"Deck Their Shelves"

So you're stumped at what to get your book-loving, family member, friend, coworker or neighbor.  You've been looking for that perfect book that they'd love or how about that perfect book to inspire and grow their love of reading.  Try giving some of these new to the season reads a look.

New from the season:

Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
The Time Keeper by Mitch Album
Black Box by Michael Connolly
The Christmas Kid: and other Brooklyn Stories by Pete Hamill
The 13th Day of Christmas by Jason F. Wright
No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden by Mark Owen
The Racketeer by John Grisham
The Panther by Nelson DeMille

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Behind the Beautiful Forever by Katherine Boo
NW by Zadie Smith
The Forgotten by David Baldacci
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
Cross Roads by Wm. Paul Young

Under the Mistletoe by Jill Shalvis
Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See by Juliann Garey
Open Heart by Elie Wiesel








Don't know if they've already read it, don't worry.  The whole reading experience doesn't just have to be about the love of the written word.  If you're looking to just spark their reading interest then check out a few of these great reading related ideas.  In addition to a worth while read or just as a little something extra give a book basket, filled with all sorts of book loving gifts.  Give a warm and cozy throw blanket, a tea or coffee mug filled with a few favorite teas or their favorite coffee.  Add a soft pair of slippers or warm socks.  Give them a bookmark to keep their place or a personal clip on book light.  There are so many book related gifts you can choose from.  Just think about who you're gifting to and fill that book lover's basket with thoughtful reading inspired goodies!  Most of all give them the gift of curling up with a good read or at least the idea of one!

MNBC: Prune Adventure

Take a look at our Monday Night Book Club field trip to Gabrielle Hamilton’s NYC restaurant, Prune.  We had such a great time and tasted some of the best food NYC could offer.  Thank you to the wonderful MNBC members for such a memorable adventure.  I truly had a fantastic time and plan on researching more field trips for us.  I’d also like to thank Gabrielle Hamilton and her awesome staff at Prune for their gracious hospitality and delicious lunch.  After reading Blood Bones and Butter: the Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, visiting Prune and meeting Gabrielle Hamilton really made the experience so special.  Thank you again and please enjoy the photos.

Great Secret Read!

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

A story so rich in culture and so real in experience, Secret Daughter is a tale tightly woven with such absorbing emotions that you cannot help but feel your heartstrings tug in the direction of Gowda’s characters.  Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s writing flourishes in her first novel, both through her literary voice and capturing of human emotion.  Secret Daughter takes place over a 25-year period and gives a voice to two couples from two different cultures: India and California.  Both couples are struggling with their own maternal issues– one mother is forced to give up her baby girl for fear her husband will again dismiss it because it was not a boy –the second, a successful doctor desperate to become a mother, tries to conceive a child with her Indian husband, but ultimately is told she is infertile.  Despite the hardships, raw feelings and jet lag from India to the United States, these two sets of parents do what they can with the resources they have to survive their adversities.  At the very heart of Gowda’s novel are two children, one a boy who grows up in India to live a double life so that his parents can escape the slums of Mumbai; the other his sister, who was born into the Indian culture and then adopted and grows up in America with many American privileges.

Secret Daughter introduces many realistic and true family topics that families often have to face; from the differences in cultures to the age old question of nature versus nurture, Gowda single handedly layers a novel of pure emotional satisfaction.  Not quite a native Indian herself, Gowda was born in Toronto to parents who are Mumbai natives.  She attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  It is clear through her writing that while obtaining her education in America Gowda never lost her Indian roots.  Her inspiration to write Secret Daughter came partially from a class project, but mainly from working at an Indian orphanage.  She befriended a young orphaned girl and through their kinship and the girl’s charming nature, Gowda found the muse for Asha and the story of a mother’s sacrifice.

