BOOK REVIEW: The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

Title: The Year of Pleasures

Author: Elizabeth Berg

Publisher: Ballantine 

Year published: 2005

ISBN: 9780812970999

Genre: fiction; chick lit; USA fiction

Pairs well with your favorite flannel pajamas,

a slice of berry or peach pie,

and a glass of Merlot.

As I've noted previously, when I'm in a reading slump, I often turn to a well loved novel that I've read several times over. This past week, that was The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg. 

As a woman who has completely started over more than once in my adult life, I identify closely with the main character, Betta Nolan: after the tragic loss of her husband to cancer, Betta sinks into an understandable period of depression, confusion, worry, loss, and so on. Ultimately, she decides to follow through on a dream she and her husband had involving moving to the middle of the country and starting over in a small town. 

But, of course, nothing is ever as easy as just picking up and moving. Betta does make the move, but it is filled with a sense of directionlessness and a pull towards something that is ill defined yet also tinged with feelings of fate. 

Throughout the story, we learn more and more about the woman Betta was, who she wanted to be, and who she becomes (which is really who she was all along). We meet an adorable cast of characters along the way, ranging from sweet college kids that feel almost like lost puppies looking for their mother to a single mom and her sweet son to a cranky old woman who is dealing with losses of her own, not to mention three old friends from Betta's life before marriage. 

I love this novel for its familiarity, not just because I've read it so many times (at least ten!), but also because I see myself in Betta and her joy in little pleasures that she often denies herself even though her husband encouraged her to indulge. I see myself in her love of fine things, comfortable things, joyful things, heartwarming things. I see myself in her love of quirky things and her joy in creating stories both professionally and as a hobby. I see myself in her use of baking and cooking as a love language. 

Betta starts out lost and very much alone, but throughout the novel, she rebuilds her sense of self, learns to enjoy life again despite a huge loss, and she creates a new home and a new sense of family and community. 

I hope you'll give The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg a chance and that you'll fall in love with the story and the characters just as I did. 

And, I hope you'll come away with the knowledge and belief that it's ok to use the good soap that you set aside for company, the plush towels you keep for guests, the chocolate that you only buy on special occasions. Don't wait for guests or special occasions. Use the fancy soap and soft towels. Eat the good chocolate. Buy the little bowl that you love even though you don't know what you'd use it for. Life is too short not to indulge in some pleasures.

Buy it on Amazon HERE or on Bookshop.org HERE.

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi

I have enjoyed watching Padma Lakshmi cooking or talking about cooking for several years, but after watching her show "Taste the Nation" on Hulu, I decided to look for her cookbooks at my local library. Naturally, there is a long hold list for the one that my library has -- Tangy, Tart, Hot, and Sweet -- so I settled for her 2016 memoir, Love, Loss, and What We Ate. 

Although the memoir was not the best I've ever read, I still enjoyed it very much. Within the first twenty pages, I was drawn in with both my wanderlust and tastebuds ablaze! Lakshmi has me wanting to travel, to cook, and to eat new foods.

The memoir follows Lakshmi's life back and forth between the United States and India, as well as to London, Paris, and Miland. She describes in beautiful detail her extended family and the importance of food in her life from a very young age and uses food to explore her relationships with her family members, friends, and lovers. 

I had no idea Lakshmi had been a model, nor that she'd been a television host in Italy, and until watching "Taste the Nation", I'd never really noticed the large scar on her arm (even though I'm sure I've seen it before!). Lakshmi's background is at once highly familiar and exotic. She had many of the same struggles as a teenager as myself and many others, but she also straddled two cultures. She was raised by a single mom and had to navigate two different stepdads and the resultant challenges in her relationship with her mom and these men. 

Lakshmi also goes into great detail about her difficult marriage to Salman Rushdie and the lingering effects it had on her psyche and her post-divorce relationships, and she is quite frank and open about her struggles with endometriosis and fertility. I took comfort in several aspects of her story, as memoir readers often do, and saw myself reflected in many of her experiences. 

I do wish that the book had a been a bit more tightly edited and that there were more recipes sprinkled throughout. While I don't mind a metaphor here and there, they are quite heavily used in the first half of the memoir -- occasionally so frequently that I almost put the book down. And, I'm a sucker for a memoir that includes recipes, but again, there were several in the first half of the book and then far fewer in the second half. I would have loved a recipe with every chapter or every other chapter, especially since so much of the book revolves around food, spices, and the pleasure of eating. 

