I'm trying to learn more about France and I'm always interested in food stories, so I thought a Julia Child book was just right. During my binge of Top Chef I caught an episode dedicated to Julia Child. Tom Colicchio told a story about Julia Child coming to his restaurant in New York on her birthday. He came out of the kitchen to say hello and mentioned that his birthday was the same as her's (or close to it?). After that Julia Child came to Tom's restaurant every year on her/their birthday. That is why Julia Child was a success. She has that je ne sais quios! And she cared more about people than anything else.
The most important and influential relationship in Julia’s life was with her husband, Paul. When Julia was in the beginning stages of learning to cook she remarked, "Yet my friends, both French and American, considered me some kind of a nut: cooking was far from being a middle-class hobby, and they did not understand how I could possibly enjoy doing all the shopping and cooking and serving by myself. Well, I did! And Paul encouraged me to ignore them and pursue my passion." At 37 years of age, Julia Child threw herself into cooking and ended up changing the way a generation thought about cooking at home.
My Life in France details the making of the labor of love, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which sounds like it's the most thoroughly researched cookbook in history. It took YEARS! Julia and her French friends, Simca and Luisette (mostly Simca), tested recipes many times before coming up with the best directions. Their aim was to make French cooking understandable and doable for any home cook. There were so many times when it seemed like the book would never be published and Julia was just lugging all those pages around Europe each time they moved for nothing. She and Simca would get into little skirmishes and Luisette was never doing her share of the work. The original manuscript was more than 750 pages! Each recipe was like one of Julia’s babies and she couldn’t stand editing anything out.
After they’d come home to the United States and Julia had started doing cooking demonstrations on PBS after the success of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the Childs were invited back to France for a short holiday. They contemplated it and decided to go after recalling one of their favorite phrases they lived by when they first got together: "Remember, 'No one's more important than people.' In other words, friendship is the most important thing - not career or housework, or one's fatigue - and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went. And thank heaven we did!" On that trip, they decided to build a little house on their friends' property and it's where they spent their happiest moments in Paul's last years (Paul was much older than Julia).
This is a fun read. I understand that Prud'homme is mostly responsible, but the unmistakable voice of Julia Child comes through. Julia famously never made excuses for her food and it's that confidence that is so inspiring and refreshing.
2. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Bridget and I read Hatchet together for Battle of the Books. We were probably halfway through it when she went to the district battle, but it was helpful because the other members of her team had read it so long ago that they had the details mixed up with other survival books on the list.
I'd read Hatchet before - probably in grade school or junior high. I remember that he was alone trying to survive in the wild, but having an adult's (and parent's) perspective really changes this book. When I was younger, I thought about how I could totally do what Brian (the boy in the book) was doing - I would definitely make it. As a parent, I was freaking out.
One of my favorite scenes in the book is Brian trying to catch one of the fat birds so he could eat it. He looks for the birds by color and sometimes he's sitting right next to a bird for several minutes when it just flies off. He knows there is a solution to this problem and he has to slow down and think it through before he realizes that the bird is camouflaged in the bushes so completely that looking for its color is pointless. Brian starts looking for the shape of the bird instead and catches one right away. Letting a kid take the time to think through the problem is revolutionary!
I didn't care for the drama of Brian's parents' divorce and his mother's "secret." I guess we need a little background on him, but it was obvious to me from the start what Brian had seen and teasing it for so many chapters annoyed me. Bridget had to have me spell it out to her, though, so I guess Paulsen knows his audience.
Goldilocks and Just One Bear turns the classic story around and has a bear lost in the big city. Everything is unfamiliar and the bear is very nervous. He needs something to eat! He wants to take a nap after all this stress! He finds an apartment where things are just right and there's also a familiar old friend.
This is a great read-aloud book. The illustrations are kind of simple, but that puts the focus on the story, so it's fine.
The Auckland Islands are 250 miles south of New Zealand and pretty much uninhabitable. In the mid 19th century, there were two shipwrecks on opposite sides of the island, the Grafton and the Invercauld. The survivors of the Grafton shipwreck lived and even thrived a little bit for two years. The Invercauld officers and crew almost ate each other. What was the difference?!