Gowda’s westernized childhood and unique cultural influences developed her insightful perspective of both worlds.  These two worlds are what led her to create two very different women based on her own distinction between her parents’ influences of their native culture, India and her western education and upbringing in America.  For example, Kavita is the impoverished villager who knows too well what happens to unwanted baby girls and Somer is the American pediatrician who marries a fellow doctor from India and longs for a child she cannot have.  Both of these women stem from a mutual beginning, Asha, even though they’re from two different worlds.  Kavita travels to an orphanage to surrender her baby since her family is too poor to afford a baby girl; Somer’s infertility leads her and her husband to that orphanage to adopt a baby.  Gowda’s novel forces two worlds, otherwise foreign to one other, together, melding them into a story that intimately considers how we all are shaped – be it through fate or free will, nature or nurture – and how it all comes down to the astonishing power of a family’s love.

The narrator alternates between Kavita, Somer, Asha, Krishnan and Jasu.  Gowda recreates vividly the sounds, scents and sights of India she experienced because of parents.  She pulls you deeper into a culture that most only glimpse. With ease she navigates the emotional topography of her parenthood, loss, identity and love.  She defines the cultural fears a western women faces in India; Somer accosted in a crowded market and arriving home with questions flooding her mind and heart of whether or not, since nature has already deemed her childless, she has made a mistake “…Would she know better what to do with Asha if they shared the same blood?  Would Asha respond better to Somer if she didn’t look so different from everyone she’d known in her short life?”

Wonderfully written, both lyrical and poetic, it is hard to believe Secret Daughter is Gowda’s debut novel.  Her fluid storytelling keeps the heavy themes at an easily controlled pace.  She doesn’t dive too deeply and never downplays their importance. Because of Gowda’s tactfulness you feel for each character, despite their roles in the scheme of the story.

If you haven’t read Secret Daughter, you are truly missing out on an insightful story that is both rewarding and thought-provoking.  You travel between two worlds and cannot help but feel the pull on your heartstrings.

Hello Readers!

I apologize for the delay in posting.  Due to the hurricane and nor’easter our internet access was infrequent and at times nonexistent.

Here is a listing of my all-time favorite foodie reads; from biographies and memoirs to cook books and the like.  These are titles I couldn’t wait to savor and dishes I’ve enjoyed devouring.

I hope you enjoy at least one of these scrumptious reads this flavorful season.

Angelina's Bachelors: a novel, with food by Brian O'Reilly & recipes by Virginia O'Reilly.

Animal, vegetable, Miracle: a year of food life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

Apron Anxiety: my messy affairs in and out of the kitchen by Alyssa Shelasky

Blood, Bones & Butter: the inadvertent education of a reluctant chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

The Botany of Desire: a plant's-eye view of the world by Michael Pollan

The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook by Lindsay Landis

Dearie: the remarkable life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz.

Dinner: A Love Story: it all begins at the family table by Jenny Rosenstrach & photographs by Jennifer Causey

The Feast Nearby: how I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally (all on $40 a week) by Robin Mather

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

A Girl and Her Pig: [recipes and stories] by April Bloomfield with J.J. Goode

Julie and 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 by Julie Powell

Kitchen Confidential: adventures in the culinary underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

The Kitchen Daughter: a novel by Jael McHenry

Memoir of the Sunday Brunch by Julia Pandl

My Berlin Kitchen: a love story, with recipes by Luisa Weiss

Real Simple Dinner Tonight-Done!: 189 quick and delicious recipes edited by Allie Lewis Clapp & Lygeia Grace

Restaurant Man by Joe Bastianich

The Roots of the Olive Tree by Courtney Miller Santo

Salt: a world history by Mark Kurlansky

Savory Sweet Life: 100 simply delicious recipes for every family occasion by Alice Currah

The School of Essential Ingredient by Erica Bauermeister

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

Tender at the Bone: growing up at the table by Ruth Reichl

Hungry Read

Blood Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

Can you cook with a pen?  Chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton has done just that.  Originally known for her ability to fill a small laidback downtown restaurant with 30 guests, plus a line down the street of patrons at the ready to sweep in and take the next available nicked table.  Hamilton has topped her culinary greatness off, crafting a memoir just as reminiscent, zesty and artisanal as her food.

