November 2021 Cookbook Reviews

 

Rebel Homemaker by Drew Barrymore

I didn't have any expectations with this cookbook, but based on the title and that it was Drew Barrymore I wanted to check it out. But, I felt like it was a lot of nothing and not very many recipes either. And it felt like the majority of the recipes were seafood, which I am allergic to and can't eat. I liked the idea of the book and that Barrymore was inspired to have a garden and grow and cook more homemade food, but the reality just fell flat for me. If this wasn't Drew Barrymore I don't think it would have even been published.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Super Easy! by Ree Drummond

I feel bad rating a Pioneer Woman cookbook with only 2 stars, but I just didn't like this one. I felt like her earlier cookbooks focused on more from-scratch cooking and this one focused on a lot of pre-made, convenience ingredients. I think anyone who cooks regularly knows that from-scratch is not always time consuming and can be just as fast (and taste better) as most convenience foods. There were like 2 recipes I want to try, but usually with her cookbooks there are several I want to try. I personally wouldn't recommend this one.

November 2021 Reviews

 

Pax: Journey Home by Sara Pennypacker

Pax, Journey Home picks up a little after the end of the first Pax book. Pax has moved on with his mate Bristle and Bristle's brother Runt. Bristle recently had three kits and Pax is helping teach them the ways of the fox world. When it seems that humans are again coming in large numbers, Pax sets out to find them a new home. But, what Pax didn't realize is that the female kit followed him. During their journey Pax is surprised to find Peter, the boy who raised him, is back near his old home. Peter is struggling with grief. He had already lost his mother, lost then found and released Pax, and now his father has been killed in the war. Peter has decided that the best thing to do is never allow anyone close enough to him that he could be hurt again. He signs up to work with the Water Warriors who are working to help clean the water in the surrounding areas that have been contaminated by the war. When his work takes him a little too close to where he last saw Pax, Peter has to decide whether to start to heal or continue to harden himself. It's at that moment that Peter and Pax reconnect and Peter gets a second chance in several ways.

I LOVED the first Pax book and was so excited when I saw there was another one. This one is also beautifully written and alternates between Peter and Pax's points of view. I wasn't as blown away by this one, but it's still a beautiful story of love between a boy and his fox that is expanding to the next generation in Sliver.

Smoke But No Fire: convicting the innocent of crimes that never happened by Jessica S. Henry

Most of us have heard news stories about someone wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't commit, but who were exonerated. In this horrific book, Jessica Henry looks at another facet of wrongful conviction - people who were convicted of crimes that never happened. According to Henry, "...nearly one-third of all known exonerations of innocent people involve no-crime wrongful convictions." (p. 4) This is terrifying and Henry looks into the many factors involved in these kind of prosecutions and wrongful convictions. The three main issues at hand are 1) forensic error - a natural death that is treated as a homicide, 2) false accusations, and 3) our legal system - police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges. She also explores the issue of misdemeanors and how they factor into these overall issues in our justice system. I've read a lot about true crime and miscarriages of justice, but what I read in this book was absolutely appalling. It's hard to fathom that this is everyday business in the United States and you're not reading about a third-world country or time in history that we've since overcome or changed for the better. I think most people think something like this only happens to "other people" - people who are involved in criminal life or live a high risk lifestyle, etc. But, Henry shows that this could literally happen to anyone from any walk of life. Although, people with more money and privilege are less likely to languish is prison awaiting trial or have to rely on a public defender.

I grew up watching Perry Mason and Law & Order on TV and thinking that the defense attorneys were the "bad guys" who were defending the criminals. Today, I can hardly watch Law & Order re-runs because of the cavalier attitudes of the police and prosecutors on that show. The more I read and watch documentaries on true crime, the more I realize just how much the whims of the police and prosecutors are at play in the justice system regardless of the fact that their decisions destroy people's lives daily. We shouldn't have a justice system based on whims and gut feelings. This book should be required reading for everyone.

There are a lot of quotes I liked:

"Once the police commit to a theory, tunnel vision may blind officers - and eventually the prosecutors to whom the case is referred - about who is telling the truth and who is lying. Cognitive biases cause the police to overvalue evidence that reinforces the lie, and to discard or minimize evidence that would otherwise indicate that something is rotten at the foundation of their case. When a wrongful conviction results, the lie becomes a legal truth, and a factually innocent person becomes a guilty one in the eyes of the law." (p. 47)

[On police arrest quotas] "In Miami Gardens, Florida, officers claimed they were told by superiors to 'bring in the numbers' and were ordered to stop all black males between fifteen and thirty years old." (p. 66)

[On prosecutor incentives] "In Colorado, prosecutors who obtained a 70 percent conviction rate (or higher) received a monetary bonus. Peers boast to one another about their convictions and hold raucous celebrations when a jury renders a guilty verdict. I've always found something peculiar and inappropriate about this celebratory aspect of obtaining convictions: 'We just sent someone to prison! Wha-hoo!' To me, a conviction of another human being, and their condemnation by the state to a term or prison or even death, is a somber and sobering moment, even when the defendant is factually guilty." (p. 85)

"We have an adversarial system that pits the prosecutor against the defendant in a courtroom battle where justice is the theoretical objective but where the measure of a prosecutor's success is their number of convictions. Then we tell the prosecutor that they have to turn over to the other side all the evidence that hurts their case. That's like asking the wolf to guard the chickens in the coop." (p. 97)

"Finding out that the prosecution possessed exculpatory evidence but did not turn it over is often a matter of pure luck or happenstance. How can a defendant learn that the prosecution hid evidence the defendant never knew about in the first place? They often can't." (p. 99)

"In 2009, Louisiana public defenders handled the equivalent of 19,000 misdemeanor cases annually, which gave them seven minutes per case...In Louisiana, a single public defender randomly selected by the New York Times had a caseload on a given day of 194 felonies. The Times calculated that the Louisiana lawyer would need almost 10,000 hours (the equivalent of five work-years) to provide truly competent representation to his existing clients." (p. 111)

"One may wonder in shock how it is that our system is so broken that judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and even defendants tolerate the idea that innocent people should plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because the alternative is worse." (p. 125)

[On judges] "In 2007, Pennsylvania was rocked by the 'Kids for Cash' scandal after it was discovered that two county judges had received more than 2.6 million from for-profit juvenile detention companies in return for steering as many juveniles as possible to their detention facilities." (p. 136)

"A 1982 study found that a reduction of just 10 percent in the number of defendants who plead guilty would require more than twice the number of judges and related judicial resources than existed at the time. And that study was conducted before the tough-on-crime policies of the 1980s and 1990s flooded the criminal justice systems and left judges staggering under heavier caseloads...the number of judges in federal court, for instance, increased by 4 percent from 1993 to 2013, while caseloads in that same period increased by 28 percent." (p. 143-44)