Joan Druett uses journals and firsthand newspaper accounts (shout out) to reconstruct the scenarios. She has much more information to go on with the Grafton because of the first mate, Francois Raynol, and Captain Musgrave's detailed journals. Was it the first mate? Guys, I gotta admit I'm writing this report months after reading the book. The whole reason I write book reports is that I never remember books like I want to after being obsessed with them while I'm reading them. I digress.
The difference is leadership, obviously. And Francois Raynol of the Grafton insisted on keeping things civilized. They started a school of sorts where the five men took turns teaching the others in their area of expertise. They build a shelter from the remains of their ship, they take turns cooking, they pray together, and they hold an election in which they elect Captain Musgrave to be their leader. You need those things! Their survival depended on them being a family. The whole reason the five men are eventually rescued is that Raynol figured out how to build a bellows and they made a new boat that Raynol and Musgrave barely got out to sea. They got help and came back for their shipmates.
On the other hand, it's every man for himself when the Invercauld wrecks 20 miles away on the Auckland islands a few weeks after the Grafton wreck. No one is the boss of anyone and no one wants to be told what to do. They separate and begin starving. They also wait around to be rescued instead of learning how to survive. One guy escapes their rudimentary shelter when two of the men talk about eating another man who is dying. Sounds like a living hell! They end up catching a disease-riddled Chinese boat off the islands. Why did that make me chuckle?
5. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
You may have noticed that I don't read straight-up fiction very often. One of my reading-nerd friends recommended The Snow Child to me and wanted me to hurry up so we could talk about it. I listened to the Audible version, which was good, but that meant I didn't see one of the key elements in the book.
We're in Alaska around 1920 with childless couple, Jack and Mabel. (I'd like to renew my objection to 95% of male characters in all of literature and TV and movies being named Jack.) Jack and Mabel are in Alaska precisely because they are childless, to get away from the experience of a stillborn daughter (it's been too long - I can't remember if the baby lived for a little while or not) and family and friends having too much pity for them. Having been in the position of people asking too much when we're going to start a family (for almost ten years), I kind of get the need to move away. A move to Alaska, so very far away from family and friends who just want to be there for you? That's a bit too permanent for a moment that will pass, in my opinion.
Jack and Mabel are super poor, they don't know anything about Alaska or how to farm there. Mabel makes pies and sells them to the local diner and Jack tries to figure out how to farm. On the night of the first snow, Jack and Mabel shed their grief burdens and build a snowman together. It ends up being too short to be a "man" and looks more like a child. The next morning Jack spies footprints coming away from the snow child and also notes the old coat and hat they put on the snow child are missing as well. Next, Jack catches a glimpse of what looks like a girl running through the forest with a fox, wearing the coat and hat from the snow child. What the...?!
The Snow Child is a fairytale but in reality. In the printed version, the snow child, Faina, speaks, but her words are italicized instead of surrounded by quotation marks. Jack and Mabel each go through a phase of thinking they're crazy because they can see the girl, then thinking the other is crazy for the way they treat Faina.
I enjoyed The Snow Child right up until the end, which I think went off the rails a bit. I don't know how it should have ended, but I kind of hated the way it did end.
I was exposed to Mary Wollstonecraft's writing during college and Mary Shelley's in high school. I had no idea they were mother and daughter! Maybe I heard it during a class and forgot all about it, but it kind of blew my mind.
In this book, the author alternates chapters from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mary Shelley. Mary Wollstonecraft's childhood is, of course, miserable. Her father is a drunk, her mother is depressed and/or pregnant all the time. Wollstonecraft has some decent mentors, though, and is an observant and verbose young woman. The way Wollstonecraft sees her mother (a prisoner and servant to her father, who is abusive) lays the foundation for Wollstonecraft's views on women's rights later. Mary's younger sister gets married to a charming, rich man and the sister appears to be very happy. The sister has a baby, and a few days later goes completely bonkers - she won't even speak. The husband begs Mary to come stay with them and try to help, he seems genuinely stricken by the whole turn of events.
