memoir, A Natural Woman, we watch her life evolve, buoyed by the sexual revolution, women’s liberation and all the other cultural cliches FOFs created–and now take for granted. Even as her first marriage dissolves and the “girl groups” fall out of favor, she forges ahead, reinventing herself as a hippie-ish single mom, a #1 recording artist, and later as a pioneer woman in Idaho. Through it all, she struggles to find a balance between her blockbuster success as a performer and her deep desire to live a “simple life”–cooking, sewing and caring for her children, husband and home.
Here, we’ve got 4 fascinating details from Carole’s new memoir, Natural Woman. Enter to win a copy for yourself when you leave a comment below.
—————————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————————
Enter to win a copy of Carol’s new memoir, A Natural Woman, when you leave a comment below.
2 FOFs will win. (See all our past winners, here.) (See official rules, here.) Contest closes May 10, 2012 at midnight E.S.T.
Images: Grand Central Publishing / Tomorrow’s News
COMMENTS (62)
—————————————————————————————————
Are you a memoir junkie like we are? Then tuck into these top picks from FOF book reviewer Linda Wolfe. Plus, enter to win them all when you answer this question in the comments below: What’s your favorite memoir of all time?
Lately there’s been chatter in the publishing circles I inhabit about memoirs being difficult to sell; one editor even told me emphatically, “The age of the memoir is over.” What? Most of the women I know love reading memoirs. They may be harder for publishers and editors to market nowadays, but so too are all kinds of other books, what with bookstores disappearing faster than endangered animals, and self-published books making editors themselves an endangered species. But let’s not pick on the memoir. Those of us who like to read will always be captivated by well-told personal stories of love and loss, divorce and death, the triumph over illness or abusive rearing. So I want to say to my editor friends, keep those memoirs coming!
Here are four fascinating ones I’ve read in recent weeks:
—————————————————————————————————
ONCE UPON A SECRET by Mimi Alford. Random House. 198 pages.
You probably saw Mrs. Alford on television. She was on every talk show imaginable: a discreetly dressed woman in her sixties, with a soft voice and unprepossessing manner. But back in 1962, still in high school – she attended Miss Porter’s prep school, the same school as Jackie Kennedy – she landed a summer job as a White House intern. On her fourth day at work she was invited to join a small group of the president’s special friends for a lunchtime swim in the White House pool. Kennedy turned up while Alford was swimming, liked what he saw, and invited her for a tour of the residence that evening. It was an evening that would shape – and scar — the entire rest of her life. The preppie Alford was not just sexually inexperienced, she was a virgin. She’d been kissed only once in her life, back in eighth grade, and despite her pretty, Waspy looks, suffered from a severe case of low self-esteem. She’d had no boyfriends throughout highschool, had been anorexic at seventeen, and had always felt anxious and somehow undesirable.
{Click here to read the complete review!}
Alford remained a sexual toy of Kennedy’s until, during her first year of college, she met and became engaged to a boy her own age. Naively believing couples should be completely open with one another, she told her suitor about her affair with the president. He said he still wanted to marry her, but he made the harsh demand that she never say another word about the affair, not to anyone. They married, and Alford kept the secret. But it poisoned her life, making her feel emotionally distant from everyone she knew, and turning the marriage into a punishing and arid relationship. After many years of feeling her secret as a scourge destroying her from within, she did begin telling a few close friends about her relationship with Kennedy. But they kept her secret, too, and she never admitted the affair publicly, even after her marriage ended in divorce. It was widely rumored that Kennedy had had an affair with a young White House intern, but who she went unknown, until historian Robert Dallek unearthed Alford’s identity and revealed it in a 2004 biography of Kennedy. After that exposure, and after finding a new husband who didn’t think her youthful indiscretion shameful, she decided to talk about her long-held secret – hence this book. And in letting go of the secret, she claims to have found at last some modicum of inner peace.
The details of the affair are engrossing and often shocking. And the book has a rare authenticity. It doesn’t sound ghostwritten. Alford’s voice is her own: gentle, modest, and self-revelatory.
When the author was interviewed on TV some of her young interviewers were critical of her for having succumbed to the advances of a much older man. Didn’t she feel abused? Alford’s response was no, that his attentions made her feel important.
I felt the young interviewers just didn’t get it. They’ve grown up in a different time, a time when women feel outraged at the thought of an older and more powerful man attempting to seduce a younger powerless female. And seem to expect said female to feel outraged, too. But Alford’s time was my time, too. And I can assure you that if the charming, handsome and powerful Jack Kennedy had wanted to make love to me, I’d have done just what Alford did. And felt just the way she did.
—————————————————————————————————
INTIMATE WARS by Merle Hoffman, The Feminist Press. 267 pages,
How you feel about Intimate Wars will depend entirely on how you feel about a woman’s right to choose whether and when to bear a child. Hoffman is the director of a prominent New York abortion clinic she opened at the age of twenty-five–two years before Roe v. Wade–which she is still running today, forty-one years later. Strong-willed, outspoken and fearless, Hoffman has fought in all the battles over reproductive rights that have tormented our times since the day dangerous, unsanitary and cruel back-alley abortions, were supplanted through U.S. law by safe abortions performed in clean, accountable, professionally-staffed medical clinics. Hoffman has been a hero in these battles, and a crusader in other women’s health issues as well, like the need for affordable mammography for all women. I say hero deservedly; Hoffman has faced down innumerable bomb-threats; opened hate mail that contained deadly powders; and learned to shoot a gun in order to protect not just herself but her many employees from threatened attacks.
{Click here to read the complete review!}
The discovery of the set on which she would make her mark came about accidentally. Needing a job to augment her dilettantish pursuits, she took a part-time position as office assistant to Dr. Martin Gold, a New York physician specializing in family care. In 1971, when abortion was legalized in New York, Gold opened one of the state’s first ambulatory abortion facilities and, feeling that a woman should be its public face, asked Hoffman to run his new clinic. Accepting, Hoffman realized that she was about to be “on the front lines of an exciting, pioneering new era of medicine….longing for a great stage to act upon, I was ready to throw myself into creating a new world. Now was the time– this was my hour.”