Overall, if you enjoy memoirs, food, and travel, I do think Love, Loss, and What We Ate is well worth your time, just be prepared for the metaphors and uneven spacing of recipes. I enjoyed it enough that I likely will re-read it at some point in the future. 

You can find Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi on Amazon HERE or Bookshop.org HERE.

Have you read Lakshmi's memoir or used her cookbooks? If so, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of them.

BOOK REVIEW: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

I was BLOWN AWAY by Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi! I was drawn in right away by Gyasi's descriptive and detailed writing style which reminded me a bit of the writher Paul Theroux's style. 

I wish I could say that I read Homegoing straight through and without big breaks, but a friend and I picked it up and decided to read it together back in mid-April when Covid-19 shutdowns were still somewhat new in the United States and we were all still figuring out how concerned we should be. I figured, "Hey, I'll likely have plenty of time to read!" 

And, I did...

But, as I really started to get into the book, I found myself having to slow down and step away a few times because some of the descriptions are so vivid and difficult to read that I had to take a few breaks. And, as I stepped away from the book a few times, the pandemic really ramped up in the United States, followed quickly by the murder of George Floyd and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests -- including protests in my city of Portland, Oregon.

My friend and I could not have predicted the protests, nor the huge surge in interest in reading and learning about racism and bigotry, shopping Black-owned businesses, and so on, so it was coincidental that the book we'd chosen to read was written by a Black woman. And, her novel is rooted deep in the history of slavery. 

Homegoing follows two lines of a family through a pair of half-sisters in 18th century Ghana. The sisters are separated with one being captured and sold into slavery, eventually resulting in a family line in the United States and the other marrying an Englishman who happens to be part of the slave trade but with her line staying in Ghana. 

Gyasi weaves two familial lines together by alternating between them every other chapter. Each chapter follows the life of one generation of the family from the 18th century to near-modern day with the final chapter wrapping up the entire story in a way that I won't spoil for you here other than to tell you this: the end is PERFECT. I don't know that I've read many (if any) books where the ending is so perfectly crafted and makes so much sense. That alone makes Homegoing worth reading.

The novel includes views of the slave trade from the point of view of Ghanian villagers, British slave traders, and those captured and forced into slavery, and shows quite forcefully just how strongly the past clings to the present. Gyasi deftly weaves the lingering echoes of slavery and all of the institutionalized racism that came with it and still exists today into every chapter. Her characters feel complete and real. Those of the last few decades feel like people I might see walking down the city street -- I could picture them and hear them so clearly. 

Even though the two family lines diverge for many, many generations and across two continents, the way Gyasi wrote her story shows the deep connections between the two. What's also interesting about her novel is that you could read it straight through, as my friend and I did, or you could read one story line first and then the other. In fact, I plan to re-read it following one story line and then the other soon. 

I HIGHLY recommend Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi! Some descriptions and events in the book are definitely hard to read (the conditions of the dungeon in which slaves are kept, whippings, and so on), but every word of this book has importance and bearing on the entire novel. 

Have you read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi? What did you think of it? Drop a comment and let me know!

You can buy the novel HERE on Amazon or HERE on Bookshop.org.

My favorite Frida Kahlo books

Each week I participate in a baking challenge celebrating women in history, and this past week's theme was the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo. I have long been a Frida fan, discovering her in high school at a time when I felt very much out of place in my family and my school. I was artistic (but not yet confident enough to call myself an artist), dressed semi-eccentrically, and had political ideas that were quite different from those of much of my family. As many teenagers tend to do, I looked outside of my family for others I might identify with. I'm not Mexican, didn't consider myself an artist at the time, and so on, but I still saw something of myself in Kahlo.

Years ago, I had a sizeable collection of books about Frida, but due to money woes in my 20s, I sold all of them -- this, my dear readers, is one of my biggest regrets when it comes to books! I wish I'd held onto them!

Fast forward to the past four or five years, and I've started to rebuild my Frida Kahlo library and thought I'd share my books with you (I'll share the dishes from my Frida Kahlo themed cooking in a future post). 

I have four Frida Kahlo books, of which two were bought at the Victoria and Albert Museum (or V&A) in London, England, one was bought in the United States, and one was bought at the beautiful El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore in Buenos Aires, Argentina (more on El Ateneo Grand Splendid in a future post). However, all four are available to purchase in the United States. I love these particular books because they are colorful and full of vivid images and don't shy away from some of the realities of her life. 

