Best of the Fall Reading List

Oh how I do love books. I am finding a library across the street is doing wonders for my reading habit, as I’m checking things out I wouldn’t otherwise buy. I often come home with stacks of books up to my eyebrows of chick lit, cookbooks and new fiction. I thought I’d share five of the highlights … with an emphasis on New England, relocating and cooking:

1. My Life in France by Julia Child
My mental file for Julia Child is an old stuffy woman who knows how to cook, and would also know that I don’t. I was way off! I picked this up in light of the Julie/Julia movie, blog and books as I wanted to get to the core of Julia to better understand Julie. It’s a very easy to read memoir of her move to Paris France and development of the now epic Mastering The Art of French Cooking. I really could relate to being a newly wed and moving to a strange new place. I admired the way she and her husband navigated the ex-pat crowd in Paris and finally found a company of fellow foodies that eventually led to the book.
Next up: Julie and Julia, My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell

2. Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman, Caroline Healey Dall edited by Helen R. Deese
Confession: I haven’t actually finished this one. Or gotten more than 100 pages into it. Granted its a THICK book of one woman’s diary that .. well, I’ll let the reviews say it better:

Dall, the daughter of an upper-class merchant family, kept a diary of 45 volumes—filled with personal anecdote, social observations and astute analysis—from the age of 16 in 1838, to her death in 1912. Dall’s involvement with a broad range of social change movements, including Transcendentalism, abolition and women’s suffrage, placed her at the center of the most important public debates over America’s political, religious, intellectual and social future.

Very interesting and easy to read, but I get worn out after a few pages. I’m thinking that I’ll come back to this one often and slowly work my way through it.
Next up: (perhaps in a few years…) The letters of John and Abigail Adams.

3. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
This one I did finish. In a day. Wow, you have to read this book. Here’s a teaser for you: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Reading pollan’s history and description of nutritionism and the role of industry and government to shape our horrendous national diet of processed foods was a wake up call. Eric found me in the kitchen going through our cupboards looking at the ingredients. I was shocked to realize even my trusty Raisin Bran has high fructose corn syrup.
Next up: Omnivores Dilemma by Pollan and anything by Mark Bittman.

4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
This one was really a delight and probably the best fiction I’ve read this year. I didn’t know what to expect from such an odd title, but in a series of letters between a writer in post world war II London to a small community on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, I was quickly drawn in and fell in love with the characters finding themselves, and each other, after the war. The insights into German occupation of Guernsey was an interesting historical point of view, that at times so sad it gutted me as I reached for tissues.
Next up: Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder

5. More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre
First, it is a bit odd to me that I am starting to cuddle up with a cup of tea, and a cookbook to read. Yet, see number three above, and here I am. I loved reading this one cover to cover, as its been advocating for natural and sustainable food practices for 25 years. Her first chapter is like a prophetic call that proceeded Pollan’s work. I also appreciated the spirituality of cooking that comes so naturally. God bless the Mennonites. The Mennonite Central Committee commissioned this collection of recipes with submissions from around the country, and is a diverse but simple collection of good food. The day after I read it I was pulling things out we already had on hand, and making oatmeal (that tasted good), and two loafs of bread (after a mishap with boiling water and yeast that produced a few bricks).
Next up: James Beard’s American Cookery by James Beard

What are you reading and loving?