Thursday, June 26, 2025

Transcription by Kate Atkinson -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

"Miss Armstrong! Miss Armstrong! Can you hear me?".

-- from Transcription by Kate Atkinson.

Transcription came out in 2019 and sat unread on my shelf until last week. I regret not reading it immediately because I loved it. 

It is the story of a young woman who gets recruited during WWII to work for MI5. After the war, she goes to work for the BBC, but her past intrudes on her new life. Atkinson tells the exciting, comlpicated story with her usual charm and subtle humor. 


YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Transcription:
Nor did they have any idea that Godfrey Toby worked for MI5 and was not the Gestapo agent to whom they thought they were bringing traitorous information. And they would have been very surprised to know that the following day a girl sat at a big Imperial typewriter in the flat next door and transcribed those traitorous conversations, one top copy and two carbons at a time.
FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.

Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.


Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Favorite Books -- BOOK THOUGHTS

 


BOOK THOUGHTS

Favorite Books

Here are two dozen of my favorite books. Think of this as a sort of Meet the Book Blogger post. I pulled these favorite fiction and favorite nonfiction books off my shelves to illustrate the types of books I like to read. They aren't my favorite books of all times, but they are favorites that I've kept around. All have survived several shelf purges, proving they really are favorite books. 

One thing you can tell from these favorites is I don't run out to read the latest book. My TBR shelves overflow with dated popular fiction, "modern" classics from the 20th Century, and books that were never popular but caught my eye. I read a lot of crime fiction and dabble with a few romance novels now and again, but there are several genres I rarely, if ever, read, like sci-fi, fantasy, erotica, and horror. 

As for nonfiction, I love food writing, travel writing of the expat memoir variety, biographies of Midcentury socialites (there's a sub-genre for you!), style guides (as in writing style, not clothes), coffee table books about home decorating, and books about books.   

Do we share any tastes in books? Here are some of my favorites.



 FAVORITE FICTION

📗 The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

📗 Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

📗 The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

📗 Independence Day by Richard Ford

📗 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

📗 Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

📗 Mating by Norman Rush

📗 Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

📗 Transcription by Kate Atkinson

📗 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

📗 Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

📗 American Tabloid by James Ellroy



FAVORITE NONFICTION

📘 Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

📘 The Library Book by Susan Orlean

📘 Wait for Me! By Deborah Mitford

📘 The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage by Kingsley Amis

📘 Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor

📘 Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

📘 My Life in France by Julia Child

📘 The Food of France by Waverley Root

📘 Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

📘 The Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

📘 Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government by P.J. O’Rourke

Have you read any of these? Would you?




Thursday, June 19, 2025

BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

The internet is down (again) in my neighborhood. So please bear with me for this makeshift Book Beginnings on Friday. I had to do the post on my phone, which is crazy making. 

Which is why there is an old picture of my husband and cat instead of a book. 

Mr. Linky is not letting me log in on my phone  so please leave a link to your Book Beginnings posting a comment. ASAP I will get the linky box back and, if possible, add your links  

This happened a couple of weeks ago and we didn’t get internet back for almost two days. You don’t think about how much you use it until it’s gone! 

Please make do with me for now. And join me next week for, I hope, normal Book Beginnings on Friday. 




Saturday, June 14, 2025

My Reviews of Three Food Memoirs -- WEEKEND COOKING



WEEKEND COOKING
My Reviews of Three Food Memoirs

Food-centric memoirs are a favorite subgenre of mine. I recently read three of them back-to-back, which felt like gluttony even to me. That doesn’t mean I am not looking forward to the next one to pop up on my TBR shelf!


Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten

My sister gave me Be Ready When the Luck Happens for Christmas, knowing I would enjoy it as much as she did. She was spot on. I loved everything about it. Well, I wish it had more recipes – there are only a handful – but that just gives me the excuse to try Ina Garten's cookbooks.

My reaction surprised me a bit. I really didn't know anything about Ina Garten before I read this new memoir. I knew she is famous, had a business called The Barefoot Contessa, and posted a pandemic video of a giant cosmo cocktail that went viral. But I never watched her on tv and don't have any of her cookbooks. I was curious, though and I love reading about food people, so I looked forward to reading it. It didn't disappoint. What an interesting life!

The book starts with Garten’s childhood, which was not all that nice. Her parents were not supportive. In fact, they were psychologically, and sometimes physically, abusive. Now, as a woman in her 70s who’s clearly had plenty of counseling, she has distance from this background and can reflect on the wisdom she gained from it. Most of the book is about her marriage to Jeffrey and her career. Theirs is a long and successful marriage, but it had rough patches early on, even a lengthy separation. The support Jeffrey gave her, and her difficult childhood, are touchstones for Garten and she returns to both throughout the book.

My favorite thing about the book was learning about her career. She was working for the White House Office of Management and Budget, writing nuclear policy, and bored out of her socks, when she up and decided to buy The Barefoot Contessa food shop in the Hamptons. After 18 years, she wanted to do something new, so turned her hand to writing cookbooks. That led to TV shows, magazine columns, and other ventures. As a woman who started and ran my own business for the last 12 years, Garten’s risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit appeal to me enormously. I loved hearing about her professional growth and need for new business challenges. She is inspiring.


