From Sourcebooks, I received a free e-book of Rustic Joyful Food Meant to Share by Danielle Kartes. I first checked out the table of contents. There I discovered recipes “For Friendship + Company,” “For Comfort + Family,” “For Fun + Littles,” “For Love,” “Sweets,” and “Drinks.”
On closer inspection of “For Comfort + Family,” I found several recipes of interest. Each section begins with an introduction to that section. By giving each section a personal introduction, Dnaielle Kartes makes the cook feel part of her family. The first recipe I tried was Chimichurri Chicken Meatballs with Herbed Greek Yogurt, Red Quinoa, and Green Beans. Each part of the recipe is clear and gives even the novice cook confidence. The Quick Creole Shrimp Etoufee with Butter Lettuce and Mushroom Salad also is a winner.
The book is full of colorful, enticing photographs of the completed recipes. The table settings themselves are also enticing. See examples below.
Kartes pairs sides with main dishes, thus giving any cook a complete meal without having to search through different pages or other cookbooks to complement the main course.
“Fun + Littles” is a whole chapter on cooking with kids. When my boys were little, they often helped in the kitchen. As adults, they both continued cooking for themselves and sometimes for their dad and me. The recipes in this section are kid-friendly in taste and preparation.
Rustic Joyful Food Meant to Share is colorful and enticing. While I enjoy holding a cookbook in my hand and perusing the recipes, I found this ebook quite useful. I opened it on my iPad in the kitchen and found the recipes I wanted to try. I highly recommend Rustic Joyful Food Meant to Share!
Receiving the free book from Sourcebooks has not influenced my review.
On the left is the American cover, in the middle is the UK cover, and on the right is Annie Lyons
After waiting quite some time, my hold at the library on The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons became available. I picked up the book from the curbside service and began reading as soon as I got home.
Eudora Honeysett, 85, is old and tired. She lives alone and has no family. She keeps to herself, enjoying her own company and that of her irascible cat Montgomery. She often swims at the nearby community center, always alone. One day as she returned home from her swim, Eudora fell and her neighbor Stanley, a widower, sees her fall and rushes to help her. Although Eudora brushes him off, he insists upon calling an ambulance.
Later, Stanley teases Eudora that she was tipsy and fell. He enjoys teasing others, always with good nature. In the end, Eudora is thankful for Stanley’s intervention because a social worker visits Eudora and gives her a cane which turns out to be useful in keeping her balance.
Eudora’s next-door neighbors moved away and now a new family is moving into the house. Eudora hopes this family will “keep to themselves like the last family.” However, Eudora does not reckon with the indomitable Rose Trewidney, age 10. Rose, her mom, and dad have bought the house next door to Eudora. They are also expecting a second daughter to arrive soon.
Rose and her mother Maggie introduce themselves to Eudora; immediately, Rose is full of questions and also eager to make friends with Montgomery. Although Eudora tells Rose that Montgomery is not friendly, the cat warms to Rose quickly, never offering to bite or scratch her.
Eudora has decided to die on her own terms. She is old and ready to go. She contacts a clinic in Switzerland about its death with dignity program. Over the phone, Eudora meets Petra, the counselor who will guide Eudora through the application process. Petra asks questions about Eudora’s mental health and whether she is depressed. Petra is kind and listens as Eudora explains that she is alone, no family at all, and that she is ready to end her life. Petra gently tells Eudora that the application process will take time and that a doctor will review the application and make the decision about whether to accept Eudora into the program.
Rose continues to visit Eudora and worms herself into Eudora’s perfectly ordered life. Eudora cannot be rude to the child, so Rose makes little inroads into Eudora’s life. Rose also likes Stanley, so he is often included in Rose’s schemes.
As the story progresses, readers learn about Eudora’s background and how she has come to be all alone. Her dear father is killed during WWII. Her mother, Beatrice, is never the same after her husband dies; she becomes bitter and difficult. At the time, Beatrice was pregnant with Stella, Eudora’s sister. Sadly, Beatrice never bonds with Stella and they are often at odds with Eudora as the peacemaker.
