Delicious! by Ruth Reichl FIC Rei

  
We own both the book and the audiobook.  (I listened).  Billie Breslin comes to New York from California to interview at Delicious which is a well-established food magazine.  When she is told that she must cook at the interview Billie is thrown into a panic.  However, she passes it with flying colors with her special gingerbread cake. There is a rather strange group working there and Billie doubts that she will ever fit in but of course she does.  When Delicious suddenly closed down Billie continues to work in the old mansion because she needs the money.  Her job is to answer complaints about published recipes.

There are several subplots going on at once.  There are hints as to why Billie is avoiding going home to visit her widowed father and her aunt.  She writes letters to her sister but there seems to be a problem between the two of them.  Then there is the story about the future of the building.  But my favorite part of the story involves a hidden room which leads to a cache of letters.  They were written during WWII by a young girl to James Beard.  Billie becomes enthralled in the life of the young author, Lulu.  This was a very entertaining book and I couldn't wait to get to the end - and then I was sad that it was over.

New Life, No Instructions by Gail Caldwell 070.92 Cal

 

I was interested in this book for two reasons - I loved the cover and the title.  A quick look at the jacket cover told me that the book was about a "dramatic turning point" in the author's life.  I didn't know what that was but I was willing to take a chance.  I was drawn in immediately.  Ms. Caldwell had polio as a child.  With a lot of hard work she was able to walk.  For decades she was faithful to an exercise regime (swimming and rowing among other things) to keep her leg going.  But during the past 10 years the pain and problems began.  She was sure that it was related to the polio.  This by itself  would have interested me - and it did.

What I wasn't expecting was the dog angle.  As she talked about her past pets and what they had meant to her, I found my eyes welling up with tears.  When she talked about getting her latest puppy, Tula, and wondering about her ability to keep up with an energetic ball of fur I knew exactly how she felt.  Throughout the book there were many sentences that struck a cord with me - in fact I copied them down.  Here is one that I wanted to keep: "We need to remember, I think, that dying isn't the worst thing.  That getting to love someone on the way out is a great honor, easy to forget in the wake of so much sorrow."   I loved this book. 

The Aviators by Winston Groom 629.13 Gro

I really enjoyed this book (I listened to the audio version) - but you have to like history!  It follows the lives of Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle and Charles Lindbergh.  The book covers their lives from childhood until death.  I thought Groom did a wonderful job of intertwining the stories.  He gives the growing up part of their stories and then goes into WWI.  We get caught up to date with what happened after that war and then what happens to them during WWII.  These men were so brave - and I am not talking about during the war!  The early age of aviation is so dangerous that it makes for a scary story.  Even though I knew that Lindbergh's solo across the Atlantic was successful, I was still nervous for him as I listened.

Besides the history it was also interesting (and sad!) to see how our heroes can be worshiped one day and fall out of grace the next.  If you are a history buff I think you would enjoy this book. 

Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas FIC Zai

If you like horror stories, try this book.  Not the bloody kind.  It's worse. The psychological kind.  And it is the mother.  Yikes.  Josephine likes to have her family in line.  She has two pretty daughters and a son who is brilliant.  Her husband works in the tech world.  Things were just the way she liked them until her older daughter, Rose, ran off with a boyfriend.  Now Josephine has to be twice as vigilant in order to keep her family under control.  Younger daughter Violet can't physically leave but she does what she can to escape her mother's control -  Eastern philosophy, hallucinogenic drugs and fasting to the extreme.  All this accomplishes is to land her in the psych ward.  No worries about son Will.  He has Asperger's and epilepsy so Josephine has been home-schooling him so that nothing happens to him. Douglas, the father, makes his escape through a bottle.  This is the story of a family falling down a hole into a very dark place.  You are not going to find many likeable characters!