Cuisine. Culture. Commentary.
Youthful friendships are a tricky thing. Sometimes the bonds are formed before the personalities fully develop. But when the friendships are made during the peak of adolescence, they are often nearly impossible to break – these are the only friends who can understand what it’s like in those moments when you are just discovering what…
Read More
Oh Pat Conroy, you’ve done it again. This is why you are my favorite author. Please move to New York and tell me stories every day. In his latest novel, Conroy once again gives the Lowcountry a dreamlike quality. You can feel the breeze blowing through the Spanish moss as you read. South of Broad is…
Read More
We’ve seen tons of chef memoirs recently – even I’ve gotten sick of them. But it’s hard not to be intrigued by Marcus Samuelsson’s story. Samuelsson was not even three years old when his mother walked him and his sister to the nearest town in Ethiopia in search of care for their tuberculosis affliction. His mother…
Read More
The tension is high when two brothers and their wives meet for dinner at a trendy, overpriced restaurant. One is a snob who’s focused only on showing off his wine skills while the other is negative, overly analytical, and finds something to criticize in even the smallest of gestures. What seems to be a parody…
Read More
Simon Rich’s collection of short stories is a little off the wall. Sure, it’s about love (meeting, getting, and subsequently losing the girl), but these love stories are nontraditional, to say the least. Take, for instance, a man who is lucky enough to get set up by his friends…with an actual troll. Or when Sherlock…
Read More
In this re-imagining of “The Scarlet Letter,” Hester Prynne becomes Hannah Payne and instead of a simple letter sewn onto her clothes her public shame takes the form of chroming, where a criminal’s skin is altered to match the color of their crime and then they are released into the world. Needless to say, this…
Read More
“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” is Gone Girl Lite. All the twists and turns but done in a humorous way. Someone goes missing and information as to what exactly went down is exposed in a backwards manner. Bernadette Fox was a high powered architect until she had somewhat of a breakdown, at which point she and…
Read More
I love memoirs of crazy childhoods. Perhaps it’s because I know I’m safe from all that dysfunction and strife thanks to my loving parents and idyllic upbringing. When the back of Mary Karr’s memoir, The Liar’s Club, described it as an “account of an apocalyptic childhood,” I thought I was in for some serious loony toons.…
Read More
Other than memoirs, I very rarely pick up a nonfiction title so I was leery of my book club’s most recent pick. Once I got about 50 pages in, however, I realized that this true story was as unbelievable as any work of fiction. Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of Louie Zamperini begins with a brief overview…
Read More
Madame Wu runs her large household – the most prominent in their Chinese village – with precision. She always knows what is going on and pays attention to even the smallest of details, able to distinguish the subtle differences between each of her sons’ footsteps. On her 40th birthday, instead of handing the reigns over…
Read More
Peaches to Apples 