"One 2008 study about the TAP [Trespass Affidavit Program] program found that 'approximately 30% of the residents [who lived in specified housing units run by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)] reported they had been charged with trespassing, despite the fact that they lived there. Approximately 70% of those surveyed at the NYCHA Thomas Jefferson Houses reported that they had been repeatedly stopped by police officers when simply coming and going around their homes.'" (p. 164-65)

"A plea hides police wrongdoing, cloaks weaknesses in the prosecution's case, gives a pass to harried defense lawyers who have no time to provide real representation, and enables judges to keep their dockets moving. Further, pleas to crimes that never happened waste precious taxpayers' resources, with the police and prosecutor investigating fictional events and defense lawyers, mostly at taxpayer expense, trying to stave off the state. Worst of all, they harm innocent defendants who become permanently branded a criminal after serving whatever sentence they receive. Because the plea system circumvents the fact-finding function of a trial, a defendant's willingness to plead guilty is treated as evidence that he or she is guilty. This is, of course, simply untrue." (p. 185)

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Cloud Cuckoo Land follows 3 very different storylines in 3 different historical settings. Konstance is aboard the spaceship Argos that is fleeing Earth for a new potential planet to establish with human life. Zeno and Seymour are in present day (and slightly into the near future) Boise, Idaho - Seymour is an autistic teenager hyper-focused on environmental destruction near his home and Zeno is an eighty-six year old man helping middle schoolers create a play based on an ancient Greek text he translated. Finally Anna and Omeir are caught up in a battle against the city of Constantinople in 1453. Without giving anything away, somehow Doerr connects these three very different time periods and stories through the story/book of Cloud Cuckoo Land. Beautifully written and with some similarities to All the Light We Cannot See like warfare, children, orphans, and disability.

I LOVED All the Light We Cannot See and didn't want to have too high of expectations for this one, but it was very good and worth the 600+ pages. I did like All the Light We Cannot See better, but I'm still thinking about all the nuances of this one long after I've finished it too. I will say I saw in several reviews people complaining about the one "villain" being autistic and that that is derogatory/mean/stereotypical/etc. I will say that the villain is not the villain BECAUSE he's autistic, but more likely his autism created the OCD/obsession with environmentalism that led him down the path of radicalization. I personally loved that 4 of the 5 main characters were somehow flawed, yet kept going - just like Aethon in Cloud Cuckoo Land. I would highly recommend this one!

A quote I liked:

"Moonlight and Tree stand patiently in their yoke, horns dripping, backs steaming, and the boy checks their hooves for stones and their shoulders for cuts and envies that they seem to live only in the moment, without dread for what is to come." (p. 159)

No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler

I loved Everything Happens for a Reason and was excited to read this new one. But, I felt like it was kind of a shorter repackaging of the content of Everything Happens for a Reason. Not that it was bad or poorly written, but I didn't feel like there was a lot of new content. I don't know if I would have picked it up if I had known it was a lot of the same concepts just repackaged. In Everything Happens for a Reason she focuses more on struggling with having a terminal diagnosis at such a young age, and in this book she does kind of focus more on how to live once she is in remission, but the majority of this book was still her dealing with the cancer and the treatments. I guess I hoped it would start after her remission and not re-live the whole cancer treatment again. I still love Kate Bowler and her story and all that she has discovered through her illness and miraculous recovery, but I didn't love this book as much.

When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

When we think of women in early television most people think of Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy, but there were women both on camera and behind the scenes before her. In this book Jennifer Armstrong tells the stories of four women who helped invent television - Irna Phillips, Gertrude Berg, Hazel Scott, and Betty White. These four women were very different, but were all trailblazers as women and in the new field of television. They all struggled with being working women in the 1950's when being a mother and housewife were the societal norm. They also struggled with racism, anti-Semitism, and being blacklisted during the McCarthy/anti-Communist era. It's sad that several of the early shows these women created and starred in have been lost because early television was live and not recorded (Lucille Ball was one of the pioneers of filming and editing her show which is why it's still around in syndication today). But, Armstrong does a great job of telling these women's stories and showing the impact they had on television and society during their lives. And amazingly one of them - Betty White - is still around and about to turn 100 years old! This is a unique look at the beginning of television and how these four women helped shape it into what we know today.

Some quotes I liked:

"[Irna Phillips] $300,000-per-year pay put her into the upper echelons of all American earners at the time but was particularly astonishing for a woman. (An average nonfarm family took in about $3,000 per year in 1946, for comparison. In 2020 terms, she was pulling in nearly $4 million a year.)" (p. 32)

"[I Love Lucy] was all recorded on film to be edited later, which was significantly more expensive than broadcasting live. Arnaz and Ball agreed to a pay cut to help offset the costs, a deal that in exchange gave them ownership of the film of the show itself. For decades their method would be the industry standard for half-hour comedies...A significant unforeseen benefit of shooting on film emerged later: it preserved the show in pristine recordings, which allowed it to be shown in syndicated reruns for decades to come and now even to be shown via streaming services...The bargain Arnaz and Ball made to shoot on film so they could remain in Los Angeles also paid dividends for the rest of their lives; they owned the films, so they reaped the syndication profits...Her undeniable influence as a creator, producer, and visual comedy genius would grow larger over the decade as many of TV's early female pioneers faded from view. She was the explosion that came at the end of a long line of women before her, and she would shine so brightly that those women's contributions would be forgotten." (p. 170-71)

"White did, however, have more radical plans afoot. She invited the dancer Arthur Duncan, who had been a guest performer several times on Hollywood on Television, to appear on her show several times. The difference this time was that a Black tap dancer would be seen nationwide, rather than just in Los Angeles. That included the American South...[when stations complained and threatened to boycott her show] Her response: 'I'm sorry. Live with it.' She used Duncan as much as she could. The network, at least, backed her decision...White's casting of Duncan would lead to his becoming one of the first Black regulars on a variety program, The Lawrence Welk Show from 1964 to 1982, and a major inspiration for the future tap superstar Gregory Hines." (p. 219-21)

"But no one who knew Gertrude Berg ever knew the woman to cook. Her hired cook, Louise Capers, was the one who made the food in the Berg residence. That didn't stop Berg from agreeing to coauthor a cookbook. Nor did her penchant for fine dresses, furs, and pearls stop her from putting her name on a popular line of housedresses. Empire building required perpetuating such illusions at times - that is, if you were a woman building an empire...As her granddaughter said, 'She would never have worn a housedress. I mean never.' This woman had her hair done, in her classic chignon style, even when she was at home with her family. Her grandchildren never saw her hair down. In fact, they never saw her bare feet, either. She owned dozens of dress gloves, hats, fur coats, and opulent pins. She would have no use for a low-cost, simple frock meant only for a housewife to do her housework in. But Berg did not pass by an opportunity when it presented itself to her." (p. 236-38)

