Eat, Pray, Love

Personal perspectives on religion or spirituality can often be boring at best and unbelievably awkward at worst. Fortunately Elizabeth Gilbert presents her own journey (the physical and metaphysical), in Eat Pray Love, without gravitas and with humor and humility. I happen to be a big fan of the single-woman-on-a-journey-after-heartbreak literature (read: Tales of a Female Nomad), and Liz (can I call her Liz?) has such a great sense of humor (personifying Depression and Lonliness as thugs, getting a prim and proper Italian saleswoman to admit that she, Liz, does indeed look like the pasta and gelato she spent three months eating in Italy and divulging her friend's nickname for her as Groceries) that I felt immediately drawn to her and her friends.
I was torn between her reasons for getting a divorce: "finding yourself" seems a lame reason to give up a shared life, but she readily admitted that, and how brave is it to actually go on a year's journey, by yourself, to three unknown countries, and come out at the other end a better person?
I think the same narrative could have been mangled by a less sophisticated writer. Liz doesn't fall into the trite or privelaged perspective. She really maintains a balance (which was her goal in the year of travel) and when she starts to tip, she laughs, has the reader laugh with her, and pulls herself back up.
Netflix stars? A whopping 5 out of 5!

EAT, PRAY, LOVE- by elizabeth gilbert

This month, the bookclub book is "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm a mere 60 pages into it, but those 60 pages are by far, the best 60 pages I've ever read. While I can't review the book yet, if the other 292 pages continue on the same path, I'm pretty confident that it will not only receive the first 5 star rating from me, but also receive the spot of "my favorite book ever." What I've found most surprising is that the topic itself, while interesting, wouldn't necessarily make for a favorite book. What does so is the author's style of writing. After reading one paragraph last night, I found myself thinking about how impressive it was- something that I don't ever think while reading a book. (If the writing's great, I usually think about it when I've finished the book- never while I'm in the midst.) I have high hopes for this one, and will give a full review once I'm done.

Bags Are Packed

I stopped by the Brookline Booksmith yesterday to pick up Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert . It is the next pick for book club and when I reserved it at the library, the queue was 116. Plus, I'm going on vacation so thought it would be good to have my own copy. But the Booksmith is a triple threat as Steph has noted before: new books, discounted new books, and used books! I knew I shouldn't but...a conversation with Mihee this past weekend reminded me of my love of Carson McCullers, and I found a beautiful old Penguin Classic of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. The Penguin Classics have a distinctive orange cover and the Booksmith had many...D.H. Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs. G has a nice illustrated book of the many covers of Penguin, and, as an aside, the entire library of Peguin Classics, would certainly give your bookshelves a useful job, would set you back a pretty penny, and would likely take at least two lifetimes to read!
I'll be on vacation next week, but with luck, will have a few new books to review after.

The Soul of a Chef

This is my first post to this blog, so if the formatting, book photo, etc. don't look quite like Steph and Andrea do 'em, hey, give me a break.

A friend of mine works at a nice wine bar here in Austin, and at a brunch once I mentioned to her that I once had dinner at the French Laundry. After she finished looking at me with jealous contempt, she pulled herself together and recommended I read Michael Ruhlman's The Soul of a Chef. It's a quick bit of nonfiction that follows three chefs -- Brian Polcyn of the Five Lakes Grill, Michael Symon of Lola (these days, Lolita), and Thomas Keller, the chef-owner of the French Laundry, who has a handful of other restaurants these days, too.

The format of the book is a little odd. It's split into three sections, with actual section header pages dividing them from one another. In that regard, it's more like three short stories than anything else. Furthermore, as much as I enjoyed the book, I have to admit the sections stood pretty much entirely on their own. There's a bit of juxtaposition from one section to the next, but not too much, and Ruhlman makes something of an effort to tie them all together with a nice little bow at the end, but it feels forced.

I easily overlooked that, though, because the stories themselves are fascinating. Polcyn's follows him through the Culinary Institute of America's Certified Master Chef exam, a grueling 10-day test, each day focusing on a different technique, ingredient, or style, and each day consisting of many hours of non-stop cooking. At the time the book was written, the exam wasn't even held in terribly high regard by many practicing chefs (the classic academy-versus-vocation friction) and Ruhlman explores Polcyn's motivations for taking the test and neatly covers the actual cooking itself in vivid detail while, in parallel, tracking Polcyn's emotional state, his successes and failures, and the ultimate results of the exam.

Symon's is a change of pace, following the chef through the opening and success of his restaurant Lola, in Cleveland, and contrasting his unconventional style with the rigorous, unforgiving technique demanded of Polcyn in the CMC exam. Ruhlman paints a compelling portrait of Lola's kitchen and its staff, the tensions and camaraderie, and manages to communicate well the love each cook has for their profession and also the incredible challenges they face. There's nothing terribly romanticizing about Ruhlman's depictions; if you don't want to be a chef before reading the book, you're not going to jump at the opportunity afterwards. But you can see why the cooks do what they do.

