What are you reading these days?

[bloviatrix]

Just finished Pepin's The Apprentice and The DaVinci Code. Currenty re-reading Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook, The Fourth Star, The Nautical Chart - Perez-Reverte, and re-reading Auster's New York Trilogy.

Chad

Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite writers. I always get excited when I hear of someone else reading him.

What ever you do, stay away from the movie The Ninth Gate which is based on The Club Dumas. They butchered an excellent novel.

[Eric_Malson]

[ Mapp and Lucia

A fellow E.F. Benson Fan! Although I miss Lucia and Georgino mio, I read "Secret Lives" a little while ago and giggled a lot.

Here's another. I seem to re-read the Lucia books every couple of years. Somehow, they are perfect summer reading. ("Tacete un momento, Georgie. Le domestiche!")

Secret Lives is fun, as are, sporadically, the "Dodo" books. I'm still hoping to turn up a copy of Paying Guests one of these days.

Edited July 1, 2003 by Eric_Malson (log)

[maggiethecat]

I'm still hoping to turn up a copy of Paying Guests one of these days.

Eric:

Click the eGullet link to amazon. They have six copies, from the low, low price of $2.00.

[NeroW]

Picked up from the library for vacation read:

How to Read a French Fry - Russ Parsons - Fascinating - hard to put down.  I want to rush out and buy the ingredients to try his recipes and learn something about his science!

Our Chef at school recommended this book, but I haven't picked it up yet.

[carswell]

Like other correspondents, I usually have several books going at once.

Cookbooks:

• David Thomson's Thai Food
  Frédy Girardet's Émotions gourmandes
  La grande cuisine italienne de Antonio et Nadia Santini
  Cliff Wright's A Mediterranean Feast (an onging project; after 18 months, I'm about halfway through)
  

Food-related:

• Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything (somewhat entertaining, occasionally enlightening, but I find myself wondering what all the fuss is about; his is a fun job, though)
  

Other:

• David Thompson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
  The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th ed.
  Wolff's J.S. Bach: The Learned Musician
  Le Livre des Ruses : La stratégie politique des Arabes (kind of an Arab The Prince, written a century before Machiavelli's work)
  

Recently completed:

• Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (the second time; what a great novel, er, poem, er, piece of fiction!)
  Michael Nava's Rag and Bone
  Lush Life (bio of Billy Strayhorn)
  Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between the Woods and the Water (The second volume -- the first being A Time of Gifts -- of PLF's promised three volume recounting of his "hike" from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1933-34. Earlier in this thread, someone called Byron's The Road to Oxiana the best travel book ever; I would perhaps have agreed -- with Chatwin's In Patagonia and Seth's From Heaven Lake also in the running -- until I read these two volumes.)
  Pierre-Jean Remy's Callas, une vie
  Isacoff's Temperament : How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization
  

In the queue:

• Fernandez-Armesto's Near a Thousand Tables : A History of Food
  Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony
  Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy
  Some Austen (prolly Mansfield Park)
  

Edited July 2, 2003 by carswell (log)

[KNorthrup]

Just finished Pepin's The Apprentice and The DaVinci Code. Currenty re-reading Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook, The Fourth Star, The Nautical Chart - Perez-Reverte, and re-reading Auster's New York Trilogy.

Chad

Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite writers. I always get excited when I hear of someone else reading him.

What ever you do, stay away from the movie The Ninth Gate which is based on The Club Dumas. They butchered an excellent novel.

Didn't they only use half the story? Hence the title change.

I've been disappointed in the last couple releases. Recognizing that they're not translated and published over here in the actual order in which they were written.

Has anyone read The Dante Club? Came out about the same time as The DaVinci Code, which I haven't gotten to, and disappeared. Still need to get to Dream of Scipio too. It's certainly thinner than Fingerpost.

Just got Nigel Slater's Appetite.

[DRColby]

Finnished and enjoyed "The Apprentice" and am about half way through "From Here, You Can't See Paris" by Michael Sanders. Very enjoyable and a great commentary on values and the simpler things in life, especially food. Also had to find time today to insure we have an apartment reservation in Paris for this Fall.

dave

[carswell]

Forgot:

The free-ranging A. Balic bio/chickenography. An ongoing project. After 18 days, I'm about halfway through. Is it eGullet's longest-ever thread?