Hoffman can be grandiose. But she’s refreshingly open, no secrets this woman; she tells us that she and the married Gold were lovers. She tells us that they remained so for many years, until eventually he divorced his wife and married her. They had no children–he already had some, and she didn’t want any. But long after his death, Hoffman realized, at the age of fifty-eight, that what was missing from her embattled life was a child. A year later she adopted a three-year-old Russian girl, and discovered the intense joys of motherhood.
Has raising a child altered her commitment to providing abortions? Not at all. It has simply strengthened her dedication to helping women experience those joys only when they want and are ready to do so.
—————————————————————————————————
WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL? By Jeanette Winterson, Grove Press. 250 pages.
Jeanette Winterson’s best-selling 1985 autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, told the story of her adoption as an infant by a fanatical born-again Pentecostal Christian who saw evidences of Satan in the tiny child. Trying to alter her nature and destroy her spirit, her mother, who she refers to as “Mrs. W.”, punishes her for the slightest infraction of rules. She is not just beaten, or sent to bed hungry, but sometimes even locked in the basement coal bin or made to spend the night outdoors on the front stoop. When the pre-teen Winterson falls in love with books, her mother burns them. And when she is a teenager and her mother learns she is attracted to women, she is forced to undergo a cruel and frightening church exorcism. Winterson survived Mrs. W., left home at fifteen, started working, managed against all odds to attend a local college and then Oxford University, and ultimately went on to write Oranges–which has become a classic of lesbian literature–and several other books.
{Click here to read the complete review!}
Winterson has also come to see that the ordeals she endured at her adoptive mother’s hands have played a role in the achievements of her life. Remembering the burning of her books incident, she writes that what the books held “could not be so easily destroyed. What they held was already inside me, and together we would get away.” More, as she regarded the smouldering pile of paper and type, she had an epiphany: “There was something else I could do. ‘Fuck it’, I thought, ‘I can write my own.’”
The author’s undauntable personality manifests itself throughout this powerful book, which culminates in her search for her birth mother. With increasing suspense, she tracks her identity and whereabouts, and ultimately the pair is reunited. Her mother turns out to be a kindly motherly woman, as happy to meet Winterson as Winterson is to meet her. Winterson likes the woman she finally meets. But regretfully, she realizes that the reunion has come too late; she can never be the happier person she might have been had she been raised by her genial birth mother. She is Mrs. W’s creature. And, she speculates, that has made her into the strong, successful woman she is now. Indeed, when her birth mother, learning of her child’s unhappy rearing, condemns Mrs. W., Winterson finds that, “I hate Ann’s criticizing Mrs. Winterson. She was a monster, but she was my monster.”
—————————————————————————————————
FIERCE JOY by Ellen Schecter. Greenpoint Press. 2012
In her late thirties, Ellen Schecter, married, and the mother of two small children, began experiencing pain in various parts of her body. Her left foot felt numb, her fingers tingled, her ears ached, she saw white flashes in one of her eyes. The pain was so cosmic and so difficult to pin down that she sometimes thought it might be a figment of her imagination, that she might be a hypochondriac or a hysteric. But after two years of trying to ignore the ever-increasing anguish colonizing her body, she and her husband finally sought medical attention and a diagnosis. What she had turned out to be not in her head at all, but systemic lupus marked by inflammation of her peripheral nerves. The disease is progressive. The commonly used treatment – heavy doses of steroids – failed to slow its march through the corridors of her body. And Schecter proceeds to fight her deterioration with every scrap of will and humor she can muster. Fierce Joy is the story of this courageous woman and her battles to maintain her spirits even while she was losing not her nerve, never her nerve, but her nerves.
{Click here to read the complete review!}
At this time, she was working part-time at the Bank Street College of Education and writing children’s book and scripts. Refusing to let her illness cut off her possibilities, she takes a full-time job at the college. And she becomes, she tells us, “a whore in search of any potential for healing, Eastern or Western, as long as it doesn’t endanger the traditional medical options I need.” In some of the book’s lighter sections, she describes her encounters with meditation, support groups, the laying on of hands conducted by a founder of a major New York church’s health and healing program, and her sessions with a noted physician who uses hypnosis and trance work to help severely ill patients deal with their diseases and the side-effects of their treatments. Dr. Casell assists Schecter in coming to terms with her illness by accepting it, by mourning her losses instead of denying them, “palpating the dimensions of my rage instead of burying it.” On a day she finally allows herself to do this, she is “suddenly but unmistakenly flooded with a fierce joy that simply will not allow me to be dragged down into that deep Pit, but instead pushes me up and into the light.” Indeed, she refuses to be dragged down; when she becomes too ill to continue working full time, she sets herself the goal of learning Hebrew and studying the Torah. Wherever Schecter goes and whatever she tries, she meets helpers and friends along the way, people who smooth her way, and soften the sad sharp edges of this tale.
You’ll like this brave woman, who can laugh through her tears, and make us laugh too. I have one caveat. The book ends abruptly in the year 2000, leaving one to wonder what’s happened to Schecter in the past twelve years. Presumably she spent a lot of that time working on the writing of this book. But I wish she’d told us more about these years, and how she’s been coping of late. It’s a criticism, but one I doubt I’d be making if she hadn’t made me feel close to and concerned for her.
—————————————————————————————————
FOF Linda Wolfe is the award-winning author of 10 books and a 12-year veteran of the National Book Critics Circle.
Enter to win all four memoirs–your spring/summer reading list!–when you answer this comment in the questions below: What’s your favorite memoir of all time?
COMMENTS (55)
.
FOF Linda Wolfe, the award-winning author of 10 books and a 12-year veteran of the National Book Critics Circle, shares 3 books in bloom this spring.
Enter to win all three books that Linda recommends by answering in the comments below: Which do you most want to read?
—————————————————————————————————
THE SONG OF ACHILLES
by Madeline Miller. Ecco. 371 pages.
Song of Achilles won’t be out until March 6th, but if I were you, I’d pre-order this stunning novel by classics scholar and fiction first-timer, Madeline Miller. I read it in galleys, and these days galleys often bear the encomiums that will appear on the actual book’s jacket. They tend to be from friends of the author or editor, and often can’t be trusted any more than the words of the guy trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. This galley came with the following proclamation by Emma Donaghue (author of Room): “Mary Renault lives again!”