Mary Wollstonecraft arrives at her sister and brother-in-law's house to a catatonic sister and a baby who will surely die if his mother doesn't snap out of it. Mary soon notices that something isn't right between husband and wife. Her sister is only afraid of the husband, no one else. The sister reveals after several weeks that she was raped by her husband a few days after she'd given birth. Mary Wollstonecraft is not having that. At the time, wives were the property of their husbands. Husbands were allowed by law to beat their wives and marital rape did not exist. The institution of marriage, in Mary Wollstonecraft's experience, was a garbage deal for women. Mary waits until her brother-in-law is away, then gets her sister the heck out of the house. (They had to leave the baby behind, if I remember right.)
Wollstonecraft makes a pretty good living with her writing. She falls in love with William Godwin, who shares her forward-thinking ideals. Mary and William get married even though they don't believe in it. (Eye roll a little here. I think the two of them concentrated too much on marriage being the problem when it was really the way the law saw women that was the problem.) Mary gives birth to a daughter, Mary, and dies ten days later.
Motherless Mary Godwin didn't get a great start in life. William Godwin remarried fairly quickly to a woman with children who needed a husband. Godwin had a reputation that brought young "revolutionary poets" like Percy Shelley around the house. All the girls at the Godwin house were in love with Shelley, but Percy was married. And also a dummy. Mary and her stepsister end up running away with Percy Shelley and going on The Worst Road Trip in History. Shelley's wealthy family disowns him, and he's left not just his wife behind, but a new baby as well. Who are these "men"?! So disappointing.
Anyway, Percy and Mary end up getting married and having a few years of happiness trying to create poetry and not let the creditors ever catch up with them. Lord Byron shows up to get the stepsister pregnant and be The Worst. During a stormy weekend, Byron, Shelley and Mary challenge each other to come up with the creepiest story. Mary's was Frankenstein. She wins. Mary adds to the story and rewrites and edits for a few months before publishing Frankenstein. The literary world, of course, thought Shelley wrote it instead. Women can't write like that! Nonsense!
There's so much more! I was really caught up in this book. When I was working at the COB, I started to step up to a soapbox when I was asked to wash dishes from a birthday lunch in the ladies room. They weren't my dishes, although I was expected to bring food in for parties even though I road a bus in to work and I was working the same number of hours as all the men and yet they were never expected to contribute homemade food for any parties, and the only reason I was doing dishes is because I was a girl. I pointed out this discrepancy to one of the 60+ year-old men I worked for and he told me to remember the plight of the pioneers. Nah - not the point. That same dear man referred to me as a women's libber once. Ha!
Where was I...? Romantic Outlaws is well-written, and I thought extremely interesting.
7. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Remember when Evelyn was a boy's name? Yeah, me neither. I really enjoy Waugh's way with words - his dry English humor is my jam. The story is just meh, though.
Brideshead Revisited is Charles Ryder remembering his Oxford friend (crush) Sebastian Marchmain and their days at Oxford before World War II. Sebastian is a character - beautiful, rebellious, unhinged (he carries around a stuffed toy and pretends to talk to it). Sebastian is also very clearly gay, which the book never comes right out and says. Charles is very reserved, so this new friendship brings out a new side of him. We get hints that Charles is in love with Sebastian, but nothing ever comes of that.
There's a lot of subtext here. I don't know if I caught all of it. Sebastian doesn't want Charles to meet his family. There's a lot of weight on Sebastian's parents' divorce and what kind of person Lady Marchmain is. Sebastian's siblings are all a little bananas in one way or another. Each of the siblings tries to embarrass Charles or make him uncomfortable, and Lady Marchmain tries to recruit him to...? Spy on Sebastian? Do her bidding?
The story is told as a flashback. The grand Marchmain house is dismantled and sold for parts after the war and it's supposed to be very tragic. The family didn't seem to really love or care about each other and every single life in this tale is empty and depressing. Even when they're "happy" they're depressing.
Waugh's delightful writing doesn't make up for the gloom that is this book.
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