Lyons gives readers pieces of Eudora’s backstory interspersed with the current day’s story. That way, readers slowly understand what has made Eudora standoffish, keeping to herself.
Readers cannot help but like Rose who calls herself a fashion advisor. She dresses very colorfully with a wide array of adornments. Here’s an example of one of Rose’s splendid outfits; Rose appears wearing a “sparkling ‘Fashion Guru’ T-shirt teamed with purple Hawaiian shorts, silver flip-flops, and a matching bandanna.”
As the story continues to unfold, Eudora, Stanley, and Rose become BFFs, at least that what Rose says. In the end, that is true. Will Eudora go through with her decision to go to Switzerland for her death with dignity? If so, how will Rose understand her loss of her BFF? Read the story to discover the full story of Eudora’s past and her present. You will be glad. Eudora, Stanley, Rose, Maggie, and Ron, Rose’s dad, will all stay with you as friends.
Annie Lyons has published several novels after working as a bookseller and in publishing. In 2009, she lost her job, having been made redundant, so she was a stay-at-home mom. She enrolled in a creative writing course and started her first novel, Not Quite Perfect, published in 2013. She has continued to write and publish since then. Discover more about Lyons here: https://annielyons.com/.
I received a copy of How the Deer Moon Hungers by Susan Wingate from BookTrib. My review reflects my own views and has not been biased by receiving the free book. Wingate, https://www.susanwingate.com/, has written over fifteen novels as well as nonfiction.
How the Dear Moon Hungers won several awards: Best Fiction in the 2020 Pacific Book Award Winner, the 2020 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for Young Adult Novels, and the July 2020 Elite Choice Book Awards.
The story centers on Mackenzie, Mac, Fraser and how her life spirals out of control when she witnesses her younger sister being hit and killed by a drunk driver. Sadly, Mac’s mother blames Mac for not protecting her sister.
Clearly, Mac and her mother are both grieving and the mother does not realize the rift in her relationship with her remaining daughter she is creating. To compound Mac’s problems, she is sent to juvenile incarceration because of a bogus drug charge. Readers will feel outraged at the mother because of her blaming Mac, but they will experience additional feelings of anger at a system that then pushes Mac into critical danger in the institution.
Wingate is a talented writer at creating a teenage girl who faces tremendous odds in her life. Readers should read the whole story to see whether Mac can overcome the terrible events and come out on the other side whole and ready to face adulthood.
I particularly like the two endings of the book. Again, readers will have to find those for themselves. For book clubs, How the Deer Moon Hungers will produce a lively discussion. I can envision members of a book club who would tear Uma, Mac’s mom, to pieces for her treatment of her living daughter. Others will defend her actions and her words because of her extreme grief. Most members will certainly feel empathy for Mac as she struggles in the aftermath of two severe events in her teenage life.
After her husband’s death, Katie Beringer’s friends encouraged her to try online dating. When she took the chance, “little did she know the roller coaster ride that awaited her.” She admits that her “mission with this ‘tough love’ book is to give the empowered females the tools to quickly screen out the wrong guys.”
Beringer has several focal points in her writing. One of them is to let readers know that “she does not play matchmaker.” Part of her motivation for writing the book is to share her adventures and misadventures with online dating. Additionally, Beringer’s book includes chapters on knowing the language of online dating and research and ratings on the plethora of dating websites.
He Said What? is also a cautionary book. Beringer states the danger of sexting with a “WARNING: Once technology captures that image . . . it is out there forever, for all to see!” Another point for online daters to remember are her words, “just because someone desires you does not mean that they value you.” While the book is replete with good advice, another one to consider is “don’t beat a dead horse. As much as you may like him, if you are the only one reciprocating, that is a sign to move on. . . .Actions speak louder than words, and they’re not reciprocating engagement with you, then they are just are not that into you. Let them go.”