Keller's, the final section, is the best, and probably owes to Ruhlman's deep familiarity with the chef. They collaborated on the French Laundry Cookbook, and so Ruhlman spent a very long time with Keller, even had the chef come to his house in middle America to get away from the restaurant long enough to focus on the book. Ruhlman casually describes Keller cooking in his own house, having friends over for the dinner, like an outrageous fantasy: "Come on over for dinner," I could say to my friends, "Thomas Keller's staying in my guest room, and he's cooking." Great if you can get it, I suppose.

The core of the book is the exploration of the motivations of these chefs, and in that way it transcends its little genre of "culinary documentary." It's a study of three passionate craftsmen (or artists -- Ruhlman struggles with that question throughout) and touches on significant issues: The worthwhile use of a lifetime, the origins of passion, the value of diligent work, and the very idea of a "calling" or "purpose."

Ruhlman's prose is solid and compelling, and the material itself is so vivid that even with the slightly cumbersome three-section format, I'm tempted to give it 5 stars. But then I think about other books that are obviously better, like Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude, and hesitate. Ruhlman's is not a timeless work of Western literature, but it's a well-written, very enjoyable and inspiring read. An easy 4 stars.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Being close to someone doesn't necessarily mean you share the same opinions on movie, tv, books...while my sister and I both have a fondness for all movies with Parker Posey , she did not share my love of Little Miss Sunshine. My friend Nadine fell asleep while watching The Science of Sleep-- a movie I loved so much I wanted to become the characters! Jane is a prolific reader and has recommended many a book to me, including Philip Roth's American Pastoral. I hated it. Included in the stash she gave me was a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. A recent email to her mentioned it was on my list of books to read soon, and she told me it was so terrible that she couldn't even finish it. I wondered if the Today Show bookclub sticker on it offended her hipster sensibilities. But then my friend Ahmed picked the book out of my entire list and suggested I read it next, it was so good! I decided to give it a go and while on the beach this weekend with Mihee, she commented that she had read the book and felt it was just average-- she didn't feel it was particularly bad, nor amazing.

I finished it up yesterday while doing laundry, and to put it simply, was mesmerized! The theme of time travel was quirky-- Henry is able to go forward and backward in time, although not at will. He visited his love, Clare, from the time she was six until she turned 82. She knew him her whole life.

Ms. Niffenegger does a nice job of giving each character their own voice and personality. Seems like it would be easy enough, but many writers do not do this-- one character's words could easily be transposed with another. But Henry's childhood neighbor is calm, yet direct and refers to Henry as "buddy" as he does to her. Clare's assuredness and self-possession does not transfer to her friend Charisse, a cool and outwardly confident woman, who has a secret knowledge of her husband's (Gomez) love of Clare.

Despite the potential for time travel exploitation, Henry and Clare try to keep "normal". A handful of people know Henry's secret and will on occasion ask him about their futures...but he rarely divulges. He's not perfect, though, and does give stock tips, "picks" winning lottery numbers.

The most remarkable aspect of this story is not the time travel itself, but is how Henry and Clare remain in love through troubles that would tear apart even the most resilient of couples-- his absences are long and unexplained, personal tragedies, such as alcoholism and mental disease, run through each of their families. The burden of knowing the future would be too hard for almost anyone to bear, but Clare pulls it off with grace.

I'm giving this book 4 netflix stars and would recommend it to anyone, but only a time traveler would know if you would love or hate it.

THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN- by claire messud

I couldn't wait to read this book. Ever since it first came out, just about a year ago, I've been waiting. It's great reviews and high ranking on reading lists convinced me that this would be a brilliant pick for bookclub. It finally came out in paperback at the end of June, and was therefore eligible as a bookclub pick- mine for the august meeting. In an effort to finish up another book, I put this off until a week before our meeting- maybe not such a great idea when it's 479 pages. However, I managed to finish it- mostly in one day- and was generally disappointed. In some cases, being so excited about a book (or anything, really) can lead to disappointment. There's only so many times that a book can be so great as to live up to its exaggerated hype. This may have been the case here, although I believe that I would have been disappointed even if I'd not been expecting greatness. The main characters were nothing but stereotypical- the homosexual male, Julius, cheated on his partner, did lines of cocaine, and came across as a drama queen; wealthy, beautiful Marina lacked ambition, lived with her parents, and carried an air of entitlement; and Danielle, who was initially the only character I liked, soon showed herself to be weak and trivial. Despite being laced with intricate wording and (sometimes) well written paragraphs, this book was much longer than necessary, and didn't accomplish much. Had Messud taken risks with her characters by presenting them as strong, somewhat normal (and thus, not stereotypical), people, the book could have told an entirely different story- a good one.
Netflix rating? 2/5