May Books

From Amazon.com
Bill Buford's funny and engaging book Heat offers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen. Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to read Heat and give us his take. We loved it. So did he.



I luckily won a copy of South of Superior and liked it so much. When I see it in bookstores, I fight not to tell other customers, "Try it! It's such a sweet story."

From the jacket flap:
When Madeline Stone walks away from Chicago and moves five hundred miles north to the coast of Lake Superior, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, she isn't prepared for how much her life will change.




I'd be jealous of Molly Wizenberg and how well she writes if she weren't so darn likeable. A Homemade Life is a beautiful homage to home pleasures and her family.




The Peach Keeper is the newest by Sarah Addison Allen. It's a fast read and I enjoyed it well enough. If you're new to her work, I'd read The Sugar Queen or Garden Spells first.

From the jacket flap:
It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree ... the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind.



House by Tracy Kidder isn't my typical book and it was fascinating. (Maybe I need to expand my horizons.)

From the back of the book:
Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer prize-winning author, takes us to the heart of the American dream ... House brings us into the intimate lives of a family building their first home. We feel the tensions between architect, owners, and builders.

Kidder is a beautiful writer: When a tree becomes lumber, some of its peculiar characteristics survive. When, for instance, a crooked tree trunk is turned into two-by-tens, some of those homogeneous-looking boards will contain what's called "reaction wood," and they tend to warp. It is as if the lumber could remember the tree.


Had I read The Raising by Laura Kasaschke when I was sixteen I would have loved it in that way that teenage girls love spooky, gothic thrillers like Flowers in the Attic.

From the back of the book:
Last year Godwin Honors Hall was draped in black. The university was mourning the loss of one of its own: Nicole Werner, a blond, beautiful, straight-A sorority sister tragically killed in a car accident that left her boyfriend, who was driving, remarkably—some say suspiciously—unscathed. Although a year has passed, as winter begins and the nights darken, obsession with Nicole and her death reignites: She was so pretty. So sweet-tempered. So innocent. Too young to die. Unless she didn’t. Because rumor has it that she’s back.

Spooky, no? It was a dark look at campus life, especially among sororities. The premise of the plot is pretty outrageous but when the writing is good enough (as in The Likeness by Tana French) I can suspend my disbelief.

The ending was weak, though, and was a let down after all the tension in the thriller.



I borrowed So Easy by Ellie Krieger from the library and copied every other page, pretty much.


I made Blueberry-Almond French Toast Bake (page 55) for Jeffrey for Father's Day. It was good although I'd A) macerate the berries in a bit of sugar first and B) Add some butter in there somewhere. It needed just a touch.

I want to try the Pasta Salad with Salmon, Peas and Herbs (page 74), Broccoli Cheddar Breakfast Bake (page 52), and the No-Cook Lemon Bars (page 238). I'll let you know how they turn out.


Favorite Book of the Month: South of Superior

Character Who I'd Most Like to Have a Drink With: Bill Buford, author of Heat. The book was really good but I just know there are many stories that didn't make it in the book that I'd love to hear!