I took her endorsement with a hefty cellar of salt. But once I cracked the pages, I had to admit that Donaghue was right. Madeline Miller tells her tale of ancient Greece and its warrior heroes with all the knowledge and story-telling strength of that fabled master of historical fiction, Mary Renault – not to mention that very first historical novelist to tell Achilles’ tale: Homer.
Remember the story? Achilles, the best warrior of his day, lurked moodily in his tent after being insulted by his commander, refusing to go out and fight the Trojans alongside his fellow Greeks. It was only after his best buddy, Patrocles, was killed during the fight, that Achilles came storming out of his tent, rallied the troops, and with uncontrolled rage and much brutal slaughtering drove the Trojans back. When I read the Iliad as a girl, I always wondered what made Patrocles so important to Achilles that he would wreak vengeance for his death on such a grand scale. Homer doesn’t tell us.
Miller, using the theories of Plato and other ancient Greek scholars and writers, does. Her Patrocles is not just Achilles’ best friend, but his longtime lover. This was a common interpretation of their relationship in the ancient world. There is even a fragment from a lost tragedy by the great ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus, that speaks of Achilles and Patrocles exchanging “frequent kisses.”
In Song of Achilles, nine year old Patrocles, the son of a Greek king, is sent into exile because he has accidentally killed a bullying older boy. He is “adopted” by another Greek king, who often takes into his care young boys of good families to be potential companions to his son, the golden-haired Achilles. Although Achilles is half-god –his mother was a water goddess – he is unassuming and compassionate. He singles out the lonely Patrocles to be his friend, and from then on they study together, play together, get tutored in the arts of medicine and warfare, and, in their early teens, become lovers.
When the Greeks decide to go to war against the Trojans, Patrocles, who abhors killing, tries to evade conscription. But Achilles, hoping to make his name and win for himself a glorious destiny, is eager to fight. Equipped with troops, weapons and ships by his father, he sets out for the war, and Patrocles, fearing to lose him, follows.
What happens to them and their relationship during those long years is explored by Miller in a beguiling, psychologically astute, suspense-packed, and poignant tale. Don’t miss it!
—————————————————————————————————
AN AVAILABLE MAN
by Hilma Wolitzer. Ballantine. 285 pages.
The available man in Hilma Wolitzer’s wise and touching new novel is 64-year-old Edward Schuyler, a reserved high school science teacher whose beloved wife, Bee, has just died suddenly of pancreatic cancer. Bee, a psychologist, wasn’t the only woman Edward had ever felt passionate about. In his mid-twenties, he’d had an intense and highly sexual attachment to a fellow teacher. Despite her character flaws – Laurel had been inordinately possessive and unpredictable — Edward had loved her, or at least loved her body, “the bold and innovative ways she used it, the way she looked – those small springy breasts as tender as if they’d only recently budded; the springy surprisingly dark hair of her bush.” He’d become engaged to her, but on their wedding day, with one-hundred-and-fifty guests already seated in the church pews, Laurel stood Edward up and disappeared.
It had taken took Edward years of “emotional hibernation” and shallow hook-ups to get over the humiliation Laurel had inflicted on him before he met Bee and once again fell in love. Physically, Bee wasn’t his type at all. She was “full-breasted, with curly brown hair” and “her hips, like her smile, were a little too wide.” But what Bee had going for her was warmth and steadiness – and a ready-made family, consisting of her mother and her two young children. Giving up his Manhattan bachelor’s quarters, Edward had moved into Bee’s suburban home, and overnight become “a husband, a stepfather, a suburbanite, a mortgager, a birder, and a commuter.” More, he found that “He had never been so happy in his life.”
How then cope with the grief of losing a partner with whom he had shared twenty years of wedded bliss? How move forward with life? Or should he move forward?
Wolitzer skillfully takes us inside the head of this bewildered, anguished man as he tries to handle his despair, retain the love of his step-family, and yet possibly find intimacy and happiness again.
This time around, the rules and pathways of courtship have changed dramatically. Edward attends a grief support group and even, at the prompting of his stepchildren, tries online dating, but these do little to assuage his loneliness. So it is only by chance, and with effort, that in the end Edward does find happiness again. I daren’t tell you how because for a quiet domestic story, An Available Man is quite suspenseful.
Elegantly structured, this gem of a novel is the accomplished Wolitzer’s best work so far.
—————————————————————————————————
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
by Penelope Lively. Viking. 229 pages.
How It All Began begins with a telling epigraph from scientist James Gleick’s book, Chaos: “The Butterfly Effect was the reason. For small pieces of weather – and to a global forecaster small can mean thunderstorms and blizzards – any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continent-size eddies that only satellites can see.”
Lively proposes in this, her twentieth novel, that The Butterfly Effect can alter lives as well as weather. How It All Began follows a chain of events that result when 76-year-old Charlotte Rainsford, who tutors foreign students in English, is mugged on the street near her London home. The mugger steals her purse, knocking her down in the process, and the fall makes Charlotte fracture her hip. When she’s let out of the hospital on crutches, her married daughter, Rose, insists on having Charlotte live with her and her husband until the fracture is healed.
The necessity of looking after her mother causes Rose to skip a day of work with her employer, the self-centered historian, Lord Henry Peters. Lord Peters is due to give a speech in Manchester that day about the politics of the eighteenth century, and, not wishing to travel alone, solicits the help of his niece, Marion, an interior decorator. In order to accompany him, Marion cancels a date with her married lover, Jeremy Dalton. Her text message to him accidentally falls into the hands of Jeremy’s wife, Stella. And, staying home for the day, Rose meets Anton, a pupil of her mother’s.
Rose and Anton fall in love, endangering Rose’s marriage. Lord Peters, nervous and out of sorts, makes a fool of himself in Manchester, Stella kicks Jeremy out of their home. Marion finds a new and more satisfying life without him. And so it goes, with character after character experiencing enormous life changes as a result of that unfortunate street mugging of an elderly woman.