Online dating can be an invitation to cons. While it’s doubtful that avoiding being duped by a con is 100% foolproof, Beringer’s book has enough useful information to help those who venture into the world of online dating. He Said What? should provide a lot of discussion for adult club members.
I received a copy of He Said What? from BookTrib for a review of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are mine.
My house is not all that high-tech, but the dishwasher does sometimes give me nasty messages telling me I have not loaded the dishes properly. Or the washing machine refuses to complete a load of clothes because I failed to press the appropriate button. Still, I don’t feel threatened by these occurrences. However, that is certainly not true of Cecelia Holmes in A Woman Alone.
I received a copy of A Woman Alone by Nina Laurin from BookTrib. The review that follows is unbiased. We currently live in a technology-driven world. Homes and cars become more high-tech by the day. What happens when one’s house starts spying on one and even puts one in danger?
On the front of the book, readers will see two admonitions: “Someone’s watching. Don’t turn around.” These both represent sound advice. The story quickly draws readers into a mystery and dangers, especially for Cecelia Holmes, housewife.
Cecelia lives in a SmartHome. It has extreme security which Scott, Cecelia’s husband, convinces her it is a selling feature. The house does all the work for her including knowing how to cook her daughter’s oatmeal. That leaves Cecelia to do exactly what?
After being in the home only a short time, Cecelia finds reasons to be uneasy because her house is spying on her and also creating dangers. The first danger occurs when her daughter’s oatmeal, prepared by the kitchen appliances, makes the oatmeal dangerously hot instead of the temperature it should be for the little girl.
Then once she has Taryn, her daughter, safely in preschool, Cecelia returns home for a relaxing bath. The water is supposed to be the optimum temperature; instead, it is so hot, it burns Cecelia’s foot, causing her to jerk away from the tub. What is going on? First the oatmeal is dangerously hot and now her bath?
These two instances mark the beginning of a nightmare for Cecelia. Is she being driven mad? Is her home trying to kill her or send her running? Or is something more sinister afoot?
This review contains no spoilers. Readers will have to read the whole story to see what is behind the sinister happenings and to discover whether Cecelia and Taryn remain safe since Scott and the neighbors choose to mock Cecelia and her fears.
Nina Laurin has written three other psychological thrillers. She speaks and reads Russian, French, and English and writes in English. When she was a student at Concordia U, Laurin wrote and published her first novel, Girl Last Seen. Her second book is What My Sister Knew and it was followed by The Starter Wife. Learn more about Laurin and her writing at her Web site: https://www.ninalaurin.com/.
Perhaps reading a novel about the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic is a strange choice during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Still, I found The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue fascinating. The situation in the Dublin hospital featuring a nurse midwife, a doctor, and a volunteer helper in a tiny ward set aside for pregnant women with the flu is beyond dire.
Julia Power works long, hard hours in the tiny ward trying to save women who are pregnant and also suffering from the flu. Dr. Kathleen Lynn, who is being hunted by the police for being a rebel instigator, joins the overworked hospital staff. Then Julia finds Bridie Sweeney, a young orphan from the nearby convent, has been assigned to help in the ward.
Bridie is a refreshing addition to the ward. She has no medical training, but she is quick to learn. Julia is impressed with Bridie’s ability to remember the instructions Julia gives. Also, Bridie instinctively acts in a caring manner to the suffering women.
During the three days covered by the story, mothers and babies die and others are saved, despite the lack of adequate medical supplies. The women work tirelessly to care for the poor women in their ward. A male doctor waltzes in now and then and always wants to try invasive and dangerous treatments on the women. Nurse Julia carefully maneuvers him into making a less drastic decision or persuades him to wait and come back later.
The difficulties of surviving a pregnancy in a time when many women and babies both die during childbirth coupled with the flu epidemic creates a compelling story. Readers feel the compassion and frustration Nurse Powell experiences. She must rely on her wits since she has little help and few supplies.
The story will pull readers into the tragedies and the uplifting success when mother and baby survive not only childbirth, but also the flu itself.
