A Pig in Provence by Georgeanne Brennan

Reading Georgeanne Brennan’s A Pig in Provence was like taking a trip to the South of France without ever boarding a plane. The book is separated into eight chapters, each with a related recipe at the end. Brennan and her first husband moved to the South of France in the 1970s, intent on raising goats and making homemade goat cheese for income. They were both graduate students from California, making the move with their baby in tow. They managed to make not just money from their goat cheese, but friends as well.

Most of the chapters are about how and what Brennan learned about food from her friends in Provence. Whether it was the real way to make bouillabaisse (fish soup), pistou (French pesto), aioli (garlic mayonnaise), or tomato tarts, it all revolved around tradition, local ingredients, and community.

Though A Pig in Provence is Brennan’s personal story of her experiences in Provence, she managed to make it much less about her and much more about the place. Her descriptions and explanations were wonderful and complete. The only things I was left wondering about were questions about her personal life she never explained, and that’s quite alright.

An Aioli Feast

Last night we tried one of the recipes: An Aioli Feast. We boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, green beans, a few eggs, and poached some salmon. Then we crushed four cloves of garlic and sea salt with a pestle in a mortar, mixed in three egg yolks, and added a cup of olive oil very slowly. To eat, we dipped all of our food in our aioli, including a baguette from the store. It was simple and delicious! 4.5/5

Queen of Fashion by Caroline Weber

There is something about monarchies that I find absolutely enchanting: the history, the genealogy, the societal pressures, the mores, the architecture of their abodes, the luxury. This extends even to the British monarchy. I am also mesmerized by anything about Queen Elizabeth I and the rest of the Tudors. (This interest was cultivated long before my interest in Marie Antoinette.)

Perhaps my interest in these infamous queens has something to do with the fact that so much was expected of them and yet they faced great obstacles in achieving anything because they were women of their time.

Caroline Weber’s fantastic biography of Marie Antoinette, Queen of Fashion, approaches the subject in a refreshing way. Pointing out the intentional and unintentional symbolism in the styles and colors of the clothing the French queen chose to wear provided another dimension to the story of her life. In the introduction Weber provides, she explains that this biography was meant to fill in the gaps that other biographers left out. Since clothing was such an integral part of Marie Antoinette’s life, to tell her story without a detailed account of what she wore and why ignored an entire facet of her existence.

Weber doesn’t just talk about the clothes Marie Antoinette wore, but also her life, the trends of the day, her influence on French style, the symbolism of the clothes her countrymen wore in revolt, and the French Revolution’s influence on fashion.

All in all, I felt even more sympathy for Marie Antoinette as a human being after reading this book. The first time I ever heard of her, likely in elementary school, was of her allegedly saying “Let them eat cake!” in response to news of starvation, extreme poverty, and famine in France. (That was discovered to be a false accusation.) This book and the aforementioned movie paint pictures of a Marie Antoinette who was not perfect, but certainly did not deserve to be maltreated and executed. They illustrate a complex and nuanced view of the life she led, and how much she really was a victim of circumstance. 5/5

French Milk by Lucy Knisley

French Milk is a graphic novel about a 22 year-old New York girl (the author) and her trip to Paris for five weeks with her mother. This graphic novel is styled as a diary, with fantastic visuals and occasional photographs of the real thing.

I approached this book with a bias. I took a trip to Paris when I was 22 years-old, too. The trip included a stop in London for five days, a ride on the EuroStar to France, and a week in Paris. It was an amazing experience, and I want to go back.

Reading French Milk helped me remember the little things I loved and the excitement of Paris. The food, the art, the culture was refreshed in my memory because of this book.

Basilique du Sacré Coeur by MH

The author’s personal style didn’t hurt, either. Her diary was open, honest, and was successful in making me care about her characters.

The only complaint I had with this book was that the structure was difficult to adapt to at first. I was expecting French Milk to resemble the comics the author posts on her journal, something akin to Persepolis, the only other graphic novel (series) I’ve read cover-to-cover. However, once I got used to it, French Milk was effortless to enjoy. 4.5/5

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

One of my favorite movies of 2006 was The History Boys, based on the play written by Alan Bennett (and he wrote the screenplay, too). When I saw this novella on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer request list, I hoped for a story as fascinating and touching as The History Boys was.

I wasn’t disappointed. The Uncommon Reader is a fictional story of the real life Queen of England and her recent foray into the world of literature. Bennett is able to capture the essence of reading, once again, and establish characters so close one can touch them. It is funny I should say that because Hector in The History Boys says:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

Bennett is not dead, given, but his novella certainly struck a chord in my bookworm heart. Many chords, in fact.

I am no queen, but I can definitely relate to this:

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. (30)

The novella gives the reader a sense of the life of English royalty: hectic, pampered, and much removed from the ordinary. Every hobby or habit is questioned, and normality and humanity seem far off. This fictitious version of Queen Elizabeth II finds solace in reading, and finds her humanity. Through the literature she reads, she is able to sympathize and learn, to live through the lives of the ordinary people she has been so distant from. She is able to grow and think for herself in a totally new way.

And none of this happens without causing friction.

I found this work to be a great read in parts, but sometimes it got a bit slow. For 120 pages, it took me an awful long time to read. Of course, I am glad that I did, and I would recommend this to anyone who likes to think about why they read and what it does for them… and anyone who is interested in the royal family, too. Fictitious though it is, The Uncommon Reader sure is believable. 3.5/5

Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Picador for this free copy of The Uncommon Reader!

Paper Towns by John Green

In early 2007, I stumbled upon John and Hank Green’s now-complete Brotherhood 2.0 video blog (or vlog). (They now have a new vlog/blog at Nerdfighters.com.) To be honest, I had never heard of either of them before their project, but their vlog posts were painfully funny and a welcome diversion from my piles and piles of graduate school work.

Here are two vlog posts of John Green reading a draft of Paper Towns way back in 2007: Paper Towns, Part 1 and Paper Towns, Part 2. (And don’t worry, they’re not spoilers.)

In December 2007, Brotherhood 2.0 ended. Eventually, I stopped thinking about the Green brothers and Paper Towns until Melissa Walker posted on her blog in October about Paper Towns and this fantastic video of people with their new copies! (Thanks for the reminder, Melissa!)

Paper Towns was definitely something to be excited about. It’s a fantastic realistic story wherein the protagonist learns more about himself than the person he is searching for. I would put it in the Catcher in the Rye—Perks of Being a Wallflower—Be Good—Tell Your Sister category of bildungsromans that are and would be appealing to young adults, 20-somethings, and YA literature fans like myself.

John Green balanced the right amount of emotionality without becoming sappy, existentialism without becoming too abstract, and humor without becoming insincere. I was thoroughly impressed, and I look forward to reading more of John Green’s work. 4.5/5

Have you read this book yet? What do you think of it?