"The Guiding Light would eventually run continuously on radio and television for seventy-two years, making it not only the longest-running soap opera but also the longest running of all scripted programs in broadcast history. Phillips created the genre itself and is credited with several of its innovations: professionals such as doctors and lawyers as main characters with endless story possibilities, episode-ending cliff-hangers, organ music cues, and characters who crossed over from one serial to another. The daytime soap never truly gained the respect Phillips deserved, likely because it was associated with female audiences." (p. 263)

October 2021 Cookbook Reviews

 

Farmhouse Weekends by Melissa Bahen

Melissa Bahen lives in a farmhouse in the country, but points out in the introduction that you don't have to live on acreage in the country to practice "farm ways" of living. She said that even before they found their dream farmhouse they were already canning, gardening, and making homemade food and you can do that just about anywhere. She and her husband aren't farmers and they both have jobs, but the weekends are for their farmhouse activities and that's what this cookbook is based on - recipes she's created for the weekends when you might have more time to cook. I love that the recipes are organized by season to focus on whatever ingredients are in season. I found several recipes I'd like to try. If you're looking for some good, homemade food to make this weekend I would definitely recommend this book.

An Unapologetic Cookbook by Joshua Weissman

I wasn't familiar with Joshua Weissman before checking this book out from my library. I really like that he focuses on making as much of your food as you can from scratch and from good quality ingredients. I think the media and food industry want people to think cooking from scratch is too hard or too time consuming. It's usually faster and easier than you think especially for basic dishes. In the first section of recipes Weissman gives tons of recipes for basic components - broth, condiments, pickles, etc, then gets into breads and starches from scratch. The rest of the chapters are your basic cookbook categories - breakfast, appetizers, meat, pasta, dessert, etc. All of the recipes use some of the basic components from the first section. This would be a great gift from someone just starting out on their own or trying to make more of their own food from scratch. Overall, I would recommend this one and did find a few recipes I'd like to try.

Peace, Love, and Pasta by Scott Conant

I love Scott Conant from watching him as a judge on Chopped, so I definitely wanted to check out his newest cookbook. Despite the title the whole book isn't pasta recipes. It's organized like a typical cookbook with chapters like staples, soups, salads, and antipasta, vegetables, etc. I did like that he included a chapter on Turkish cooking since his wife is from Turkey and he's grown to love many of the recipes and food from that area. He also tells some crazy stories from his life in the description of some of the recipes - like in the recipe for pork schnitzel he talks about working at a restaurant in Germany and Michael Jackson and his pet monkey coming in for a meal! Overall, there weren't a ton of recipes I wanted to try, but it is a good overall cookbook with a wide variety of recipes.

Once Upon a Chef by Jennifer Segal

Jennifer Segal is a busy mom so she created this cookbook to help families get meals on the table during the week. The Weeknight meals are a little faster and easier to throw together when everyone is home from work or school. The Weekend meals are when you might have more time to work on a meal or for something special. Most of the recipes looked easy to follow with no weird or random ingredients. There were a few I'd like to try as well.

October 2021 Reviews

 

The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr

Beth Barr grew up in the Southern Baptist denomination that viewed complementarianism as the only "real" Biblical view of men and women. And while at times she heard things that made her uncomfortable or didn't feel right, she believed (like many women do) that the fault was her and her pride or sin. But in graduate school while working on a Master's degree in medieval history, Barr started to see that historically women in the Church weren't relegated to only the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker. In medieval times many women were preachers or evangelists and had the option of celibacy to pursue a life working for God. The Reformation, which most Protestants hale as highlighting the truth of a personal relationship with God outside of a Priest, actually started to create the idea of women's place being in the home and her highest calling to be a wife and mother. In this book Barr shows the historical timeline of Biblical womanhood and how instead of resisting the patriarchy of the world it created a new (worse) Christian patriarchy that continues to hurt people to this day. Instead of "not conforming to the pattern of this world... [Romans 12:2]" the Church continued to frame women's role from the perspective of the predominant culture of that day - which was patriarchy. Complementarians like to quote Paul a LOT and if you grew up in the Church you likely know the passages I'm referring to. But, if you read anything in the Gospels about Jesus you can see that He truly treats everyone as equals - women, children, Gentiles, slaves, EVERYONE. And His harshest words weren't for women who stepped out of their place, but for religious leaders who put more burdens on people with their strict rules. I've always thought that Christians today don't see just how radical Jesus was in His time (and can still be today). When you read about him speaking to women and calling the children to come to him that seems normal today. But, that was simply not done in that day and time. So, in doing these things Jesus is showing us the truth that in Him "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. [Galatians 3:28]" Barr does an amazing job with this book showing how Biblical womanhood has been shaped over time to be the twisted version it still is in some circles today. She has a great balance of her personal stories and historical examples to shape the book. It's doubtful any complementarians will pick this book up, but maybe things would improve for women in the Church if they did.

Some quotes I liked:

"Patriarchy by any other name is still patriarchy. Complementarians may argue that women are equal to men, as does the Southern Baptist Convention's 1998 amendment to the 'Baptist Faith and Message': 'The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image.' Yet their insistence that 'equal worth' manifests in unequal roles refutes this." (p. 18)

"Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy...Isn't it ironic (not to mention tiresome) that we spend so much time fighting to make Christianity look like the world around us instead of fighting to make it look like Jesus Christ?" (p. 36-37)

"The evangelical church fears that recognizing women's leadership will mean bowing to cultural peer pressure. But what if the church is bowing to cultural peer pressure by denying women's leadership? ...Christians in the past may have used Paul to exclude women from leadership, but this doesn't mean that the subjugation of women is biblical. It just means that Christians today are repeating the same mistakes of Christians in the past - modeling our treatment of women after the world around us instead of the world Jesus shows us is possible." (p. 41)

"In a world that didn't accept the word of a woman as a valid witness, Jesus chose women as witnesses for his resurrection. In a world that gave husbands power over the very lives of their wives, Paul told husbands to do the opposite - to give up their lives for their wives. In a world that saw women as biologically deformed men, monstrous even, Paul declared that men were just like women in Christ. No, the problem wasn't a lack of biblical and historical evidence for women to serve as leaders along with men in the church. The problem was male clergy who undermined the evidence." (p. 87)

"Theologically, though, I agree with the Reformation. I am a Protestant - not just because I grew up as a Protestant but also because, as an adult, I have chosen to remain Protestant. I think Luther was right - about faith, Jesus, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible. At the same time, the Reformation wasn't perfect. Glorifying the past because we like that story better isn't history; it is propaganda." (p. 107)

