British writer Hilary Mantel has taken the literary world by storm by writing back to back award- winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, which have not only sold in huge numbers but have been developed into a highly touted PBS series and Broadway stage plays. Although she has been made a Dame of the […]
Monthly Archives: April 2015
Écoutez bien: In one corner is Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard. This is a memoir-cookbook out April 7th of this year. It’s the sophomore book from Ms. Bard, a sequel to Lunch in Paris, which was stuffed with delicious and stories of l’amour far from home. Rumbling in the other corner, we have a […]
Several years ago, I attended the 26th Annual Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the non-credit affiliate of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, whose graduates fill the ranks of the best and brightest in American letters. Ours was a workshop class of 12 aspiring novelists which ran the gamut of genres – literary, historical, women’s fiction, and crime. I […]
I am a collector of bookstores. When vacationing, I like to seek out a new or used bookstore in town, to support local business, to add to the growing collection of books by my bedside, and to discover what sets it apart from others. I can sometimes remember years later that I acquired a book at […]
The first food I remember reading about as a child was Rat’s breakneck inventory of his picnic basket in The Wind in the Willows: coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwidges pottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater. That list stuck with me, so much so that when I first encountered ginger beer as an adult I was elated. It was every bit as tasty as I’d […]
Readers Unbound 