Cuisine. Culture. Commentary.
I was feeling a little homesick so recently I opened up my copy of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I’m not sure if it cured my homesickness or just made me yearn for my beautiful and unique hometown more than ever. Either way, it’s a great read. John Berendt’s work of non-fiction…
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The Divergent series has taken the world by storm. Well, it has taken the teen world by storm. Once again, I gave in and read a Young Adult novel series. I’m still proud that I resisted Twilight, but I can’t make fun because I loved the Hunger Games. Veronica Roth’s series was the latest sensation…
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When my Mom told me she was going to hear a Holocaust survivor speak a couple weeks ago, I asked if she wouldn’t mind picking up a copy of the book he was discussing (she did – and it was signed!) because the subject matter was slightly different from anything I had read. There are…
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Though David Sedaris touches on his childhood in this collection of essays, those anecdotes don’t become the focus of this book as they did in the last collection of his I read, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”. This time, he pulls from his early adulthood and – my favorite – sprinkles in some rants spoken…
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The mafia is a rarely discussed piece of Jewish history, one that is overshadowed by major events like the Holocaust or minor events like “my son, the doc-tah”. When most people think of Jews, they think of the stereotypes. The smartypants. The weaklings. But guess what: in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, it was a…
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“The Paris Wife” is a work of historical fiction that brings Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage to life in Jazz age Paris. It paints the picture of Hemingway as a rabble-rouser and charming as hell. Hadley Richardson, his first wife, is a quiet girl about eight years his senior whose previous life was incredibly different from…
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In terms of storytelling, Beautiful Ruins goes backwards, forwards, and sideways. We start in the early 60s in an Italian fishing town so small the locals assume people only show up there by mistake (they do). Pasquale Tursi runs the small inn on the island and is in awe of Dee, the American actress staying in…
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It is NOT an urban myth, folks. Mole People aka Tunnel People aka people who live underneath the train and subway lines of New York City – they exist. In the early 90s Jennifer Toth took on the dangerous project of interviewing New York’s underground homeless. You may be accustomed to bums begging for money on…
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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…
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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…
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Peaches to Apples 