"Why didn't Protestant theology sanction women to teach and preach, even though it had declared the priesthood of all believers and sanctioned the marriage bed?...Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband." (p. 116-17)

"And just like that, evangelicals baptized patriarchy. Women could not preach and had to submit - not because their bodies were too flawed or their minds too weak, but because God had decreed it through Paul's inerrant writings. Those who doubt these biblical truths doubt the truth of the Bible itself...From my experience as someone who grew up Southern Baptist and remained in conservative evangelical churches throughout most of my adult life, inerrancy creates an atmosphere of fear. Any question raised about biblical accuracy must be completely answered or completely rejected to prevent the fragile fabric of faith from unraveling." (p. 190)

"Complementarianism is patriarchy, and patriarchy is about power. Neither have been about Jesus...Jesus set women free a long time ago. Isn't it finally time for evangelical Christians to do the same? Go, be free!" (p. 218)

Before and After: the incredible real-life stories of orphans who survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate (Evening Edition book club)

When my book club read Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate I don't know that I had heard of Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children's Home Society. But, even though it was fiction it was a compelling book that explores a very dark part of Tennessee's history. During Lisa Wingate's book tour for that book she met many of the children who had been placed by Tann and TCHS. Many others reached out to her by email after reading her book. After hearing some of their stories she felt compelled to try to bring them together and record their stories as well. Wingate reached out to her friend Judy Christie to see if she would be willing to attend a reunion event for the children placed by TCHS and record their stories. Christie immediately said yes and recognized the importance of capturing these people's personal stories before they were gone. Most of the children placed are in their 70's and up - many sadly no longer living. Before and After is the work that came from that reunion event and tells several personal stories of the children placed by TCHS and their struggles and sometimes triumphs of finding their biological families.

I didn't know much about Lisa Wingate before reading Before We Were Yours, but I have to say that after reading this book I have so much respect for her drive to tell the real stories that inspired her fiction book. She and Christie really worked hard to contact these people and bring them together. It's a bittersweet book because while some children ended up in good homes, some didn't. And while some have found missing siblings and parents who continued to look for them, some found not-so-great biological families that don't live up to their hopes. But, it is definitely an important book that I would recommend.

Some quotes I liked:

"The investigation [into TCHS] concludes that Tann profited from the operation of TCHS in Memphis in excess of five hundred thousand dollars in the last ten years of her life - taking in today's equivalent of between five and ten million dollars. During that period, the investigation found, she placed more than a thousand children for adoption outside the state of Tennessee, principally in New York and California, the exact number not known." (p. 15)

[In a group therapy session one of the TCHS children attended] "The group leader speaks words to her that no one has before: 'When you're adopted, you come into the world with loss.'" (p. 85)

The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin (re-read, listened to audio book)

My husband and I listened to this book mostly driving to and from vacation in the Outer Banks because we had a 7 hour drive. Somehow we didn't finish it on that trip and finished the last 2 hours on our way to the Homesteaders of America conference where we got to hear Joel Salatin speak as well. I doubt we would have enjoyed this book as much if it wasn't narrated by Joel. He is such a phenomenal speaker (and author) so listening to him this long was really a treat. I will say because we listened to it over a few weeks it wasn't as compelling as when I read the print book. I think if we had listened to it over 2-3 days it would have felt more cohesive, but that's not a knock on the book rather on our way of listening to it. It was definitely an enjoyable listen and made for a lot of good conversation in the car.

Crafting with Flannel by Sarah Ramberg

I just happened upon this book on my local public library shelf and picked it up because of the cover with all the plaid flannel. There are lots of really great craft ideas in this book. Some are pretty simple and some are slightly harder, but nothing that seems crazy complicated. I found a few things that I'd like to make for myself and/or as gifts. Then when I was reading about the author I saw that she lives in Charlotte, NC so that made me like this one even more. If you like homemade gifts/decor this is a good book to check out.

Black, White, and the Grey by Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano

The Grey is a restaurant in Savannah, GA that is built in an old Greyhound bus terminal - hence the name, The Grey. John Morisano purchased the building and had the idea to make it into a restaurant. He partnered with Mashama Bailey as the executive chef. Together they created this restaurant and along the way became more than business partners, but true friends. This book is the story of how the restaurant came to be and how their relationship developed. In the description of the book it says this is "...a story about the trials and triumphs of two individuals with seemingly little in common - a Black chef from Queens and a White media entrepreneur from Staten Island - who partnered up, relocated to the South, and built a relationship and a restaurant that they hoped would get people talking about race, gender, class, and culture." The premise sounded really interesting to me even though I wasn't familiar with The Grey before. But, I have to say it fell flat for me. Everything felt forced - the book, the restaurant, how insistent John was that since he was white man he needed a black woman chef, etc. I do believe their friendship is genuine, but it really seemed odd how things came together and how fixated he was on certain things. I also felt like the way the book was written was distracting. John and Mashama go back and forth writing a sentence or a few paragraphs about the same event from each perspective. I would have rather had one chapter half by John and half by Mashama or one whole chapter from each of them. And sometimes one is telling a story and the other goes off on a tangent that doesn't really fit. I didn't like the way it was written at all. And my final complaint is that the first chapter starts off with a car accident on the night of the 4th of July, then you don't get the rest of that story until the last chapter. It was just a really weird way to structure the book. I will say the restaurant sounds really interesting and unique, so if I'm ever in Savannah again I'd like to check it out. But, I wouldn't recommend this book.

Wintering: the power of rest and retreat in difficult times by Katherine May

I had read/heard good things about this book and was excited to finally get it (it had a huge hold list for awhile). But, for me it was definitely a letdown once I read it. I assumed based on the subtitle that it would be about resting/healing/nesting/etc. during a hard time. But, it was more of a weirdly vague memoir about the author's re-occurring depression with some other physical ailments thrown in the mix as well. The book starts with the author being irritated that her husband is ill on her birthday trip - he had appendicitis and his appendix burst. That didn't paint her in the best light to start off the book. Then shortly after that she reveals that she has Asperger's which mostly explained her reaction to her husband's serious illness, but it made me have a LOT of sympathy for him even though he's rarely mentioned again in the book. I also agree with several of the reviews I read that this book highlights how privileged her life is and also how unaware she seems to be of that privilege. She's able to quit her job and while that's stressful for her - it's not stressful because of the money, it's stressful for her as her job is a large part of her identity - and she has the financial means to just quit because she doesn't like it anymore. She talks a lot about the patterns she's created for when her "wintering" or depression is coming, but again not everyone can travel the world or sleep all day when they feel like, etc. I also felt like it was weird how she referred to her husband only as H, but gave her son's full name. A lot of the personal issues she brings up as examples in the book she never gives any resolution to - for example were all her stomach problems an actual illness/disease or from the stress of wanting to quit her job? She never gives a conclusion to most of her examples which is frustrating.