I received copies of Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten from The Book Club Cookbook. At 467 pages, Tsarina could be daunting to some readers. It is, in fact, a very readable story. However, one must be prepared for a great deal of violence—violence against women and children, but also against men, including the Tsar’s own son.
The story opens in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1725. Peter the Great is on his death bed. Who will rule Russia upon his death? Peter the Great’s son is dead, murdered by his own father. That leaves the throne open to whom?
Catherine Alexeyevna, Peter the Great’s second wife, took the throne herself even though she could not read and write. Not only that, Catherine had been born into extreme poverty, an out-of-wedlock child. Her beauty, wit, perceptive intelligence, and ambition took her from being practically a slave and a washerwoman to the Tsarina of Russia.
Peter’s brutality knows no bounds. He had his first wife imprisoned and later had her tongue cut out so she could not speak. Peter continued to take other lovers even as his marriage to Catherine. Often, these other lovers flaunted the relationship in Catherine’s face, but she always remained the victor in the relationship.
Catherine herself was not above cruelty, sabotaging a relationship Peter had with a beautiful young woman who promised him a son.
Catherine gave birth to twelve of the Tsar’s children, but only two girls survived to adulthood. All of the others were stillborn or lived only a short time. One daughter lived to be seven, but she died at the same time as her father, so they were buried the same day.
The words ruthless, powerful, ambitious, splendor, opulence, and cruelty are pervasive throughout the story. Alpsten opens the story with Peter’s death; then she cycles back to Catherine’s beginnings when she was known as Marta.
A series of unfortunate and fortunate events eventually led the beautiful Marta into the Tsar’s realm where she became his mistress. When the Tsar married Marta, he gave her the name Catherine Alexeyevna.
Ellen Alpsten graduated from L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and became a news anchor for Bloomberg TV in London. Tsarina is her debut novel.
Thanks to Sourcebooks, I received a copy of a delightful Christmas book: Grandma’s Sugar Cookie by Rose Rossner and illustrated by Kathryn Selbert. Opening the book to the frontispiece, readers are immediately drawn in by the colorfully decorated cookies and gingerbread men.
Further cheerful, Christmas decorations continue throughout the book. Instead of a variety of children of all ethnicity, Selbert has drawn a number of different animals, starting with two bears who are baking chocolate chip cookies.
The pages continue with each page describing ways grandmothers love their grandchildren. I also like the names Rossner has included for grandmother: Grandma, Grammy, Nana, Mimi, Nanny, Gram Gram, Granny, Gran, and Gigi. My favorite of those is Nanny because that’s what we called my maternal grandmother.
Grandma’s Sugar Cookie ends with a recipe for the cookie, a delightful, sweet ending for this board book.
I discovered The Book Club Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Vicky Levy Krupp. That discovery led me to the Web site, https://www.bookclubcookbook.com/, where I learned about the authors and their passion for reading, books, and authors along with matching recipes to books for book clubs. There, I also learned about receiving books for my book club.
Circle of Readers, my book club, was lucky enough to be selected to receive copies of Home for the Holidays by Sara Richardson. We will be discussing the book soon. After I received the books for our members, Richardson’s editor contacted me to ask if we would like Ms. Richardson to join us via Zoom when we discuss the book. The answer was a resounding YES! We are now looking forward to having Ms. Richardson join us next week for our discussion of Home for the Holidays.
Home for the Holidays turned out to be just the kind of story I needed at this time. COVID-19 cases continue to rage in OK and elsewhere. We hear about unrest and political division. Home for the Holidays provided just the diversion I sought.
The story revolves around three sisters who receive invitations to visit a beloved aunt at her home in CO during Christmas. They all have fond memories of spending holidays at the Juniper Inn Resort with their aunt and their mother. Unfortunately, their mother and her sister, their aunt, had some sort of spat and their mother kept them away from the resort and their aunt for years.
