October 2026 Cookbook Reviews

 

Oversharing: anytime snacks, everyday dinners, and cooking for company by Cortney LaCorte

Cortney LaCorte became known for her over-the-top cheeseboards, but in this cookbook she moves beyond appetizers or snack boards. While there is a chapter on appetizers, there are also chapters on weeknight dinners and "when to wow" dinners, along with sides, desserts, and cocktails. There are several recipes I'd like to try in here. She also includes tips throughout the book and also has a section on how to craft your own cheeseboard. Overall, there looks like a lot of good recipes in here.

Garden Variety: plant-focused recipes inspired by my garden by Timothy Pakron

I'm a big gardener and love cookbooks focused on fresh, seasonal vegetables. I'm not a vegetarian but I do love vegetables and I'm always looking for new ways to cook or try them. I thought this would be a cookbook I would love, but there really weren't any recipes I wanted to try. I liked the author's introduction about how he grew up loving gardens and wanting his own garden as an adult. The recipes are organized like a typical cookbook - basics, breakfast, sides, soups, etc. The photographs throughout the book are beautiful, but I just didn't love the recipes.

October 2026 Reviews

 

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Evening Edition book club)

An unnamed young woman tells the story of how she met her much-older husband and the series of events that happened after he took her back to his English estate of Manderley. Maxim de Winter's first wife, Rebecca looms large at Manderley and the second Mrs. de Winter struggles to acclimate as the new mistress.

I know this book is considered a Classic but I did not like it at all. I know it's probably the time period it was written in, but it was WAY TOO LONG. Almost NOTHING happened until 250 pages in. And I just hate books where the main female character is supposed to an ahead-of-her-time-feminist when really she just married an old rich guy. This unnamed narrator wouldn't be seen as a feminist, but the whole plot line is so slow and awkward. You supposedly love this guy, so TALK TO HIM. If they had had ONE real conversation about his past relationship, the storyline would have been vastly different. And by the way, you should have at least ONE real conversation before you marry someone. I'll be interested to see what my book club thinks of this one.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Books & Banter book club)

I grew up watching the Disney movie version of The Jungle Book but had never read the book until now. I was more surprised that Mowgli's story was less than half of the book. I honestly didn't love his story maybe because of still picturing the Disney version of the story. The first part when the wolves find him is pretty good, but the other two stories are odd and leave you hanging. The wolves are no longer accepting Mowgli and humans aren't accepting him either - so now what? No idea because that's where the story stops.

I did really enjoy "The White Seal" story and I was hoping in "Toomai of the Elephants" that the elephants were going to escape and go back to being wild. I didn't love that for the most part, the animals in the stories seemed to be content to be used by the humans. Overall, I didn't love it. I think this would go WAY over most kids heads too.

The Genius Bat by Yossi Yovel

I love bats so this one was definitely something that sounded right up my alley. While there was a lot of great bat information, it was much more science and scientist heavy than I was hoping. Yossi Yovel is a scientist and professor who's spent most of his career researching and studying bats. He knows a lot and is very involved in the bat science world. I found that most of the chapters had about 25% bat content that would be interesting to the non-scientist reader and 75% about very detailed experiments and/or too much information about various bat scientists. I'm sure other scientists would enjoy this book, but for the average nonfiction reader, it was was too heavy on science and too light on interesting bat info. There is a section with 33 photographs of different bats which is nice, but only the scientific name is listed. Why not include both the scientific name and the common name? Overall, this was a harder book to read and I did skim over some of the sections that were very experiment heavy. There are other books about bats that are more geared toward the general reader.