Charlotte is the most deeply drawn of the large cast, perhaps because she seems to be the voice of the author, herself in her late seventies. Charlotte’s thoughts are eloquent. “For years now,” she thinks, “pain has been a constant companion. Cozily there in bed with one in the morning, keeping pace all day, coyly retreating perhaps for a while only to come romping back: here I am, remember me? Ah, old age. The twilight years – that delicate phrase. Twilight my foot – roaring dawn of a new life, more like, the one you didn’t know about. We all avert our eyes, and then – wham! You’re in there too, wondering how the hell this can have happened, and maybe it is an early circle of hell and here come the gleeful devils with their pitchforks, stabbing and prodding.”
The other characters are somewhat shallow, more caricatures than characters, really, but they are unfailingly amusing. Henry, who has lost his prominence and begun losing his memory, knows that “history is a slippery business; [that] the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion. Henry is well aware of this, and aware that the eighteenth century has disappeared over the horizon so far as he is concerned, reconstructured, reinterpreted.”
That eighteenth century, whose disappearance from his memory has devastated Henry, doesn’t much trouble his niece, the interior decorator. “That period, for Marion, meant certain furnishings and styles: Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Robert Adam. Stripes. Tottery little tables….She had got through life quite easily knowing nothing much of the eighteenth century.” Jeremy, courting his wife in an effort to woo her back, takes Stella to “a courtship restaurant. He had taken Marion there once, early on. No matter. She hadn’t cared for it – something wrong with the decor.”
And all of the characters, even those who are lightly drawn, have moments of epiphany, sudden realizations of the meaning of what they are going through. Charlotte, living with Rose but not privy to her feelings about Anton, thinks, “Who knows their own child? You know bits – certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities, The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them” Anton, after Rose decides to remain in her marriage, accepts the failure of their relationship because it has made him feel alive again. “I had forgotten…not just what it was like to feel, but that feeling existed at all. It is like coming out into the sunlight.”
And what of the mugger? Here, Lively is at her wittiest. “The delinquent …was himself set upon almost immediately by a hostile gang and relieved of £67.27, which were distributed among the gang membership and disposed of within the hour. The delinquent was much annoyed at his loss, but recovered within a day or two; so it goes. Beyond him, unknown and of no interest, he had left Charlotte on her crutches, the embattled Daltons, Henry in his humiliation, Marion, Rose, Anton…Demonstrating that no man is an island. Even a fourteen-year-old with behavioral problems.”
Enter to win all three books that Linda recommends by answering in the comments below: Which do you most want to read?
—————————————————————————————————
(See all our past winners, here.) (See official rules, here.) Contest closes March 8, 2012 at midnight E.S.T.
Jennifer Iserloh spends all day, every day thinking about, talking about, cooking and taste-testing food…And she looks like this. —->
Why wouldn’t we want to know her secrets? Secrets of a Skinny Chef (Rodale, 2010) is a compendium of 100 guilt-free recipes that Jennifer developed throughout her career as a celeb chef and apprentice to culinary greats such as Scott Bryan and Tyler Florence. She has also developed recipes for major media outlets including SELF, Prevention, The Today Show and InStyle.
With low-calorie, low-fat recipes such as Hot “Wings” with Spicy Sauce and Italian Cheesecake, it’s “the foods that you already love… just a little healthier,” explains Jennifer. But does stripping recipes of fat and calories mean we lose the flavor too? FOF Book Guru Sharon Murner cooks the book, then weighs in here:
1. Did you enjoy this book?
Yes, and I still am. There are some awesome recipes that make you think that you ought to be gaining weight, such as the delicious Italian Cheesecake and the Tiramisu Parfait, but you won’t.
2. What was unique about this cookbook?
The recipes themselves and the tips, such as her skinny secret for ‘Good’ party dips like her Creamy Mexican Bean Dip with Whole Grain Tortilla Chips. (You’ll have to read the cookbook for the ‘secret.’)
3. What would you want to ask the author, now that you’re done reading?
I’d love to know what brand of nonstick cooking spray she prefers since many of the recipes call for this ingredient.
4. Would you recommend this to other FOFs? Did you find yourself telling friends about the book as you were reading it?
I would definitely recommend this cookbook. I did tell friends about the recipes I tried and loved.
6. What recipes did you try and love?
I’d recommend the Maple Apple Waffles. I also liked the Cream of Broccoli Soup with Cheddar which is altered to be ‘skinny’ by using reduced-fat cheddar cheese and sour cream, taking it down to 126 calories for a 1 cup serving–yea! I also loved The Baked Meatballs with Zesty Marinara and the Scalloped Potatoes with Ham. I loved the trick of using sweet potatoes as well as red potatoes and reduced sodium ham to make this recipe ‘skinny.’ Last but not least, I enjoyed the Blueberry Cobbler with Yogurt Topping for dessert. Of course, there are many more, but these were my faves! Hope I didn’t make anyone too hungry.
7. What cooking substitutions from this book would you implement in your own recipes?
Jennifer’s substitutions such as reduced fat milk, greek yogurt and sour cream have been easy to implement in my own cooking.
8. Is this book similar to any other books you have read? Which?
The other go-to diet cookbook I’ve used for years is The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet by Herman Tarnower and Samm Sinclair Baker. I find I like Jennifer’s recipes better because they are more varied and modern.
9. If you had to classify this book would you call it a “must own” a “pass” or a “skim it” cookbook?
It’s a ‘must own’ in my opinion especially if you want to eat well and not have to worry about gaining weight.
10. Any other thoughts you’d like to share?
This cookbook inspired me to try different recipes [than I'd normally cook] such as Buttermilk Yogurt Dressing and Supermoist Turkey Burgers (you really can’t tell the difference between turkey and beef in this one!). I’ve truly liked every single recipe I’ve tried.
Can’t get a read on what your friends and family want for the holidays? Here’s the ultimate list of books to GIVE this holiday season brought to you by FOF book critic Linda Wolfe, the award-winning author of 10 books and a 12-year veteran of the National Book Critics Circle.
Then comment below for a chance to RECEIVE one of Linda’s top picks–”Then Again,” Diane Keaton’s new memoir. (Three FOFs will win.)
—
FOR CELEBRITY MEMOIR BUFFS:
“Then Again” by Diane Keaton. Random House. 291 pages
Keaton’s memoir, “Then Again,” is not just her story, it’s her mother’s as well. Dorothy Keaton Hall, who died at the age of eighty-six, left behind her eighty-five journals and scrapbooks that Keaton never bothered to read while her mother was alive. But in 2008, after her mother’s death, she began ploughing through them, in the process discovering things about her mother she never knew – among them her mother’s thwarted ambitions and her early fear of memory loss.