Overall, I felt like this book was a whole lot of vagueness with no solid advice or point. Also, if I knew on the front end that "wintering" was her wording for depression I would not have picked up this book. While I don't suffer from depression, I also don't see how this would really help anyone who did either. Her only advice seems to be quit your job and listen to your body. I'm all about trying to listen to your body, but sometimes you have to incorporate that into working as well. I wouldn't recommend this one.

Good Morning, Monster: a therapist shares five heroic stories of emotional recovery by Catherine Gildiner

Catherine Gildiner is a Canadian psychologist who retired from practice after twenty-five years. This book highlights five heroic and memorable patients - people who endured such horrific abuse and neglect, yet were able to tremendously improve through therapy:

Laura - her mother died (or was possibly murdered) and her father dropped her and her two younger siblings off in a remote cabin during the Canadian winter when she was 9.
Peter - the son of Chinese immigrants who was placed in a crib in the attic for 15 hours a day from the age of 2-5 and suffered from attachment disorder.
Danny - an Indigenous man who was taken from his family and placed into a residential school where he was sexually assaulted and molested for most of his time there.
Alana - her father was a pedophile who raped her daily from the age of 4 to 14 and because of that she developed dissociative identity disorder.
Madeline - her mother was a narcissist who greeted her every morning with "good morning, monster" and Madeline developed OCD and high levels of anxiety.

While some of the stories were harder to read than others (Alana's was the worst and Gildiner even said she left out the most horrific details because it would be too hard to read). Gildiner does a good job of telling the patient's story and also how she worked out the best way to help them. I was REALLY impressed with her work with Danny because she sought out Indigenous healers and scholars to understand how to best work with him - and this was back in the 1980's when a lot of these issues weren't in the public eye really at all. Obviously this is not a light read, but it isn't depressing and sad. It's honestly miraculous to see these people not only survive their horrible childhoods, but to truly heal and grow into much happier people than you would think possible based on their histories. It definitely highlights just how resilient the human mind can be.

Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton

This is a quick, cozy read about how to make the Christmas holiday season less stressful and more enjoyable. It's divided into three sections - Before Christmas, During Christmas, and After Christmas. Each chapter within each section focuses on some specific aspects of that season. Each chapter also has lots of questions to contemplate or journal about in order to work out what is most important to you and your family and how best to enjoy the holiday season. To me there wasn't anything ground-breaking in here, but it was a good reminder that we can manage the holidays instead of being controlled by the holidays or family members/traditions/etc. In the first section of the book about planning for Christmas I liked this question Kempton poses: "Given the kind of year you have had, what kind of Christmas would be most nourishing and appropriate? A loud, celebratory one? A quiet, restful one? A magical, surprise-filled one? A traditional one? An alternative one? A cozy one? A sunny one? Or something else?" (p. 67) I think that is definitely something most people don't think about. If it's been a hard year what would make the holidays better? Instead of just doing whatever your family traditionally does, think about what you NEED the holidays to be instead of just doing what you always do. Overall, if you're struggling to reign in Christmas or enjoy it more this would be a good book to check out.

The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness by Sarah Ramey

When Sarah Ramey was 21 she got what she thought was a UTI - normal stuff for a college student. But, instead of getting better with antibiotics it got worse. And after a failed urological procedure she became septic and almost died. That was the beginning of a 13 year descent into the hell of what she calls "a mysterious illness." And it's worth noting that both her parents, stepfather, and one grandmother were all MDs and had access to lots of top doctors/treatments/etc and still no one could really figure out what was wrong. Several of the doctors she saw deserve to lose their medical license (in my opinion) for not just lack of treatment, but such lack of treatment and forced procedures that it became cruelty. What Ramey found along the way was a lot - 1) most doctors mock alternative/holistic health options - including her own family, 2) the average way of life for Americans is VERY unhealthy and is often not examined until some sort of health crisis happens, 3) gut health and your microbiome are VERY important and mostly ignored by the current medical industry, and 4) most doctors spend so little time with their patients that it's no wonder it took her 13 years (and almost dying) to figure out what was going on. I won't give away anything, but she does get answers and let me tell you it's infuriating.

I will say I would NOT recommend this book. It was EXTREMELY detailed in all her (cruel) medical procedures and problems and I honestly don't know how she wasn't suicidal. I will also say I agree with her 100% about American health, or lack thereof, that's seen a normal when it's anything but. I agree that more doctors should be spending time with patients and actually talking about what do you eat, how do you exercise, etc. But, one of the biggest things this book pointed out to me is the importance of taking control of your own health - whether you have a mysterious illness or not. The amount of pain and suffering she could have avoided if she had listened to her gut and not given in to indifferent doctors is staggering. But, as she points out (especially since she came from a family of doctors) you think these are the people who will help me, even if what they are saying contradicts what I know about myself. I also 1000% agree about how women are ignored or dismissed by the medical profession, but again this further highlights to me the importance of taking control of your own health. But, I think these issues are explored in better ways in other books. I forced myself to finish this book because after getting 2/3 of the way through and the second section ending on a particularly awful note, I was like this HAS TO GET BETTER. And it did, but she definitely took the long, overly-detailed route to get there. I feel terrible for her and all she went through, but this was a ROUGH read all the way around.

Some quotes I did like:

"...I began to read about autoimmunity - and I immediately learned that there is a huge autoimmune epidemic on the rise. Incidences of autoimmunity have, at a very low estimate, tripled in the last thirty years." (p. 19)

"Eighty-five percent of fibromyalgia patients are women.
Eighty-five percent of multiple sclerosis patients are women.
Ninety percent of Hashimoto's patients are women.
Eighty percent of chronic fatigue syndrome patients are women.
Seventy-five percent of Lyme patients are women.
Ninety percent of lupus patients, women.
...Seventy-five percent of all autoimmune patients are female. And for the true mystery illnesses, the disparity is even greater - often 8:1, 9:1. This should give anyone pause - not simply because there are so many diseases affecting women these days, not simply because that discrepancy is very large, but for a more serious reason: No one seems to notice." (p. 21)

"You can be sure that if 85 percent of fibromyalgia patients were men, rendering them unable to work from extreme fatigue, bone-deep pain, and mind fog - there would be no problem getting the funding and research to look into this scourge upon the modern male workforce." (p. 26)

"'Sarah,' he said with a sigh. 'Please eat whatever you want. You have irritable bowel syndrome, and food has nothing to do with irritable bowel syndrome.' And I remember that time seemed to slow for just a moment. This claim, food has nothing to do with the organ that processes food, seemed almost cartoonishly disconnected from logic and reason." (p. 63)

