Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked her Marriage, her Job, and her Sanity to Master the Art of Living

Food memoirs seem to be proliferating nowadays. Julie Powell, the author of this book, claims her fifteen minutes of fame too. Julie is a woman approaching thirty, in a dead-end job, married to her high school sweetheart but not ready to start a family yet. Prone to emotional outbursts, Julie is feeling anxious and unfulfilled. She decides to embark upon a project that will encompass her dual interests of writing and cooking. Julie begins writing a blog about her quest to cook all 524 recipes from notable chef Julia Child’s first cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” within one year. Newfound recognition from her “bleaders” (blog readers) gives fresh meaning to her life. Julie’s descriptions of friends and family members provide a humorous touch to her book. Some fictional touches, such as Paul Child’s imagined thoughts about his wife Julia, add to the story’s ambiance too.

Afternoon Book Discussions

Join us once a month, on a Wednesday afternoon from 1:00 to 2:00 pm, to discuss a fiction or non-fiction book selection. Coffee, tea and cookies are served. Books are available at the Circulation Desk four weeks before the discussion date. Our schedule is:

January 20th
"The Senator’s Wife" by Sue Miller

February 17th
"The Nanny Diaries" by Emma McLaughlin

March 17th
"The Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan

April 21st
"West of Then: A Mother, a Daughter and a Journey Past Paradise" by Tara Bray Smith

May 19th
"Snow in August" by Pete Hamill

June 16th
"The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story" by Diane Ackerman

Recipes for a Tasty Christmas

Here are three cookbooks to help you prepare for the Christmas holiday season.

“Christmas Cookies: 50 Recipes to Treasure for the Holiday Season” is a collection of a variety of Christmas cookies, along with guidelines on the baking, storage, and mailing of them. There also is information on how to host a holiday cookie swap and a cookie-decorating party.

“Southern Living Christmas Cookbook: All-New Ultimate Holiday Entertaining Guide” presents more than 350 holiday recipes, from appetizers to desserts, as well as 32 menus for the holidays and for parties during the rest of the year. You can host dinners, brunches, buffets, cocktail parties and more.

“Woman’s Day Christmas Cookies, Candies and Cakes” includes an abundance of recipes, with accompanying color photos, of a variety of shaped, drop and bar cookies along with those for cakes and candies.

Recent Book Selections by Staff

Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan, written by Ali Eteraz, is the story of the evolution of the author’s Muslim beliefs. Born into a Pakistani fundamentalist family, he immigrates to the United States as a teen and then returns later to Pakistan, but returns again to the U.S. after his life is threatened. Eteraz explores how his fundamentalist Muslim beliefs have taken a more moderate turn.

The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography, written by Simon Singh, is an account of the use of encryption and cryptography throughout history.

Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits by Dr. Wayne Dyer, is a guide to getting unstuck from all of the excuses that keep you from reaching your life goals.

Hardball, by mystery writer Sara Paretsky, features another adventure for female detective V.I. Warshawski. This time, she is involved with missing people, one who has been gone for forty years and other more recent cases.

One of Those Malibu Nights, written by Elizabeth Adler, combines mystery and romance, detectives and movie stars. A search for missing persons takes P.I. Mac Reilly from southern California, to Mexico, to the streets of Rome and the French countryside.

The Mermaid Chair

This novel, written by Sue Monk Kidd, is about Jessie Sullivan, a middle-aged housewife caught up in twin predicaments of marital tedium and empty nest syndrome. An emergency phone call leads her to rush to her childhood home on Egret Island just off the coast of South Carolina, also the home to a monastery in which her widowed mother works as a cook. Her mother inexplicably has mutilated herself. Jessie remains on an extended stay at Egret Island, leaving her husband behind, with two goals in mind: trying to help her mother heal in both body and spirit, and looking into what really happened when her father was killed in a boating accident years ago. Also part of the plot is the situation in which Jessie finds herself attracted to Brother Thomas, a monk who is a few months away from taking his final vows. What ensues between Jessie and Thomas helps both discover what their needs and desires are, and where to direct their lives.

North River: A Novel

Pete Hamill has written a period novel set in Depression-era Manhattan, filled with descriptive language and well-drawn characters. His protagonist, Dr. James Delaney, is a general practitioner who cares for all his patients with skill and compassion; his practice encompassing many of his poverty-stricken neighbors and the local Mafiosi. Always the devoted physician, Dr. Delaney is even more intently focused on his work now that his personal life has received a double blow with the disappearance of his wife (a suspected suicide) and his daughter’s elopement with a foreign revolutionary. Then, during a cold and snowy winter, the ice that forms Dr. Delaney’s lonely existence begins to melt when he receives the unexpected gift of his three-year-old grandson, left on the doorstep by the doctor’s daughter. Needing someone to help him with the child’s care, the doctor hires an immigrant woman who soon becomes an inseparable part of this newly-formed family. The plot moves along agreeably to a satisfying conclusion. Here is a story that shows how love and good people can reign supreme.

The Tenth Circle

Author Jodi Picoult mounts another expedition into the moral world of the American family. Daniel Stone is a work-at-home father who is a comic book artist and his wife Laura is an English professor at a local college specializing in Dante’s Inferno; their only child Trixie is a fourteen-year-old with a promising future. Then, Trixie’s world goes askew when she claims that she has been raped by her boyfriend. Daniel, as the parent closest to Trixie, doesn’t know how to bridge the sudden distance between them. Laura, who has secrets of her own, cannot handle the situation either.

The community turns against Trixie, favoring her ex-boyfriend, the local high school football hero, in the case. Trixie runs off to Alaska, where Daniel grew up as a white boy among the Eskimos. Here he acted out by cheating, stealing, and carrying out other delinquent activities in reaction to the teasing and bullying he received. Daniel ran away when he reached adulthood, vowing never to return and recreating himself as the modern father and mild-mannered man. When Daniel and Laura follow Trixie to Alaska, the situation comes to a boiling point and then reaches resolution, but not before some surprising events take place. The tenth circle in Dante’s Inferno is the worst area of Hell; the Stone family travels there and back in their quest for justice.

Comic book illustrations complement the storyline. This book is ideal for discussion.