Keaton uses Dorothy’s diaries as a scaffolding from which to explore and recount her own life: her girlhood insecurities and her adult strengths, her stunning career, her love affairs with Woody Allen, Al Pacino and Warren Beatty, and her late-in-life realization that despite the persona she’d cultivated as a woman who, like Garbo, preferred being alone, her life felt empty without children. At the age of 50, she adopted two of them, and became as engaged a mother as her own had been.
The book is a bit scattered – as one might expect a book of Keaton’s to be – with hasty entries and more thoughtful ones, reflections that are to the point, and others that are vague and puzzling. It’s really rather like a scrapbook itself, a collection of observations, reflections, and images, rather than a straightforward memoir. But it’s charming, just like its author. We learn that this famous beauty was so critical of her body that she became bulimic, stuffing herself with favorite foods only to void them right after consumption. It’s also poignant. We learn how sad it makes Keaton feel to consider the difference between her own life and that of her mother: starting in her fifties, after her children grew up and left her with an empty nest, Dorothy endured years of loneliness, whereas Keaton in her fifties has been able to come “out of isolation into a kind of family-of-man scenario, complete with an extended family, new friends and much needed ordinary activities.”
The book is an homage to her mother, a tribute to her own children, and an affirmation of woman’s ability to keep growing throughout life.
—
“Bossypants” by Tina Fey. Little Brown, 277 pp.
Tina Fey, creator and star of TV’s “30 Rock” and former head writer and occasional star on “Saturday Night Live,” has written not a memoir, exactly, but a collection of chronological essays about important periods of her life – including the one where she gets her first period. Her mother gives her a starter’s kit: some sanitary napkins, panty liners, and two pamphlets, one for a girl to read, the other for her mother to read and discuss with her. That 10-year-old Fey’s mother hasn’t bothered to read her pamphlet but just turned it over to her daughter isn’t half the fun here; what’s funnier is that Fey remains totally unprepared for her first bleed, and doesn’t even recognize what is happening to her when her underthings turn red. “I knew from commercials that one’s menstrual period was a blue liquid you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency,” she writes. This wasn’t blue, so…I ignored it for a few hours.”
If you don’t find this funny, you’d best stop reading. Period. (Pun intended.)
The book contains Nora Ephron-like tips for women entering the male-controlled work world: “No pigtails. No tube tops.” And “You’re not in competition with other women; you’re in competition with everyone.” Of interviewing for a job on “Saturday Night Live,” Fey writes, “Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.” Of going to college at the University of Virginia, “I spent four years attempting to charm the uninterested.” Of turning forty, “I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t used to have to do that. But now I do.” Of doing a photo shoot, “The makeup artist will work methodically on your eyelids with a series of tickly little brushes for a hundred minutes,” and “at really fancy shoots, a celebrity fecalist will study your bowel movements and adjust your humours.”
If you don’t love Fey, I’d say you don’t have a sense of humor, let alone good bodily semifluids.
FOR FICTION LOVERS:
“The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides. FSG, 406 pp.
Like a Jane Austen novel written for our own times, the plot of Eugenides’ engaging new book, “The Marriage Plot,” concerns a young woman, her suitors, and her quest for a lifelong partner. But our world is a far more confusing one than the marriage-means-happy-ending society inhabited by Emma and Elizabeth and Austen’s other heroines. Finding one’s way in it is far from simple, and Eugenides’ heroine, Madeleine, as well as her two suitors, Leonard and Mitchell, are having a hard time when the book begins and the three of them, students at Brown in 1982, are about to graduate.
Madeleine, a literature student who’s pretty, rich, and sexually-inquisitive, is desperately in love with Leonard, a brilliant but bipolar science student who initiates her into physical intimacy but can’t quite commit to their relationship. And Mitchell, fascinated by religion and philosophy, is in love with Madeleine, who couldn’t care less.
After they graduate, Madeleine, unsure of what kind of career to pursue, flounders. Leonard learns that brilliance isn’t enough, and Mitchell, searching for life’s deeper meanings by working with Mother Teresa in India, loses his youthful idealism. I won’t tell you who Madeleine ends up with, but, without giving away too much, I want to say that despite having known a few manic-depressives and read a great deal about that illness, the way Eugenides shows us the awful progression of the disease beats any rendition I’ve ever read in fiction. Equally special is his satirical take on the absurd literary theories in vogue in the eighties.
Witty and moving, this book about love, sex, and coming of age, gets being young in the eighties altogether right. And I suspect it’s pretty accurate about the pleasures and problems of being young in any decade.
—
“State of Wonder” by Ann Patchett. Harper/HarperCollins. 353 pages.
I reviewed this book at length earlier this year, so I’ll be brief and just say here that if I had to tell you my choice for the “Number One Best Book of 2011,” it’d be “Age of Wonder.” With more than a touch of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” this book is a stirring evocation of a primitive world, a mystery tale, and a deft exploration of the character of two brilliant women. In the depths of the Amazon, the heroine, self-effacing Dr. Marina Singh, must discover the secrets that the imposing Dr. Annick Swenson, a one-time mentor of hers, is hiding from the rest of the world. She also must learn how to live and even thrive in barbarous surroundings, and become psychologically strong enough to defy her teacher.
You’ll be with Marina, learning her thoughts as if inside her head and experiencing her alien surroundings with her distinctive eyes and ears, throughout this stunning tale.
—
11/22/63 by Stephen King. Scribner. 849 pp.
I’m not a fan of horror stories, don’t like reading about cars with minds of their own, killer viruses or crazed fans, so I rarely read King. But this book is about horror of a different sort–and it’s terrific. The horror in “11/22/63″ is time, an adversary that each of us must do battle with, and which always, whatever our circumstances, defeats us, taking away our abilities, our strengths, and all that we most prize.
