Books News & Reviews Cookbook cues: The Art of Eating In by Cathy ErwayLinda Falkenstein on Wednesday 03/10/2010 2:00 pm, (1) RecommendationBrooklynite Cathy Erway definitely has something right. Americans do not cook their own dinners often enough and when we do, it's too often an indifferent, hurried effort. No wonder eating out seems like a better idea. >More  A Book A Week: The Help by Kathryn StockettBecky Holmes on Saturday 03/06/2010 6:00 pm, (2) RecommendationsI avoided Kathryn Stockett's The Help for a while. I was afraid it was going to be exploitative, opportunistic, manipulative, a cheap bid for attention. In some ways it is those things, but not in the ways I expected. >More A Book A Week: Restless by William BoydBecky Holmes on Monday 03/01/2010 6:00 pmDon't you love a good spy thriller? I do, except not the Cold War-era ones. I also love William Boyd. I read Brazzaville Beach years ago but hadn't gotten around to anything else by him until now. >More Cathy Erway on the joys of cookingBlogs to booksLinda Falkenstein on Friday 02/26/2010Culinary school is no longer the natural route to publishing a cookbook. Food bloggers are getting the book contracts, from Pim Techamuanvivit (Chez Pim) to Molly Wizenberg (Orangette) to Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame. Cathy Erway, whose site Not Eating Out in New York chronicles a two-year experiment in cooking at home (no restaurants -- not even for dates), has just published The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove (Gotham). >More A Book A Week: Loving Frank by Nancy HoranBecky Holmes on Wednesday 02/24/2010 6:00 pmNancy Horan's Loving Frank is such a beautiful book, very moving, very sad. It's one of those novels that are based on fact, about the affair between the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. These two met and started a relationship around 1907 when Mamah (pronounced "may-ma") and her husband, Edwin, hired Wright to design a house for them in Oak Park, Ill. >More Cookbook cues: Damn Good Food: 157 Recipes from Hell's Kitchen by Mitch Omer and Ann BauerErin Hanusa on Wednesday 02/24/2010 10:00 am, (1) Comment, (2) RecommendationsNowadays, most people associate the words "Hell's Kitchen" with Gordon Ramsay, the ferocious TV chef. After reading Damn Good Food, though, I had a totally different, much more pleasant association, coupled with a burning desire to drive north to eat at one of Mitch Omer's two Hell's Kitchen restaurants. >More A Book A Week: The Believers by Zoe HellerBecky Holmes on Saturday 02/20/2010 6:00 pmMy mother used to remark on our odd habit of watching TV shows about people we wouldn't want to live next door to. Reality TV hadn't been invented when she said this; I think she was talking about All in the Family. But Zoe Heller's The Believers reminded me of what she said. >More A Book A Week: Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth ReichlBecky Holmes on Tuesday 02/16/2010 6:00 pmRuth Reichl's first memoir, Comfort Me With Apples, introduced us to Mim, her mother. Clearly suffering from some form of mental illness, Mim is a terrifying figure, at once funny and dangerous, who wreaks all kinds of havoc on Ruth's life. Now Mim is back in Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way, a short memoir by Reichl devoted entirely to Mim. >More Chocolate rabbits, plaid sunflowers: My Garden by Kevin HenkesAnyting can happen in latest charmerJennifer A. Smith on Friday 02/12/2010Inside the front cover of My Garden, the new picture book by local author Kevin Henkes, the Library of Congress dryly catalogs it as "Gardens -- Fiction." That's an understatement. The wide-eyed, straw-hatted little girl in the book imagines a garden in which jellybean bushes flourish and flowers reappear immediately after being picked. >More A Book A Week: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie BarrowsBecky Holmes on Tuesday 02/09/2010 6:00 pmThis was better than I expected, given its ubercute title, odd narrative structure, and overhyped back story. Did you know that the Channel Islands (located between France and England) were occupied by the Germans during World War II? I did not, before reading this book. >More Cookbook cues: Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas KellerErin Hanusa on Wednesday 02/10/2010 2:00 pm, (4) RecommendationsReading Thomas Keller's new cookbook is like meeting a supermodel; you have to stare with your mouth hanging open for a while before you actually think about any real interaction. It took me at least a full read-through before it dawned on me that I could use this lush, oversized book to help me cook something. >More A Book A Week: Read My Pins by Madeleine AlbrightBecky Holmes on Saturday 02/06/2010 6:00 pmNot being a terribly close follower of diplomatic maneuvers, I was unaware of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s famous use of pins to telegraph her thoughts and intentions to world leaders and the press. But lots of other people were aware of it, and now Albright has written a book about it, Read My Pins, to accompany an exhibit of her pins organized by the Museum of Art and Design in New York. >More A Book A Week: The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin CrowtherBecky Holmes on Wednesday 02/03/2010 6:00 pmSomeone recommended Yasmin Crowther's The Saffron Kitchen to me as a good follow-up to Bitter Sweets, which I read a few weeks ago. It's another immigrant story; Maryam moves from Iran to London as a young woman, marries an Englishman and has a child. Eventually she feels an overwhelming urge to return to Iran to rediscover her girlhood and to reconnect with people she has lost. >More A Book A Week: Brooklyn by Colm ToibinBecky Holmes on Thursday 01/28/2010 6:00 pmI find the accolades accorded to Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn mystifying. A few weeks ago Toibin won the Costa Novel of the Year Award for it; the Costa is a prestigious British literary prize given to authors from the U.K. and Ireland. He was favored to win the bigger prize, the Costa Book of the Year, but lost to poet Christopher Reid. >More On the trail of Paul BunyanLocal historian goes searching for folk legend's originsBill Lueders on Thursday 01/28/2010, (1) RecommendationA few years back, Michael Edmonds was toiling away at his job with the Wisconsin Historical Society when he happened upon a newspaper clipping from 1916 about Bernice Stewart. She was a UW college student who'd gone 'round to northern Wisconsin logging camps, asking lumberjacks to share what yarns they could spin about a feller name of Paul Bunyan. >More Cookbook cues: What We Eat When We Eat Alone by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlinLinda Falkenstein on Wednesday 01/27/2010 3:00 pm, (2) RecommendationsCookbooks are so often about the ideal we have of food. From Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking onward, cookbooks have given us the means to elevate what we serve at home. Then there's the reality. If you're solo -- if you live alone or if you find yourself single while your usual living and dining partner is away on a business trip -- and the kitchen is suddenly yours alone, what do you cook? >More A Book A Week: The Glass Room by Simon MawerBecky Holmes on Monday 01/25/2010 6:00 pmSimon Mawer's The Glass Room is a big book. A Big Book. A book about art and its role in our everyday lives. What better way to frame this discussion than to create some characters who are living inside a work of art -- a glass house designed by a visionary architect. >More Cookbook author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau talks about going veganNew choicesLinda Falkenstein on Friday 01/22/2010, (1) RecommendationColleen Patrick-Goudreau is the author of two well respected vegan cookbooks: The Joy of Vegan Baking (2007) and The Vegan Table (2009). She'll speak about vegan diets and cooking in Madison on Feb. 6. >More A Book A Week: When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie OtsukaBecky Holmes on Tuesday 01/19/2010 6:00 pmJulie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine is the last book I read in 2009. It's the story of one family's experience at an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. >More A Book A Week: The First Person by Ali SmithBecky Holmes on Friday 01/15/2010 6:00 pmI hate experimental fiction. Yet every now and then I feel the need to try some, just to see if I still hate it -- it's kind of like tasting anchovies every few years, even though you know you really think they are too salty and too fishy. >More A Book A Week: Bitter Sweets by Roopa FarookiBecky Holmes on Tuesday 01/12/2010 6:00 pmRoopa Farooki's Bitter Sweets is a multigenerational story about an Indian family in both India and in Britain. It's one of those sprawling family sagas that are often labeled "women's fiction" but with a South Asian flavor. >More A Book A Week: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal MueenuddinBecky Holmes on Monday 01/11/2010 6:00 pmI heard Daniyal Mueenuddin interviewed on NPR recently and that made me check out In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. I see now that it's getting a lot of press, which it deserves. >More A Book A Week: Consequences by Penelope LivelyBecky Holmes on Thursday 12/24/2009 6:00 pmPenelope Lively is interested in the consequences of our behavior and of our choices. In fact, she has examined this theme at least three times in three different books: in Making It Up, in The Photograph, and now in Consequences. >More Isthmus Reads: Steam & Cinders: The Advent of Railroads in Wisconsin and Cannery RowIsthmus Staff on Wednesday 12/23/2009 12:00 pmIf Steam & Cinders were a train, it would be one mighty locomotive -- a beautiful piece of intricate machinery chugging slowly but steadily through Wisconsin to drag its boxcars bulging with research to the promised destination. >More A Book A Week: An American Wife by Curtis SittenfeldBecky Holmes on Thursday 12/17/2009 6:00 pmCurtis Sittenfeld's An American Wife is another fact/fiction mash-up. Is that all anybody is writing these days? >More |
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What is the best delivery method for a new Central Library in downtown Madison? "Mr. Bill" "Consider spending your money somewhere besides the University Bookstore" Jack Craver"Love those self-service reserved book shelves at the Madison Public Library" Peter Patau"Just ask -- Madison Public Library as Santa Claus" Peter Patau"I've taken note of a couple of local fiction writers I want to check out" "etwasinspired"The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin book tour hits Madison Joshua Norton Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Phillipines and the Rise of the Surveillance State by Alfred McCoy is "a major read by one of the university's finest faculty members" Kyle Szarzynski "For those who doubt Madison can pull off the $10 million in private fundraising needed to make our new Central Library really special, just go talk to my friend in Potosi" Dave CieslewiczA few favorite excerpts/quotes from The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin by James Norton and Becca Dilley Jeanne CarpenterA report on the UW Distinguished Lecture Series appearance by behavior economist Dan Ariely John Benninghouse"I never expected back in August when I made the decision to try for this in my capital budget, that the new library would be approved with so little contentiousness in the end" Dave Cieslewicz"Why not put a community garden on the roof of that new downtown public library?" Peter Patau
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