The first two books are children's books written in English. Despite being for kids, these are both easily enjoyable by adults too. 

Library of Luminaries: Frida Kahlo -- an illustrated biography by Zena Alkayat with illustrations by Nina Cosford

While the illustartions in this book are not Frida's own art, they are highly engaging and help to tell the story of Frida's life. The text and artwork are both equal parts whimiscal and serious. I love looking at the pictures and seeing little details that I've missed previously. It feels like every time I open this little book, I see something new. I also like that the text looks like handwriting instead of a normal book font. 

Buy it on Bookshop HERE.

Buy it on Amazon HERE.

V&A Introduces: Frida Kahlo published by and For the V&A Museum, London, England

I had the great fortune to visit the V&A Museum in London when they had a Frida Kahlo exhibit in 2018 and it was one of the best museum exhibits I've ever attended! While photos weren't allowed inside the exhibit, you can learn more about it and HERE.

This little book is a highly colorful, richly illustrated children's book that, like the one above, does not shy away from the details of Frida's life and perhaps goes a bit further into them than the first book, though without being gruesome or too "adult" in theme. It is superbly illustrated and gives bite sized details and information rather than being a regular text that goes straight from start to finish.

Not currently available via Bookshop.

Buy it on Amazon HERE.

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up published by and For the V&A Museum, London, England

This is the book that was developed for adult visitors as an accompaniment to the V&A Frida Kahlo exhibit I attended in London in 2018. And, wow, is it packed with information, photos, artwork, patterns, color, and so much! It's easy to dip into the book here and there or simply read it cover to cover. The book covers much of Frida's life, as well as how she presented herself to the world and to herself and those in her life.

You may notice that the title is a little bit of a play on words: "Her Self" versus "herself". Much of the exhibit was focused on a tension between Frida presenting herself as fiercely and proudly Mexicana while also contending with her incredibly damaged body which caused her pain for her entire life, contrasting both with her life as an artist, a wife, a daughter, a revolutionary, and more. There was also a strong focus on her clothing and artifacts from Kahlo's life, including beauty objects and tools, notebooks and journals, art supplies, family photos, professional portraits, her own artwork, her husband's artwork (Diego Rivera), and more. The exhibit included clever use of mirrors to create illusions and different ways of viewing many of these objects. And, many of the display cases were designed to look like beds since large portions of Frida's life were spent confied to her bed. Many of the objects and works of art had not been displayed until a couple of years prior to this exhibit, so it was interesting to see parts of her life that had been closed away from half of a century. You can explore some of the exhibit HERE.

Buy it on Bookshop HERE.

Buy it on Amazon HERE.

Now....best for last!

Frida by Sebastian Perez and Benjamin Lacombe

While I truly love the above three books, I wanted to save the fourth for last. This book is truly one of my treasures! I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina around the time of its publication and first saw it at the gorgeous El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore, but I didn't buy it. I thought I would just pick it up when I returned home. Well, when I got home, I looked the book up on Amazon and the only copies available were over $100 each! I was shocked! My uncle was still in Argentina and graciously went back and bought the book for me. I treasure the book to this day because it's so incredibly beautiful and becuase my uncle was willing to go back and buy it for me. He died from a brain tumor just six months later and I miss him every day.

Anyhow, back to this amazing book! 

This book is a MASTERPIECE! While it does not contain Frida's actual art, the illustrator captured the essence of Frida and her art on every page. But, what's even more incredible is that every three to four pages are layered in such a way that pieces of the top two to three pages are cut away, revealing portions of the pages beneath. This book is so visually interesting that I don't even care that I'm not fluent enough (yet) to read the book (it's written in Spanish)! This book is a true piece of art in and of itself! Everyone that's come to my home and looked through it has been blown away! Like the other two children's books I've mentioned, this one also does not shy away from some of the harsher realities of Frida's life, but the artwork also includes many references to some of her more disturbing paintings (and those that are less difficult to view). Please keep that in mind if buying this for a child.

I'm happy to say it is now available in the USA for a much better price (ranging from $25 to $50 on most websites). 

Buy it on Bookshop HERE.

Buy it on Amazon HERE.

I look forward to sharing my Frida Kahlo cooking and baking with you in a future post, as well as photos from my visit to El Ateneo Grand Splendid, and more.

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