Now adults, Dahlia, Magnolia, and Rose, the sisters, all agree for reasons of their own to spend the holiday in CO with their aunt. I especially enjoyed the way the aunt asks each girl to spend the holiday with her. She writes a letter to the girls and sends each one a special gift from the past. For Dahlia, she sends the “snowflake music box that always sat on the mantel.” Magnolia receives “my Christmas tree rolling pin” and reminds her how much they enjoyed making Christmas cookies together. Finally, for Rose, Aunt Sassy chooses “the angel that sat atop the Christmas tree.”
Dahlia feels at loose ends because she and her husband have divorced and he is taking his new love and Maya, 8, and Ollie, 5, their two children, on a holiday to France. Knowing she will be alone for Christmas prompts her to accept Aunt Sassy’s invitation. Magnolia feels estranged from her husband, the love of her life, because they have been unable to conceive a baby. The in vitro treatments have taken a toll on their relationship both emotionally and financially. She decides time apart will do them both good. Finally, Rose is engaged to a wildly successful, rich man who adores her, but she feels pressured by his mother and hers to make decisions about a high society wedding she finds more and more confining. As a result, she impetuously accepts the invitation too, needing time away from the pressures to think.
Aunt Sassy introduces her nieces to several of the young men in town too. Colt runs the hardware store. In fact, the girls had played with him when they were all children, but their memories have dimmed. Dr. Ike Songer becomes a frequent visitor to Juniper Inn; he and Dahlia are developing a connection. When Dahlia asks Ike why he didn’t practice in Denver where he could clearly make more money, he explains “I wanted to be in a small town where I could get to know my patients as people outside of the office.” He also loves the snowy winters.
Some of my favorite lines are listed below:
After Rose decorates the tree in the town park, Colt thanks her. She responds, “I was happy to help out.” In her thoughts, readers see her reflecting: “More than happy. She loved it here. Loved the mountains hemming in the town. Loved this park and how it seemed to be a gathering place.”
Dahlia makes spreadsheets when she frets. “There was something calming about those rows and columns all lined up and perfectly symmetrical. The order, the complete visual organization always put her at ease.”
Aunt Sassy tells Dahlia about Colt’s father’s death: “[Aunt Sassy] smiled but the sorrow seemed to dull her bright eyes.”
When Dahlia knows she will be alone with Ike, she feels “her nerves churning through her stomach.”
Home for the Holidays contains plenty of drama since each sister has fled from her respective home for her own reasons. Readers find happy resolutions to the problems even if the resolution may be unexpected. In these days of uncertainty and discord, Sara Richardson has provided readers with a good antidote the that anxiety and disharmony in Home for the Holidays.
Sara Richardson has published a number of books about “love, friendship, and family.” Certainly, Home for the Holidays fits into those categories. Publishers Weekly calls her stories “emotionally rich, charmingly funny, and sensitive.” Richardson has a master’s degree in journalism. She lives in CO where she teaches Pilates and enjoys hiking near her home. Richardson, http://www.sararichardson.com/, will be publishing The Summer Sisters in July 2021; it is a follow-up to Home for the Holidays.
An addition to the review above: Sara Richardson met on Zoom with the Circle of Readers. She is delightful, warm and engaging. We had a lively discussion of Home for the Holidays. Sara was kind enough to give us a few teasers about the upcoming sequel, The Summer Sisters, which will be published in July 2021.
Although I had read parts of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, I had never read the whole book until recently. I was prompted to read the book because it was a book club selection. The book is difficult to read because Kingston mixes myth and realty throughout the book. I had to read carefully to distinguish between the two. It reminded me somewhat of The Library of Legends by Janie Chang. That book is fiction, but it also requires careful reading since it incorporates myth into the story.
The Woman Warrior has received praise and condemnation. I don’t need to give further information since the book is well-known. Suffice it to say that once again, belonging to a book club pushes me to read books I would not ordinarily read. The book was part Let’s Talk About It, Oklahoma! The program is sponsored by the Oklahoma Humanities. It is a program that brings scholars to the community for the discussions and is a valuable program.