"Because make no mistake: these illnesses were few and far between before the late 1960s. And it was in the late sixties, and then dramatically increasing in each decade to follow, that we started to make these radical changes to the diet, chemical use, antibiotic use, and the stresses of being constantly connected to technology. And we have not dealt with this wisely." (p. 183)

"Why is it a radical idea that food and rest might impact our health so greatly, and why is it a dangerous idea to suggest dietary change (which requires some inward analysis, and is also associated with the domain of women, aka food) as a saner starting place before resorting to medication upon medication?" (p. 249)

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich (Evening Edition book club)

Omakayas and her family are Ojibwa and live on land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. She is the second of four children living with her parents and grandmother. In The Birchbark House Omakayas takes us through her daily life for four seasons. Starting in Fall and ending with the promise of Spring. Throughout the year we see not only the daily life, but Omakayas's struggles with her siblings. She looks up to her older sister Angelina, but also feels like she'll never be a good as her either. Her younger brother Pinch gets on her nerves, but she loves and dotes on her baby brother Neewo. Throughout the year in this book we see Omakayas grow up in several ways, but especially when her village and family contract smallpox and in a devastating loss that happens from that illness. Overall, an interesting look at what a Native child's life would have been like.

I know that Louise Erdrich wrote this series as a counter-point to the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder to show what daily life would have been like for a Native child. I found several similarities between Omakayas and Laura - both were the second child, both looked up too, but also were envious of their older sister, and both felt the burden of helping their family during hard times. I also felt like the illustrations in this book had the same feel as the illustrations in the Little House books. I think it's great that she wrote these books so that children could read about daily life from a Native child's perspective. My book club actually decided to read this book after we read Little House in the Big Woods last year and talked about how this series was written in response. I liked this book and would recommend it.

The Turnaway Study by Diana Greene Foster, PhD

This was a very unique book. Diana Foster set out to create the first truly scientific study of women who either had an abortion or were denied an abortion and how that affected their lives for ten years afterward. Foster wanted to create this study to show hard data to confirm or refute claims about abortion - that it harms women mentally or physically, that women use it as a form of birth control, etc. The book is divided into categories about the research like access to abortion, mental health, etc. After each chapter is a woman's personal story of why she sought an abortion and what her life was like afterward whether she received an abortion or not. It was obviously a scientific book with lots of data, but the information they found was interesting. Whether it will be used for any future abortion-related legislation remains to be seen, but now there is at least one comprehensive long-term scientific study out there. And the women's personal stories definitely show how this issue runs through all race, political, and socio-economic areas.

September 2021 Cookbook Reviews

 

The Chef's Garden by Farmer Lee Jones

I picked this one up because I recognized Farmer Lee Jones from his judging on Iron Chef America. I knew from the show that he was a farmer and often when he was judging the secret ingredient would be a vegetable that he had grown. In this massive cookbook he shares the origins of his family farm, how they went from conventional to specialty catering to chefs across the country. He also explains why he wears overalls all the time (I'm not going to tell you, pick up the book to see why). He also shares how because of their work with chefs they decided to create the Culinary Vegetable Institute, which is basically a building with a huge commercial kitchen and bedrooms for chefs to come visit the farm and stay on site and cook with all the varieties of vegetables they are growing. The book is organized by type of vegetable - alliums, stems and stalks, roots, etc. Each section features several varieties of vegetable in that family and explains how to select, store, clean, and use. There aren't as many actual recipes as you would expect for this size cookbook and most of the recipes are pretty fancy in my opinion. There weren't many recipes I wanted to try, but I really appreciated the story of the Jones family farm and how they are focusing on heirloom vegetables and regenerative farming. I love that they started out in conventional farming and when that wasn't making them any money they tried something new (catering to chefs and heirloom vegetables) and it paid off in a big way.

Southern Grit by Kelsey Barnard Clark

This is what I consider a classic Southern cookbook. Clark gives a lot of good information in the Introduction. She covers pantry staples, cooking tools, knife skills/terms she uses in the book with illustrations, canning info (as I always say, please don't learn to can from a book - take a class or work with a skilled canner!), tips on cleaning, hosting parties/events, and houseplants. The cleaning and house plant tips seem random, but I guess these are important things for her and she wanted to share them. The recipes are organized in seven chapters like - happy hour bites and sips, eggs & poultry, pork & beef, and breads & pastries. Each recipe has information about what inspired it or why it's a popular dish in the South and "notes" for any substitutions or important tips about that recipe. For instance in one recipe for risotto the note calls it a "toddler recipe" meaning you can't leave it unattended. There are also lots of beautiful pictures of the food and cooking/dining spaces. This is one cookbook I might buy for myself since there are so many recipes I'd like to try!

September 2021 Reviews

High on the Hog: a culinary journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris

High on the Hog tells the story of foods and culinary history that started in Africa and were brought over via slaves to the US and are now part of our collective food culture in America. Each chapter talks about a period of time and how food and/or cooking shaped that time period. Harris also shows how food has played a pivotal role in the lives of African-Americans and how that role has changed over time too. In the same vein as Michael Twitty's The Cooking Gene, this is a unique look at how Africa and the slave trade shaped the food culture of the US. Definitely an interesting book and now that I've read the book I'll check out the Netflix series based on it.

Some quotes I liked:

"Most Americans today base their ideas of the antebellum South on images created in popular culture that have little to do with the realities of history. Despite a tendency to generalize slaveholding into North and South, there was no monolithic South even in the antebellum period. The region was divided into upland and coastal, and then subdivided further into the Up South, the Carolinas and Georgia, the Deep South, and the Gulf South. The mountainous spine of the Appalachians further bisected the region and was an area in which slaveholding was minimal. Each area had a unique experience with enslavement...In fact, even in slaveholding areas, in many cases hard-pressed whites had only a few hapless slaves; and in more than a few cases, owners were apt to be working in the fields alongside their one or two slaves. Less than one quarter of white Southerners held slaves, and half of those held fewer than five. Only 1 percent of Southerners owned more than one hundred, and a minuscule number owned more than five hundred and the large spreads that we imagine; they lived mainly in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana." (p. 93)

"It is somehow fitting that so much of the organization of the Civil Rights Movement took place around tables in home kitchens and restaurants like Paschal's and others. After all, during the 350-year-plus history of African Americans in this country, we were relegated to the kitchen and kept in actual or metaphorical servitude. The food that flourished in these restaurants during the 1960s and 1970s came to be known as soul food because it fed the spirit as much as the body on the long march to institutionalized equality." (p. 201)