Edited July 2, 2003 by carswell (log)

[KNorthrup]

del. totally misread question.

Edited July 2, 2003 by KNorthrup (log)

[carswell]

Is it eGullet's longest-ever thread?

Off the top of my head, it has at least 147 pages to go. Get reading folks!

There's a thread that's 301 pages long?! Where?

[Pinga]

Glad to have come across other Perez-Reverte fans.The Fencing Master was my introduction after a BBC Radio 4 adaptation .I also enjoyed The Nautical Chart and hated the film The Ninth Gate.

On upcoming food books I notice that Gordon Ramsey is producing a Pasta book later in the year and that Tamasin Day-Lewis is producing a follow-up to the excellent Art of the Tart on covered pies.

[Akiko]

Just finished "Orix and Crake" the new Margaret Atwood book. It's really really good, if you like her writing, this is the best science fiction that she's done.

She creates this world where they've done a lot of genetic food modifications... they have this fast food called "chickie nubs"... ooh, made me shudder every time they were eating them.

[=Mark]

Hot Night in the City by Trevanian.

[NeroW]

Just got the new Harry Potter.

Everything else in life slips away.

[herbacidal]

hey,

i need help with name + author of book.

it's about a guy who just sits in his car in manhattan.

some people think he's weird, some just want the parking space.

i thought it was an awesome premise.

anyone?

[heyjude]

Herbacidal, the book is Tepper isn't Going Out by the great and much loved Calvin Trillin. His latest is Feeding a Yen.

[herbacidal]

thanks jude,

i knew someone would get it. only 2 hours. cool.

actually, now that i think about it, i wonder if i originally heard about it from this thread.

thanx again.

[KatieLoeb]

I just blew through Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume in one day over this holiday weekend. Great "beach read" as it's about two women who grow up together summering in Martha's Vineyard with the rather eccentric family of the wealthy girl. Characters are well drawn out, story gets into various characters' perspectives in short chapter-like vignettes interspersed with the narrator's point of view, it follows the main characters from childhood through young adulthood and it has a surprise ending that really caught me off guard. Two thumbs up!

[fresco]

Rereading (or at least leafing through) The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. It is odd to encounter a woman who views some of the 20th century's most acclaimed writers and artists completely in terms of their food tastes, but downright spooky to have the French occupation and liberation (and the entire Second World War) reduced to the disappearance and reappearance of choice edibles.

[Jinmyo]

fresco, there was an interesting piece in the New Yorker a few weeks ago on Stein and Toklas during the occupation. It's not online but you might be able to turn up a wooden copy.

[fresco]

That's the piece describing Stein's adulatory introduction (in 1942!) to the writings of the Vichy politician, isn't it? Think it may have been what prompted me to have another look at Alice B.

Edit:Actually, that last bit is from a letter in the current issue--I missed the Janet Malcolm piece and will try to see if we have it around here somewhere.

Edited July 13, 2003 by fresco (log)

[Jinmyo]

That's the one. Sadly, my copy has now passed through many hands and is unavailable to me or I would scan it in for you.

[KNorthrup]

Island of Lost Maps for a bookclub. Why don't we have one here? There was one, one book worth. Lively discussion for two pages and that seems to be it. Figure it died out because it was in Dec and holidays are so busy but maybe other reasons. Earlier this week, Nigel Slater's Appetite . Last night, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers . Can't believe I bought something at Border's. Feel guilty. Like eating at a chain restaurant. Was looking for that Kerrang issue. Also picked up an HG Wells compendium - War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau - all for $9.98. How could I not? Hadn't gotten around to any of them yet. Oh wait, B&N. And after seeing LOEG on Thurs with a friend, forced Watchmen on him but of course had to reread first.

[fresco]

I don't get book clubs. Part of the charm of reading is that it is one of the few (licit) solitary pleasures.

[JAZ]

Rereading (or at least leafing through) The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. It is odd to encounter a woman who views some of the 20th century's most acclaimed writers and artists completely in terms of their food tastes, but downright spooky to have the French occupation  and liberation (and the entire Second World War) reduced to the disappearance and reappearance of choice edibles.

You might enjoy The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, a novel about the (fictional) Vietnamese cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Interesting, with some fabulous passages about food.