Recipe for Disaster

Recipe For Disaster is the story of Hannah, daughter of a Jewish mother and a dad who was raised Catholic. 

The author, Aimee Lucido grew up under similar circumstances to her protagonist, Hannah. 

In this story Hannah struggles with feelings about whether she is really Jewish or not and wanting a

Bat Mitzvah.  Also thrown in the story are cooking sessions with her Jewish grandmother

baking rugelach.  

I liked the clever way the author writes recipes that are about the ingredients for friendship and relationships. Also the author is very perceptive about the family dynamics between her parents, grandmother and siblings and friends.  This is a good story for middle schoolers to read for themselves 

and also for parents to read and discuss with their kids.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

 If you enjoy historical novels this is a really interesting book, looking at the beginnings of dictionaries.

Pip Williams has written a wonderful novel called The Dictionary of Lost Words.  This is the story of a young girl who grow up in the world of the first dictionary.  Her father is a collector of words and definitions for the dictionary and Esme grows up to follow in his footsteps.  We follow Esme as she goes off to school, gets involved with the women's suffrage movement, finds lust, love and passion for people in her life and in the words she is gathering.

It is fascinating the way they gathered the words and definitions for the First Oxford English Dictionary.

People from the public would send in words and definitions on slips of paper.  These were edited and verified by men who were working on the dictionary.  IT took forty years for the first sections A - B to be printed.  The original dictionary was printed in sections every two letters or so, years apart.  When the author found evidence of a member of the public had written to the men compiling the dictionary that a word had been left out, Williams said she knew she had the plot of her novel.

The word left out was bondmaid, the definition, a young woman bound to serve until her death.

Williams creates her story around the premise that Esme as a young girl found this word on the floor under the table where the words were sorted and hid it.  She goes on to collect words that are considered unfit for the dictionary but that she thinks are important.  Williams examines the idea that men and women look at words differently.  Certain words have different meanings and there were mainly men who worked on the dictionary.  Esme looks at words like sisters and mother and sees that there can be multiple meanings to these words.

It was very interesting thinking about the definitions and learning how the dictionaries were compiled and how it was decided which words to include or exclude.  Also following the historical events of the time, the war and women's fight for the right to vote, how women were treated and the class differences in terms of language and lifestyle were all well presented.,

Crying in H Mart

 I have always loved shopping in H Mart and eating from the little kiosks that sell Korean and Japanese food there.  People watching and trying different ethnic foods is always delicious and fun.

I will never visit an H Mart again without think of Michelle Zauner's book, Crying in H Mart.

This is a wonderful trip through the market picking out the produce and ingredients she needed to fill her memories of her mother through food.  When Zauner loses her mother at a young age to cancer, she tries to reconnect with the Korean side of her family through the shared foods she grew up eating.  

She takes her new husband to Korea and they visit her mother's family the way she did as a child.  Michelle tells the story of her childhood and the feeling of wanting to fit in in America and now when her mother is gone, the feeling of wanting to make sure people know she is also Korean.  She gave her parents a hard time as a teenager and feels bad for the time lost having good relations with her mother.  SO when her mother is sick and dying she tries hard to be the perfect daughter and make up for the unhappy years.

This story was so wonderful because in some ways I could relate to her sadness, I also lost my mother way too soon,  and because the food descriptions were so fascinating.  I am not sure I would eat many of the dishes that she describes but it was very interesting reading about this other culture.

I guess in a way there are similarities between different cultures, because there were points in the book where I thought something similar happens in the Jewish culture also.  

Once Upon A River

 Diane Setterfield has written many wonderful books.  My other favorite is The Thirteenth Tale, but here I am going to  review, Once Upon A River.  This is one of those books that has been sitting forever on my to read pile.   So I was thrilled when one of my book groups decided to make it a discussion book.  Though once I started it I was thinking so many  books to read, this is so confusing, should I keep reading?

But like every good book discussion  book this one did not let me down.  I pushed through and it became quite interesting and mesmerizing the further I got.  Also the discussion was fabulous and that always makes a reader walk away feeling fulfilled by the book.

This is an unusual story of an inn where the locals come to drink and tell stories. In the town there are three families who have lost young girls.  The Vaughn family, who lost a child  to an abduction, the Andersons, who eldest troublesome son, had a daughter who is missing, and Lily, who works for the church pastor, who  lost a baby sister many years ago.