A science fiction tale with that hoary old subject, time travel, “11/22/63″ recounts the experiences of a Maine schoolteacher, Jake Epping, who goes back into the world of the late nineteen-fifties bent on a mission: to stop Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy. King recreates that world with meticulous and delightful detail, from the vibrant preservative-free taste of root beer, to 19.9 cents-a-gallon gasoline, to music you could really dance to. But the past has its drawbacks. “It’s a time,” King points out, “for which a lot of people felt nostalgic. Possibly because they had forgotten how bad the past smelled.”
Not only does the past smell bad, it’s rife with poverty and racial strife. Yet the good-natured Epping begins to prefer the past, with all its unsavoriness, to his actual present. He takes a job as teacher in a small Texas town, gets to know the Oswald family and–this will delight conspiracy theorists–tries to determine if Oswald was the only person responsible for Kennedy’s death. He also falls passionately in love with the school librarian.
King has bigger fish to fry in this work than in most of his other novels. The book has a gripping plot and a likeable hero in pursuit of an ominous killer, but the author is also in pursuit of the answers to the Big Questions: Would today’s world be different if Kennedy had not been killed? Is there any way to slow time’s indifference to human life? Is love the only thing that makes life worth living? And, is loss always our inevitable fate?
FOR HISTORY FANS:
“Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman” by Robert K. Massie, Random House, 625 pages
Despite its heft, this doorstopper of a biography goes down as smooth as fine Beluga caviar. It’s the story of Catherine the Great, an obscure German princess who deposed her ineffectual alcoholic husband, Czar Peter III, in 1762, seized the throne of Russia, and ended up ruling that vast turbulent country for more than thirty years.
In Massie’s hands, the start of the story has all the elements of a fairy tale: a child scorned by her mother, plucked from obscurity by a kindly aunt (who just happened to be the daughter of the czar of Russia), decked out by that fairy godmother of a relative in furs and jewels, and married amid wild celebration to the future czar. “An adolescent girl,” Massie tells us, “was launched on a great adventure.”
But of course, Catherine was no fairy tale princess. And her story becomes ever more interesting as she learns to be a ruler, finding her way to gain and hold onto power despite constant threats. A quick study, she had taught herself at an early age was always to appear courteous and humble, to be a good listener, and to mask her considerable brains. But as she matured, her brilliance became evident to all who knew her, evoking respect even from such luminaries as Voltaire and Diderot. “I would say about myself,” she wrote in “A Secret Confession,” a private account of her life and loves, “that I was a true gentleman with a mind more male than female.”
Catherine reformed and reorganized Russia, she encouraged the arts, education and medical care, put down powerful rebellions, survived innumerable political crises and–somewhat ruthlessly–accomplished several land grabs that greatly extended Russia’s territory. But, aside from being an astute monarch, she was above all a woman, endlessly looking for the love she had been denied by her mother and lacked in her marriage–her husband had refused to make love to her during their nine years together. She said she was “Loath to be without love for even a single hour,” took numerous lovers, and wrote to one of them, “If you want to keep me forever, then show me as much friendship as love.”
Massie’s Catherine is not only a political genius, but a flesh-and-blood woman who at times sounds just like one’s BFF.
—
“1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created” by Charles C. Mann. Knopf 535 pp.
Charles C. Mann’s best-selling “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” was a sweeping examination of life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. His “1493″ takes up the story of what followed: the vast spread of plants and peoples that is known as the “Columbian Exchange.” “After 1492,” Mann explains, “the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange…is why there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Swtizerland, and chili peppers in Turkey and Thailand. To ecologists [it] is arguably the most important event since the death of the dinosaurs.”
Indeed, Mann tells us, it has created an altogether new ecological era, the “Homogenocene” or the Age of Homogeneity, the era in which we live, although most of us just call it “Globalization.” Undeniably, we have become One World, where what happens in Greece affects our stock market, what happens in China effects our manufacturing, what happens in Africa affects our hospitals. But the process, so recent-seeming, started ‘way back then, immediately after Columbus’s history-altering discovery.
The Columbian Exchange has vastly benefited mankind, spreading foods that not only delighted, like those tomatoes and oranges, but foods that filled hungry bellies, like wheat and corn. Nevertheless, benefit and detriment are the two faces of the Exchange’s coin. Take the exchange of plants: along with its beneficence it brought pests never before known in the West and mighty difficult to eliminate. Or take the spread of peoples: the European settlers who descended on the ancient native populations destroyed them both actively and inadvertently–inadvertently because they brought with them diseases for which these populations had no resistance. Today, it is Western society that is threatened by diseases for which we have no resistance, viruses transferred from monkeys to man in Africa and then brought–by plane–to new shores.
Mann, an extremely lively writer, gives us fascinating portraits of some of the little known figures responsible for the spread of specific plants, animals, people and germs. And he warns us about the most frightening consequences of the Columbian Exchange–not just the spread of diseases, but climate change and the destruction of ancient species. “On the one hand,” he writes of our Age of Homgeneity, “people want the wash of goods and services that the worldwide market provides.” But on the other hand, “Things feel changed and scary.”
You can say that again!
–
Enter to win Then Again, Diane Keaton’s new memoir by leaving a comment below.
Three FOFs will win.
(See all our past winners, here.)
(See official rules, here.)
Contest closes December 15, 2011 at midnight E.S.T.
Every book that FOF Danielle Steel has ever written has been a New York Times bestseller, including her latest novel, Hotel Vendôme (Random House Publishing Group, November 2011). It follows an ambitious man as he transforms a shabby Manhattan inn into a luxurious, five-star hotel. His seemingly perfect life comes to a halt when his wife, Miriam, takes off with a rock star, leaving him to raise their 4-year-old daughter, Heloise. Is this Eloise for grown ups? Not quite… But, Kirkus Reviews says the novel will “appeal to the most dedicated of Steel’s fans,” although many readers say it falls flat. “It seems Steel has run out of story lines,” says one Amazon.com reviewer. “44 Charleston Street, about a single woman who opens her home to boarders, was disappointing as well. Now we have a hotel. What’s next, an apartment complex?”
Does FOF Book Guru Barbara Phelps agree? Did Hotel Vendôme make her want to check in or out?
Did you enjoy this book?
Three quarters of it. The description made me feel like I was owning and running a grand hotel. I could feel the passion of the owner and I was gripped by the things that he and his daughter experienced. However, the plot became a runaway carriage ride–rampant changes of scene, many emotions running high…I wanted to slow it down!