"...SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] began to train student activists on black college campuses in the South who provided the next wave of protest. This wave did not start at the kitchen tables or the black restaurants where King and his followers had planned the Montgomery bus boycott. Rather, it started at the lunch counter of a five-and-dime store...This phase of the fight for equality began in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960...The sit-ins galvanized the country, demonstrations were staged in more than one hundred cities in the South and the North, and the lunch counter rapidly became a national symbol of the South's inequalities." (p. 203-4)

"Then, in 1977, the publication of the autobiography of writer Alex Haley, Roots, and the subsequent television miniseries based on it transformed the way many African Americans thought of themselves and Africa. Blacks were galvanized by Roots, and large numbers made pilgrimages to the African continent with hopes of discovering their own ancestral origins." (p. 214)

The Rural Diaries by Hilarie Burton Morgan

I honestly almost didn't read this one because I wasn't sure I wanted to read a celebrity-turned-"farmer" memoir, but I'm glad I did. Hilarie Burton was mainly known for her role on the TV show One Tree Hill, but she has been in other movies and TV shows and does continue to still act today. When she met fellow actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan (of The Walking Dead fame) they instantly fell in love. While they were both Hollywood actors, they both grew up in small, rural towns and wanted to get back to their roots. After their son was born they discovered the small town of Rhinebeck, New York and knew this was the place for them. They first bought a cabin with some acreage, but then a few years later bought an old horse farm and turned it into Mischief Farm. When a local store in town was about to close, Hilarie & Jeffrey along with two other couples (including Paul Rudd and his wife) decide to buy it and keep it going. The Rural Diaries shares Hilarie's journey from celebrity/actress to small-town mom/farmer/small business owner. Complete with pictures, this is a quick, fun read about how a celebrity couple got back to their small town roots.

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (Books & Banter book club)

On an August afternoon sisters Alyona and Sophia disappear while their mother is at work. One eye-witness thinks she saw them get into a dark SUV with a man, but month by month there is no sign of the girls or any evidence of a crime. Each chapter of Disappearing Earth covers one month from the August the girls go missing to the following July. Each chapter focuses on a woman in town and sometimes how the abduction relates to them and/or things they are dealing with. By the end of the book through a seemingly random encounter the case of the missing girls is solved - albeit somewhat vaguely. While the overall story seemed interesting and I wanted to know what happened to the girls, about half way through as each chapter kept introducing new characters I started to wonder if all these characters were going to tie into the main storyline or not. Because this is for book club I'm going to go back and take some notes on which characters are in which chapters. If not for book club I don't think I would have finished this one. Honestly, each of the characters/storylines introduced was SO depressing and bleak. Bleak is the best word I can think of to describe just about any book I've read that was set in Russia. While the main mystery is mostly solved, there isn't resolution for every character/story introduced in the book. I read that the author wanted to explore what "everyday harm or hurt against women looks like" and she definitely did that in this book. Overall, if you enjoy extra bleak stories of "everyday harm" toward women then this is the book for you, if not then I would suggest giving this one a pass.

My Time Will Come: a memoir of crime, punishment, hope, and redemption by Ian Manuel

Ian Manuel grew up in a rough neighborhood in Florida. He and his mom had been homeless at times, she spent time in prison as did both his father and brother. Even though he did have a few good influences in his life, for Ian the pull of petty crime and fitting in in his neighborhood won out. At the age of thirteen during an attempted robbery he accidentally shot a woman. She lived, but he was charged with several weighty felonies and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the age of fourteen. At first prison was actually better than life outside - he had 3 meals a day, friends, and a place to sleep. But, he started getting in trouble for what would be seen on the outside as typical teenage rebellion, but in prison any small infraction has harsh punishments. Because of constantly getting in trouble Ian ended up spending eighteen years in solitary confinement. Because of this his mental health seriously declined and he began self-injuring as a way to get attention and get out of his cell. What Ian didn't know was that his case had caught the eye of Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson knew there were some pending court cases for the Supreme Court regarding death penalty and life without the possibility of parole for juveniles. He reached out to Ian and ended up finally getting him re-sentenced to time served after twenty-six years in prison. Another miraculous aspect of Ian's story is that when he had been in jail for around a year he reached out and called the woman he shot to apologize. They corresponded off and on over his time in prison and she was instrumental in helping him be re-sentenced by showing that she forgave him and believed he was rehabilitated.

Ian's story is not an easy one, but like the many others that Bryan Stevenson has told he is not the worst thing he's done. His time in prison did rehabilitate him, despite that not being the goal of prison at all. He lost his entire immediate family during this incarceration, but he still held on to hope that he would get out and be better. My only small complaint with the book is I would have loved another chapter about how he's doing now that he's out of prison. Like Anthony Ray Hinton's book The Sun Does Shine the book ends with Ian getting out of prison and celebrating with his legal team and some family friends. I would love to have a follow up with some of the people Stevenson has helped and how they readjusted to life outside of prison and what they are doing now.

A quote I liked:

"The United Nations considers solitary confinement for more than fifteen days torture. It was my condition for eighteen consecutive years. Scientists have shown that solitary confinement, especially of juveniles, can damage the brain, provoking panic, anxiety, depression, loss of control, and even suicide. I managed to endure it and survive." (p. 95)

Keys to Bonhoeffer's House: exploring the world and wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Laura M. Fabrycky

Laura Fabrycky's husband works for the US Embassy and so their family is uprooted every three years for his work all around the globe. When they land in Berlin, Germany for his work Laura wants to visit the Dietrich Bonhoeffer museum that was created in the Bonhoeffer's former home. After their initial tour Laura comes back several times and eventually ends up volunteering there as an English-speaking guide as the museum is very close to their house. This book is part memoir of her family's time in Berlin and part exploration of how Dietrich Bonhoeffer influenced her life and faith. Being in Berlin and studying Bonhoeffer's legacy during the 2016 Presidential election felt like eerie timing. I happened to read Eric Metaxas's book Bonhoeffer: pastor, martyr, prophet, spy the summer of 2016 and it also felt like eerie timing for me. I found this to be a really unique book and an interesting view of Bonhoeffer and his continued legacy. Fabrycky is an excellent writer and I very much enjoyed this one.

