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Portuguese Irregular Verbs
Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith Published: 2006 Series: Portuguese Irregular Verbs Length: 128 pages This is a novella I picked up at the local charity book sale this year, and it’s essentially a series of short stories featuring the insufferable Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a language professor in Germany whose 1200 page magnum opus Portuguese Irregular Verbs was given the following review: “There is nothing more to be said on this subject. Nothing.” Each story features him with his various acquaintances as they as they stumble through increasingly absurd situations. The structure immediately brought to mind Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog),…
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The Amateur Gourmet
The Amateur Gourmet: How to Shop, Chop and Table Hop Like a Pro by Adam D. Roberts Published: 2007 Length: 208 pages I’ve read Adam Roberts’ weblog for nearly a decade now, starting just after this book was first published, and until I found it in a bookshop last month I completed forgot it existed. I’d always meant to pick it up, but it somehow didn’t happen for ten years. This isn’t like me. I’m amazing at buying books. You could make a very strong argument that I’m better at buying them than reading them. If you’ve ever read Roberts’ weblog, you’ll know that it’s his combination of enthusiasm and…
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The Dinner
The Dinner by Herman Koch Published: 2009 Narrated by: Clive Mantle Translated By: Sam Garrett (from Dutch in 2012) Length: 08:55 (292 pages) I’ve stated before that I enjoy unlikable curmudgeons for protagonists. Not in every book I read, but when I come across one I do consider it a treat. There’s something exciting about reading a character who completely personifies your worst Monday morning attitude, and this is one area where The Dinner succeeds. Two couples meet at an expensive restaurant. The husbands are brothers, one was a school teacher and the other is a politician months away from an inevitable win. Over the course of the dinner, a…
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The White Tiger
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Published: 2008 Length: 276 pages I picked this up on a whim at the used book sale last month. I hadn’t really heard anything about it, but it did win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, so I thought I’d take a chance on it. I’m glad I did, because this was a great little book. Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh. Adiga’s debut novel follows a young Indian boy named Balram Halwai, born the son of a rickshaw puller in Laxmangarh, as he sheds his caste and life of servitude to eventually become a Bangalore entrepreneur. He…
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Garlic and Sapphires
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl Published: 2005 Length: 334 pages This is Ruth Reichl’s memoir of the time she spent as the restaurant critic for The New York Times, from 1993 to 1999. It begins with her flying to the city after accepting the job and being recognized on the plane. These reviews could make or break a restaurant, and many chefs around the city made sure their staff knew who she was. If they could recognize her when she arrived at the restaurant, they could try to spoil her and help their review. Because of this, she began dressing in…
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Ex Libris
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman Published: 2000 Length: 162 pages I love books about books, but this is probably the first time I’ve read one so purely about the love of reading. Ex Libris is a collection of essays about the reading, storing, and sharing of books, something I imagine many people would find incredibly dull, but I love it. If you’re someone who spends their spare time reading book blogs, you probably will too. It begins with one of my favourite essays, Marrying Libraries, which recounts the compromises and sacrifices that go into the merging of two personal libraries. The bookshelves in the Loose…
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Gourmet Rhapsody
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery Published: 2000 Narrated by: Full cast Translated By: Alison Anderson (from French in 2009) Length: 04:03 (160 pages) A renown Parisian food critic, the greatest alive, is on his deathbed. He’s lived a life of eating, where food mattered more than the people around him, and in his last hours he strives to find comfort in that passion by tracing his memories back to the truest taste of his life, in an attempt to experience it again before he’s gone. This is presented as a series of vignettes, short scenes from his life. Half of the chapters are from his point of view as he…
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The Vintage Caper
The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle Published: 2009 Series: Sam Levitt #1 Length: 223 pages I love Peter Mayle’s Provence books, where he details his life after moving there from England. He apparently also has a series of detective novels that focus on food and wine, a combination of two things I enjoy quite a bit, so I thought I’d give them a try. Mayle’s a strong writer, and that does come through here, but the story itself was a bit silly. This follows Sam Settler, a once-thief now working as a private detective, as he tries to track down millions of dollars of stolen wine. I imagine his alliterative…
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French Milk
French Milk by Lucy Knisley Illustrated by: Lucy Knisley Published: 2007 Publisher: Touchstone Length: 188 pages I really enjoyed Relish when I read it last year, so I’ve been meaning to try Knisley’s other graphic novels since then. Her Wikipedia page shows five books released through publishers and a number of self-published works as well. This one is a food-centric travelogue through Paris, which ticked all the right boxes for me. Lucy Knisley wrote this at the age of twenty three while spending six weeks in Paris with her mother. It’s a great way to keep a journal, a mix of traditional journaling and illustration. I love the idea of…
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Heat
Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford Published: 2006 Narrated by: Michael Kramer Length: 12:17 (336 pages) I ignored this very popular book for years because I wasn’t that interested in restaurant culture. I love food and cooking, but the day-to-day schedule of a line cook, preparing the same thing every day, wasn’t something I found exciting. My assumption was that this would be the account of Bill Buford spending a month or two in a kitchen, waxing poetic about the strong work ethic and the screaming chefs, but it’s much more than that. He spent…