Was it a page-turner or did you have to push through it?
It was a page turner and really had me wound up in their lives and emotions.
What would you want to ask the author, now that you’re done reading?
I would ask Ms. Steel why she felt the need to try to cram so much into the last quarter of the book.
Would you recommend this to other FOFs?
I would recommend it to other FOFs–to both those who love Danielle Steel and those new to her. It was a bit different from her average plot lines.
If you had to classify this book would you call it a “must read” a “pass” or a “skim it” book?
A must-read. I did find it flying by as I read it and was excited to get back to it each day.
–
One FOF will win a copy of The Intolerable Gourmet cookbook to review. By entering this contest you are agreeing to read and submit a written review of this book to FabOverFifty and to send a photo of yourself to accompany the published story.
(Contest closes 12/1/2011 at midnight E.S.T. See all our past winners. See official rules. Our panel of editors will choose winners based on the quality of their written comments. We look for clear, concise writing; creativity; and thoughtfulness.)
COMMENTS (5)
“Are apps making cookbooks obsolete?” Such was the headline in a popular New York Times article last week, which went on to praise Baking with Dorie a critically-acclaimed new baking app from FOF Dorie Greenspan, one of our FOFeatured Women. We went straight to the source, Dorie herself, to get the scoop on what makes apps so well-suited for the kitchen and whether or not cookbooks will go the way of the dodo.
Plus, 3 FOFs will get to try Dorie’s app. Enter, by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post.
Who knew that one of the most buzzed about cooking apps would come from an FOF chef and not a 20-something!
I’m excited about new technology. I’ve had an iPad from day one and thought it was a miracle. I have 84,000 followers on Twitter. I feel like a baking evangelist. I want everyone in their kitchens baking. Apps and social media are tools to help me reach new bakers. You thought a new app would come from someone in their 20s, but it was my hope that by doing the app, I’d reach people in their 20s.
Do you think cookbooks are dead?
No. The best apps supplement cookbooks–they give you something that a cookbook can’t. I’m not giving up cookbooks; in fact, I’m working on a new one now. But, I’m thrilled we have this technology and excited about what it can do and how it’s going to evolve.
What does your app give someone that a cookbook can’t?
You can get my recipes in the book. The app is me with you in your kitchen. When I write recipes for a book, I try to include many visual clues so they know what they are doing is right–for instance, what color a finished cake will be and the way it should spring back when you press the top. An app brings this alive. My app has a ton of video, which gives me a way really show home bakers the techniques.
So what specific techniques are best learned from the app?
There’s a way that I knead dough that I can describe in a book, but when you see it, it’s completely different.
One feature that foodies have been buzzing about is the unique ways a user can view recipes in your app. Tell me about that.
CulinApp, the company that created the app, presented each recipe in four different ways because they understand that people learn in different ways. There’s “cookbook view,” where the recipe looks like a traditional cookbook. There’s “spin view,” where you can spin a carousel to choose pieces of the recipes you want to see. There’s “step-by-step” which is the videos in order with the steps beneath it in text. Then there’s “CulinView” which is a flow chart of the whole recipe so you get an overview of everything that needs to be done.
What’s your favorite view?
My preference is step-by-step.
So cookbooks will still have a place in our kitchen a few years from now?
Yes, for sure. Although, the other day, I saw a picture of kitchen cabinets that are built to hold iPads. I think it’s the wave of the future.
3 FOFs will test Dorie’s app. Enter to win, by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post.
By entering this contest you are agreeing to read and submit a written review of this app to FabOverFifty and to send a photo of yourself to accompany the published story.
(Contest closes 11/24/2011. See all our past winners. See official rules. Our panel of editors will choose winners based on the quality of their written comments. We look for clear, concise writing; creativity; and thoughtfulness.)
COMMENTS (31)
Jamie Cat Callan grew up in Connecticut, though she claims, “I have French blood running through my veins.” As a little girl she observed her French grandmother– the way she dressed, the way she cooked, the way she loved. French women don’t worry about being skinny, young enough or accomplished enough, she observed.
In her most recent novel, Bonjour, Happiness! (Citadel Press, 2011) Callan studied the lives of French women to discover the recipe for true happiness, or ‘joie de vivre,’ and to share it will all her readers. “[It] translates the joie de vivre into a language of life that is not so foreign.” wrote a book critic for Kirkus Reviews. But, what did our FOF guru, Orelle Jackson think? Is there such thing as a recipe for happiness? And if so, did she find it in this book?
1. In a nutshell, what is the book about?
Happiness. Early in the book the author points to the subtle difference between the American “pursuit of happiness” and the French term “la recherché du bonheur” or “looking for happiness.” In this, she suggests we are chasing happiness. We see happiness as something elusive – down the street, around the corner, while the French are looking for happiness. It’s as if they already know it’s there, hiding in plain sight and if they stop they will find it – Voila! The author, who had a French grandmother, suggests French women may have the edge on the rest of us when it comes to happiness or joie de vivre. In part, this book is a guide to French style and taste and the French way of life, but it also is her own journey of discovery.
2. What is the genre of this book?
This book would fall into the self-help genre.
3. Did you enjoy it?
While this is a charming book, I didn’t love it. I liked parts of it, but I found it repetitive and the whole premise problematic. I found the process of her self-discovery tedious, exasperated by her infatuation with everything French and her belief that this was the path to happiness. I was relieved to get to the last part of the book when the author finally realizes that the secret to happiness is “finding those moments in your own ordinary life, finding the people and the simple pleasures of living that will bring you happiness.”
4. Was it a page turner, or did you have to push through it?
Although it was light reading, I found it difficult to stay focused because it did not hold my attention. This is the kind of book I wanted to merely skim through.
5. What would you want to ask the author, now that you’re done reading?
I was struck by the relationship she had with her mother and wondered if she got closer with her mom before she passed away.
6. Would you recommend this to other FOFs? Did you find yourself telling friends about the book as you were reading it?
I did tell friends about the book, but I would not give it a strong recommendation.