Some quotes I liked:

"But ignorance and silence - telltale hallmarks of civic irresponsibility - are the shadows into which both victors and vanquished can easily retreat. After the war, those who had once been full-throated Nazis were reinstalled into their places in polite German society in rather astonishing numbers. A report released in October 2016 by a commission of German historians and lawyers found that 77 percent of the senior officials in the post-World War II West German justice ministry had been Nazi Party members, a success made possible by 'the fascist old-boys network' protecting its own from punishment." (p. 22)

"Though I wanted to discover the secrets that allowed him to live with such courage and tenacity, and though I was tempted to discern analogies between his world and mine, I saw that his times are not my times, and the world he lived in is not my world. That is not to say there is no correspondence - far from it. It is more to say that, like Bonhoeffer, we also choose whether to enter more fully into the questions of our time and step into them courageously with hope or to ignore them and try to evade our responsibilities, shrinking back in fear, disconnection, or despair. Above all, I wrote this book as a sign that I have chosen hope and invite you to do so too." (p. 27-28)

"By reminding the world of evil's banality, Arendt challenged a dominant narrative that the Nazis were blood-thirsty monsters, red hot rather than coolly, mindlessly indifferent. In her reporting on the significant trial for Adolf Eichmann - one of the administrators of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to slaughter all Jewish people - Arendt saw Eichmann as the pathetic embodiment of the rule-following bureaucrat, incapable of his own thought, desperate for direction from those stronger than him, a person who has surrendered his agency to others. Nazi pabulum and propaganda were his thought and speech, and he saw himself as fulfilling his duties but did not believe himself to be morally responsible for his actions." (p. 40)

"One line in Ozment's book [A Mighty Fortress] stood out to me: 'Historical experience has...left Germans more fearful of anarchy than of tyranny, inclining them to hedge, if hedge they must, on the side of good order. This they have done in a compelling belief that is is not freedom, once attained, but discipline, carefully maintained, that keeps a people free.'" (p. 71)

"In that one moment, I saw how casually I had fashioned him in my mind as a successful hero without considering how much he let go of in life, the many private sufferings and dying-to-self moments he chose, long before the Nazis put him to death in 1945." (p. 186)

"Beyond all their unrealistic political plans, a more depressing reality remained: even if they had succeeded in killing Hitler, the German population was unlikely to have cheered their coup as a liberation from tyranny. More likely, Hitler's death would have made a martyr of the Fuhrer since the general public was already so trained to worship him - even if with a fearful awe." (p. 194)

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

Daisy Shoemaker has a great life on paper - she's married to the love of her life, has a teenage daughter, and a successful cooking business. But, she feels like her husband kind of looks down on her business as more of a hobby and her teenage daughter is constantly getting in trouble at school. When she accidentally gets some emails for someone with a similar email address the two women send a few emails and get together. It seems like they could be friends. But, the other woman, Diana, has an alternative motive for wanting to meet Daisy. She has been tracking down three men she met the summer she was fourteen in Cape Cod - the summer she was raped. Daisy is married to one of those men and Diana's original plan was to meet her and get as much information about her husband in order to try to get some kind of revenge. But, Diana ends up genuinely liking Daisy and her daughter and is torn about what to do now.

Told from Daisy, Diana, and Daisy's daughter Beatrice's points of view, That Summer perfectly captures the #metoo movement and the ramifications for men who's pasts are coming back to haunt them. Similar to Emily Giffin's All We Ever Wanted, Weiner does a great job of showing all sides of this very complicated issue and the long-running consequences. I would highly recommend this one!

Good Apple: tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York by Elizabeth Passarella

Elizabeth Passarealla grew up in a conservative, Christian, Republican household in Memphis, Tennessee. But, she always dreamed of moving to New York City and after college she did. She ended up meeting her husband there and is still living in the city with their three children. Good Apple is her story of how she continues to reconcile these two worlds - her conservative Christian upbringing and faith and living in one of the bluest cities in the US. Her family back home thinks she crazy for trying to raise three kids in a two-bedroom apartment and many of her current coworkers or friends don't understand her on-going religious faith. Her writing is pretty funny and there were several times I laughed out loud while reading this book. I can definitely relate to her feelings of not really belonging in either world. For me, as a Christian woman who's chosen to not have kids that is VERY alienating in the Church, and I'm sure most of my coworkers and friends don't understand my religious views and I also work in a more liberal career field as well. Overall, this is a funny and mostly light-hearted memoir of one woman's personal experience living as a Evangelical Christian in New York City.

A quote I liked:

"What I'd like to say to my Christian brothers and sisters is: my political party, and yours, is not a big deal. It should not be the basis for your identity. It should be a footnote to the person that you are. I don't agree with every stance the Democratic Party takes. Does anyone agree with everything their chosen politician stands for? The only person who has walked this earth and lived a blameless life was Jesus. Your congressman, even the handsome one, is a majorly flawed human being. We are all making though decisions, weighing options, and trying to go with our conscience. Where mine leads me might not be where yours leads you. That's the lovely outcome of freethinking people." (p. 66)

Finding Freedom by Erin French

I remembered liking Erin French's cookbook The Lost Kitchen, so when I saw that she had a memoir coming out I wanted to check it out. I love a good food/chef memoir. But, honestly I wish I hadn't read this one. Her life was so awful that it's honestly a miracle that she's created such a successful restaurant against all odds. Her parents owned a local diner and Erin grew up helping out there and that's where she learned to cook. But, her father was an alcoholic and a MEAN one, so he never encouraged her, only berated her when she did something wrong. She and her sister are 21 months apart in age, but don't get along at all and often go years with no communication. She got pregnant at 21 and had to drop out of college. Just when she started getting on her feet with her son, she meets her future-husband Tom who is almost her father's age. The way she described their relationship starting I honestly didn't understand why she ever got together with him. Maybe telling the story in hindsight she could see all the red flags she ignored (there were a LOT), but either way they get married and he adopts her son. Oh, but guess what? Tom is also a mean alcoholic. So, Erin turns to Xanax and alcohol to cope with her POS husband and trying to run the restaurant she just started. Then, her husband has her involuntarily committed after a fight, closes her restaurant, and gets primary custody of her son using the commitment against her. Isn't this sounding like a great time already? So, at the age of 33 she is back living with her parents and trying to scrape her life back together. Honestly, the last section of the book is the only (mostly) redeeming and hopeful part of the whole book. She does manage to re-launch her restaurant, divorce Tom, and get half custody of her son, but it's still a LONG way from even a kind of happy ending. The one part that made me the happiest was that Erin's mother ended up divorcing her father after seeing Erin go through her ridiculously bitter divorce and come out on the other side happier. But, it's obvious that Erin is still trying to get her father's approval through her restaurant which is sad. I think she desperately needs some therapy if she's not getting it because just reading about her life made me feel depressed. I would not recommend this one.

Frontier Follies: adventures in marriage and motherhood in the middle of nowhere by Ree Drummond

This is a fun and light-hearted collection of essays by Ree Drummond, better known as the Pioneer Woman. She covers stories from when she was first married and adjusting to ranch life all the way up to the present talking about sending her two oldest kids off to college and their newer foster son. In typical Ree fashion the stories are mostly funny and self-deprecating. One of the funniest, in my opinion, was a group showing up for a Lodge tour but accidentally coming to Ree's actual house where she was in the tub. Overall, a good, light-hearted, and fun read. This was exactly what I needed after the last book I read that was super depressing!