One evening a man arrives in a terrible storm carrying a  small child in his arms who appears to be dead.  The local young woman who is the only doctor in the area treats  the man, and then realizes that the child is now alive.   As the story unfolds we get to know all  the many characters in this story which clearly centers around the river Thames that flows through the town.  

An historical fiction based on a real town on the river, this is becomes a fascinating tale of the families and how they are interconnected and how people can want something so much they  are willing to defy their true knowledge to make it so. There are multiple plot line working along side each other in this meandering novel.   Setterfield writes, . “A story ought to go clearly in one direction, then, after a distinct moment of crisis, change to go in another."   But that is not how she has written this book.  This story flows like a river and when it hits a rock or a bend, it redirects around to a new direction.

Halloween Murder Party

 What a crazy book cover.  This book presents the author's name in large print at the top of the cover, Leslie Meier and the at the bottom of the cover int he same green large typeface, Halloween Party Murder.

So I started reading the mystery and found it was an entertaining simple cozy mystery novel.  Just what I was looking for, a mindless entertainment for a weekend read.   Then all of a sudden half way  through the book, the mystery seemed to be solved.  Wait what?!?!  Yes that was it.  A somewhat weak finish, so more of a short story than a novel.

But still so many pages left in the book and it was starting over with chapter one...

Finally I realized that there were really three stories in this book.  Looking back at the book cover I realized that there were tow other authors listed in smaller font.  It turns out that maybe this is a way for big name, Meier to write shorter book and to help promote to lesser known authors with their short mystery stories. Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross are the other authors in this book.  I did not enjoy Hollis's book at all and Ross's book was ok but not really enticing.

So I am not really recommending this book .... quick reading but not fulfilling.

The Paris Library

 Janet Skeslien Charles is the author of The Paris Library.  This is a wonderful entertaining novel. Though it takes place during the Holocaust and touches on that topic, but this book centers on the American Library in Paris during that time period.  The book touches on the horrific happenings that were present in Paris as the Germans invaded France, but the story seems to be a plot about relationships, jealousy, regret, trust and hurt. 

The plot centers around the library, where Odile is a new librarian who knows the Dewy Decimal system number for every title and subject.  We follow her as she becomes a woman, her relationship to her parents and  her twin brother, Remy.  We watch her interact and learn as she  interacts with  the librarians who give her excellent advice.   She also is developing a romantic relationship with Paul, a young policeman who works for her father.  As she is going through everyday life the war is encroaching on their lives.  Odile learns about what her father and Paul are doing thinking they have no choice.  She also makes decisions about saving books and lives as she risks her life facing up to Germans as she makes her way  around the streets of Paris.  Many of the individual character's stories are based on real people who existed in the 1930s in Paris.

Then as a parallel plot line is 14 year old, Lily and her family living in Froid,  Montana, next  door to an older Odile.  Lily reaches out to Odile asking to interview her for a school project. Her friendship with Lily does open the door to her past and causes her to reflect on and maybe see past events in a different light.  In the end this is a beautiful story of the connection between generations and how they can help each other in many ways.   Odile's life experiences and stories help Lily through her modern day controversies.  

A Death in Belmont

 Recommended by a friend, I pulled out this book thinking it was just about a murder that happened in Belmont, MA ...  it turns out that it is much more than that.  

This book ties the local murder in with the Boston strangler murders.  It is an in-depth look at the murders and the history of what was happening back in the 1960s in Boston while someone was it seemed indiscriminately murdering the women of Boston.  I was fascinated with this subject back when  I was in high school, and I found myself still intrigued today also.  But as with so many books, I see it from such a different perspective now.  

This book sets out the facts as the author was able to gather them and presents this case from his personal experience. From the news reports and court documents he was able to put together in a very suspenseful telling of this story.  Sebastian Junger, the author, is a writer who knows how to build the story almost as you would a novel.  It keeps the story flowing smoothly and keeps the reader engaged until the end, even if you  know the news story before you start reading.

Junger admits that he also thought he knew the outcome of the story when he started the research.  He was as surprised as I was a reader that in the end there are still questions and not complete definite answers.

Written in a very readable style, by the excellent author of The Perfect Storm.