7. What part of the book did you like the most? What parts did you like least?
One of the most poignant parts of the book is when the author goes with her mother to get fitted for a bra after her radical mastectomy. In other parts of the book there seems to be an emotional gap between the mother and daughter. In this short but beautiful section, the complexity and the beauty of the mother-daughter relationship is revealed. The chapters “Good Enough to Eat” and “Weight Watchers in France” are also interesting. These two chapters really get to the big differences between us and our French sisters – our attitudes toward food and weight! While we use food as medication, punishment, or reward, our French counterparts use food as nourishment, celebration and occasion. On the opposite end of the spectrum I could not help but notice ambiguity. If happiness comes from loving yourself “for who you are right now – your beautiful, fragile, imperfect self” then why did it feel like most of the book implied if we were only French or behaved like French women or dressed like French women, we would be happy? In some ways I felt like this book should have been two books (or two essays) one about French living and style and one about Ms. Callon’s journey of self-discovery.
8. Is this book similar to any other books you have read? Which?
I have not recently read a similar book.
9. Any other thoughts you’d like to share?
There are beautiful, elegant and happy women in all parts of the world, and while their environment and ethnicity may play a role in their happiness, it is their ability to accept themselves and to see beauty in themselves and in the world around them that accounts for their happiness. While reading this book I was once again confronted by the fact that for most of our lives we measure ourselves against others and too often, find ourselves lacking. We torture ourselves with these perceived inadequacies. We punish ourselves because we are not enough – not smart enough, not thin enough, not rich enough, even not “French” enough. It is wonderful that as an FOF we begin to gain some perspective or enlightenment and realize we are “enough.” Let’s hope we can shorten this journey of enlightenment for the women and girls in our lives.
Also, while reading the book, I kept wondering just how happy French people are, so finally I did a very basic (non-scientific) internet search on depression levels in France. The results indicate France has a high rate of depression. The World Health Organization (WHO) report referred to in this article is complex and interesting.
—-
By entering this contest you are agreeing to read and submit a written review of this book to FabOverFifty and to send a photo of yourself to accompany the published story.
(Contest closes 11/17/2011. See all our past winners. See official rules. Our panel of editors will choose winners based on the quality of their written comments. We look for clear, concise writing; creativity; and thoughtfulness.)
COMMENTS (2)
If anyone is an authority on organic food, it’s Myra Goodman, co-owner and co-founder of Earthbound Farm, the world’s largest grower of organic produce. Her first cookbook, Food to Live By (2006), was praised by a Library Journal book reviewer who compares it to The Organic Cook’s Bible by Jeff Cox (Wiley, April 2006), one of those most well-known organic cooking resources to date.
In her latest cookbook, The Earthbound Cook: 250 Recipes for Delicious Food and a Healthy Planet (Workman Publishing, 2011) Myra pairs green living tips with all new recipes. Is this cooking guide as fresh as her first? FOF book reviewer, Darla Martin worked her way through and reported back.
In a nutshell, describe this cookbook.
It is about eating well and living green. It includes lots of recipes and green living tips.
Did you read her first book?
No, but I would like to now.
Did you enjoy it?
Yes, indeed.
Was it a page turner, or did you have to push through it?
Even though it is a cookbook, I read it page by page just like a novel.
What recipes and tips did you like most? What did you like least?
I liked finding new ways to cook a few veggies. I tried the cauliflower tart which I liked very much. I have marked the Coconut-Crusted salmon (p. 134) to make soon and the Chicken and Green Olive Enchiladas (p. 109). I’ve made enchiladas before but this is a new twist. The Jicama and Orange Salad with Orange-Sesame Vinaigrette sounds like a great winter salad to make when traditional greens and tomatoes aren’t in season.
I didn’t like searching here and there for the green living suggestions, which are sprinkled randomly through out the book.
Is this book similar to any other books you have read? Which?
I own and read a lot of cookbooks. This is a nice addition to my collection and I think it has a definite “California” feel.
Any other thoughts you’d like to share . . . ?
While I enjoyed the book, I don’t think I’d recommend it for everyone. Several recipes called for hard to find ingredients, such as lemongrass, or ingredients that are expensive such as truffle oil. I’m a dedicated foodie and live in a cosmopolitan area (San Fransisco Bay) so I’m willing to hunt down unusual or even expensive items. I don’t think that most people would.
–
Want to review books for FOF? Apply to be a book guru, here.
The Crabby Cookbook (Workman Publishing, 2011) is a collection of humor, survival tips and recipes for the “kitchen-challenged,” written by FOF actress Jessica Harper (star of movies such as Minority Report, Stardust Memories and Pennies from Heaven). “I thought it was high time a book acknowledged that not everybody experiences the joy of cooking; that sometimes cooking for a family on a daily basis can be really irritating!” said Jessica in a January, 2011 interview. “This book, with 135 easy recipes, is for those people, crabby cooks like me!” On the book jacket, former-Gourmet editor and New York Times restaurant reviewer, Ruth Reichl, called it “soo much fun. You stand in the kitchen laughing when you should be cooking.” Does FOF book guru, Karin Zindren, agree?
What is the genre of this book?
Cookbook.
Did you enjoy it?
It’s one of the most entertaining cookbooks I have ever read. It can be read in part or in total and you won’t miss a beat.
Would you recommend this to other FOFs?
Yes. Even as I read the book, I would call friends and family to tell them about it.
What part did you like most? What part did you like least?
I liked the stories just themselves and the recipes were a bonus. I made the Killer Pumpkin Pancakes for my granddaughters who HATE any type of pumpkin and loved these. I also made the Bruschetta with Someone Elses Tomatoes and the Slammin’ Yam Soup (I’m vegetarian so I used veggie broth and it was still great!). The Cauliflower in Disguise was great too, I even tripped up my husband with this one! Some of the recipes were too ambitious for me, probably one of the few down sides to the book.
Any other thoughts you’d like to share . . . ?
If you ever felt alone in world of cooking, this book is one you should definitely read…more than once! Oh, and try some of the recipes, they were worth the effort.
–
Want to review books for FOF? Apply to be a book guru, here.
LateBloomerBeauty
is reading
Quantum Success by Sandra Anne Taylor
foxxylady912
is reading
God Don't Like Ugly by Mary Monroe
judithmarshall
is reading
Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever by Judith Marshall
shellrobin
is reading
Then Again by Diane Keaton by Diane Keaton
