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My new Bookslut Column is up: The Magic of Mushrooms, in which I gush even more about mushroom hunting, and review the following books: The Complete Mushroom Book: Savory Recipes for Wild and Cultivated Varieties by Antonio Carluccio, MUSHROOM FEAST: A Celebration of all Edible Fungi, Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes by Jane Grigson, and The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
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My new cookbook column is up at Bookslut. And weirdly enough, it’s on a similar topic as the Bourdain Techniques show I also wrote about this morning. Here’s a little excerpt: There are a lot of cookbooks that wash up at my door these days, and while they’re all interesting, most of them are just full of recipes. Often, they’re interesting recipes, and many times they are recipes I’d like to eat if someone served them to me, but I’m probably not going to go out and source them just to cook one recipe. What I want are more cookbooks…
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I’m sure no one will be surprised to learn that my major decorating theme around here is piles of books. I have bookshelves, and even a wee library in my basement office, but the books, they still seem to pile up. So here are a few things I’ve been reading lately: This terrific article about how the David Foster Wallace archives found a home at the Ransom Center in Texas. We had our first glimpse into Wallace’s creative process in 2005 with our acquisition of the papers of Don DeLillo. Unexpectedly, the archive included a small cache of letters between…
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A seven minute recording of Virginia Woolf (with thanks to Paul Lisicky for the re-tweet). Paul says she doesn’t sound like the Woolf in his head, but I’m afraid she sort of does sound like the Woolf in my head. Or some combo of this and Vanessa Redgrave’s Mrs. Dalloway. It took me a long time to come to love Woolf’s work. If you’re not a fan, I recommend the letters — she’s scathingly funny and an unrepentant gossip. MOBYLIVES » “Words, words, words” as Hamlet lamented…..
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My new column at Bookslut, After Julie/Julia: The New Generation of Food Blog-to-Books, is up: I take on The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy, Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking With What You’ve Got and The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove.
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It’s Sunday, which means the intertubes are full of book reviews. Here are a few links to things I’m thinking about or wanting to read. Patti Smith: Just Kids: I’ve been really riveted by the press for this one. I love Patti Smith — she’s so absolutely who she is and she’s so relentlessly followed her dreams. This Fresh Air interview is incredibly touching The Guardian UK review And a Guardian UK interview A slightly snarky review from the New York Times Amy Bloom, one of my all-time favorite writers has a new collection of short stories: Where the God…
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I haven’t read No Logo yet, but like Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, it’s going on my list of interlibrary loan requests. I found this a couple of days ago, and in light of the forthcoming State of the Union, toward which I wish I was feeling less jaded, it’s an interesting take on what’s been frustrating some of us on the progressive side of the political spectrum. Enough with the task forces, and the pronouncements, and all of that. Just DO Something. Like ram health care through. I was thinking last night while…
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Elizabeth Gilbert is interviewed at Jacket Copy, the LA Times book blog, where among a number of interesting things, she has this to say: You said before that it’s a youthful impulse to think of oneself as exceptional. You’ve traveled a lot — is that also an American trait? Very. Very very very very. That’s something I’m seeing more and more, being married to somebody who is South American versus North American. He marvels at it. And he thinks, as many people do, it’s the best, and most shocking, thing about Americans. That sense of exceptionalism, and the honest and…
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Powell’s reprinted my latest Bookslut essay on The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Go take a look and maybe even buy something from them. I highly recommend the Indispensibles program — like getting a surprise present every six weeks.