A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

Unfortunately, I did not care for the second food memoir I read nearly as much as I loved Ina Garten’s book. A Homemade Life has been sitting on my TBR shelf for a while now, so I included it in my stack of books for the TBR 25 in ’25 Challenge. I’m glad I read it, and even more glad to get it off my shelf. But it wasn’t for me. I might be too old for it.

Molly Wizenberg is a self-taught chef (like Garten) who started a food blog called Orangette back in 2004. The blog led to this book, a 2009 memoir (with recipes) of her life from childhood to her wedding in 2008. That description appealed to me and is what made me buy the book in the first place. But the execution didn’t live up to my expectations.

It's not that the book or the recipes are bad. Wizenberg writes well and generally knows how to tell a good story. It’s just that she didn’t strike me as someone who really likes food or knows much about cooking. For example, she described wanting to make (up) a cake with apricots and honey baked into the top. But she put the apricots filled with honey on top of the cake batter before it went into the oven and was surprised that the apricots sunk! Even my husband knows that if you want fruit on the top of the cake, you put it in the bottom of the pan. Flip over, fruit on top. It’s not a mystery.

As for not really liking food, I’m sure she does – she made it her life. But she had an odd relationship with food and no clear philosophy about food and cooking. Like, does she view cooking as a private pleasure for herself and family? Or does she prefer cooking as a form of hospitality and entertainment? Does she like basic recipes, traditional cooking, festive meals? She never frames her approach to food. The book has bits of all those things, in no particular order. For instance, it sounds like she was a vegetarian for a while, so many (too many in my opinion) of the recipes are for baked goods and salad. But then she’s roasting chickens and making meatballs, with no explanation for why she switched. Her boyfriend/husband was a vegetarian and the master of making dinner out of a few scraps of things. That might have been interesting to experience, but not so much to read about. For example, I really don’t believe that a “salad” made by piling arugula and fresh figs on a chopping board with a hunk of “hard cheese” and – yes – chocolate shavings would be good. And no, I don’t need to try it myself. I’ll pass, like I wish I had passed on the book.


Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

The third of my food memoirs was Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl’s first memoir. I’ve read all her other nonfiction and one of her novels, so I know about how Reichl went from writing restaurant reviews in Los Angeles to be the restaurant reviewer at the New York Times and then Editor of Gourmet magazine until it shut down in 2009. This book is about her life before she became a restaurant reviewer.

Like Garten, Reichl had a difficult childhood. Her parents were loving, but her mother was bipolar. Reichl describes what it was like growing up in the chaotic environment her mother’s illness created, how that experience shaped her, and how (also like Garten) it led in part to her early marriage.

Knowing from her other books how her career took off later, this one was interesting, but not riveting like it was to read about her later life. But Reichl’s origin story is still worth reading, if only for the anecdotes about living in a commune in Berkley and cooking at a cooperatively owned restaurant. I enjoyed it very much, the story and the recipes, but it didn't knock my socks off like her later books did. I am sure I would have reacted differently had I read it first.


NOTES

Weekend Cooking is a weekly blog event hosted by Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid ReaderBeth Fish Reads started the event in 2009 and bloggers have been sharing book and food related posts ever since.

My sister gave me the book book of Be Ready When the Luck Happens and I love it because it has a ton of photographs. But I decided to read the text with my ears because Garten reads the audiobook herself. I really like it when authors narrate their own nonfiction books. You get a better sense of the tone the author wanted to convey. 







Thursday, June 12, 2025

Brilliant, Beautiful, Bipolar by Liz Casper -- BOOK BEGINNINGS


BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Brilliant, Beautiful, Bipolar: How Losing My Mind Saved My Soul by Liz Casper

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING
The first thing you should know is that I avoided writing this book for several years until I could get some distance and perspective regarding all I have been through, as chronicled in this book. 
-- from the Prologue to Brilliant, Beautiful, Bipolar by Liz Casper.

Liz Casper was a successful doctor, entrepreneur, and mother who's life turned upside down when she developed bipolar disorder in her 50s. Her new memoir tells the story of her struggle to live with and heal from her devastating diagnosis. She tells her story with charm and self-deprecating, often sarcastic, humor. I raced through it, needing to know how her story ends. 

See the Publisher's Description below for more details. If you like a real-life thriller, this one is for you! 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Brilliant, Beautiful, Bipolar:
Steve Jobs was waiting for me [on my computer] and proceeded to show me my future: reality television show (starring Jerry and me, obviously), consumer products business, fashion brand, charitable foundation, and so forth. I was comforted knowing there was a master plan for me and didn't think to question the veracity of what I was seeing. 
FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION
Liz Casper is a former medical doctor, artis, and author from the Pacific Northwest. In her first book, BRILLIANT, BEAUTIFUL, BIPOLAR, Liz shares with us her personal journey before, during, and after her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. The book, set in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, chronicles Liz’s experience both living with and healing from this devasting diagnosis.

As a former 4th generation physician, Liz cared for innumerable patients in her career with mental health diagnoses, but it wasn’t until she was diagnosed herself that she truly understood what the mental health patient actually experiences, both in their own lives, and in society in general. Through her captivating storytelling, Liz allows us a rare glimpse into the fascinating world of bipolar disorder and the experiences one has when living through this kind of illness. Always entertaining, and highly educational,
BRILLIANT, BEAUTIFUL, BIPOLAR takes us on a rare voyage inside the mind of the manic, bipolar patient.


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