She can cook and write with the cleverness to capture all her experiences; the taste and sound of her childhood, her hunger and her accomplishments.  Telling the story of how she became the Chef that she is, Blood Bones and Butter: the Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef takes you from Hamilton’s Hippie-ish 1970’s Pennsylvania childhood to her backpacking misadventures through Brussels and Burma, then to a dusty, greatly graphitied corner of the East Village and finally to an Italian family, who much like herself, allowed their lives to evolved around food.

Hamilton shares the fond memories she has of the annual 200 guest meal her family would host for friends near and far at their home in Pennsylvania.  This legendary party, a spring lamb roast, would bring her mother’s ballet dancer friends, her father’s artist friends, locals, neighbors and some from as far as New York City.  This party hosted so many friends they had to assemble in the meadow behind the family’s house.  Those who attended ate a feast of lamb and asparagus vinaigrette and shortcakes.  Hamilton and her siblings spent the day preparing for the festivities by filling paper bags with sand and candles to line and light the paths, making sure that each and every guest were led to where the food would be.

After the separation of her parents Hamilton’s childhood was shattered.  The long lost memories of the lavish lamb roasts and family dinners would forever shape her life.  Her father’s dreamy career, as a set designer, would feed her imagination.  Through his worlds of make believe and her mother’s elegant but sustainable character, Hamilton effortlessly captures the foundation of her culinary life.  One summer after her mother leaves Pennsylvania, Hamilton shares one of her earliest culinary, experiences.  Foraging through her mother’s pantry – which her father, like a grieving widower, could not bring himself to empty – she learned to invent meals from canned sardines and tinned asparagus.  To further emphasize the change in her family’s dynamic Hamilton describes her rebellious delinquency through her misadventures; breaking into neighboring homes, stealing items to be pawned in town, shoplifting and doing coke at the age of 13.  She antagonistically tells of the sudden flip-flopped family life she has.  The wake of her parents splitting up filled her with displacement and dysfunction, which lead her – at 17 – and her brother to fend for themselves for an entire summer.

Leaving New York behind to follow her sister’s lead, Hamilton lands via Peter Pan bus at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.  From here she takes menial jobs as a bottom feeder in various food related environments.  She begins her life of redemption and soon after finds herself back amongst the hustle and bustle of New York City.  Amidst the coarse and greasy backdrop of New York, Hamilton continues her inadvertent culinary adventure gaining kitchen experience in a restaurant called “Mother’s.”  She works her way from a scullery dishwasher to prepping salads and eventually gaining enough clout to join the ranks of aspiring chefs and work on the “hot line.”

Achieving what so many chefs wish they could Hamilton opened Prune, a wholesome, rustic restaurant featuring hearty, comfort food.  She prepares her food thoughtfully and serves it in a manner so relaxed, that usually the utensils are mismatched.  Prune beckons its diners to cozy up in this cramped, irresistible space, scuffed floors and all, and enjoy whatever her lifelong experiences has to offer their taste buds.  Hamilton’s driving impulse behind Prune is her determination to harness the innumerable pivotal experiences she’s had with food.  From hunger and worrying to her experiences with hospitality in other countries to the unforgiving and unexpected acceptance of big-city restaurants, Hamilton strives to give her diners the sort of original food experience that occurs in small towns round the world.

From a childhood of lamb roasts to the humbling egg-on-a-roll sandwich to more decadent entrées of “fried zucchini agrodolce with fresh mint and hot chili flakes,” Hamilton shares her “code red” hunger complete with her own passionately zealous take on food.  Hamilton can write.  She earned a M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Michigan.  She has been featured in prominent publications, authoring inspiring and energetic hints into the heart, mind and exhausting life of a chef.  Brilliantly written and not just written for the entertainment of foodies, Blood, Bones and Butter highlights Hamilton’s culinary evolution through the humblest of junctures to a substantial New York reputation.  Blood, Bones and Butter parallels Hamilton’s culinary life and career.  Taking us from her idyllic young child through to her apprenticeship as a cook to a bustling, successful New York City restaurant; this memoir captures the need for a sense of place and peace and readers will feast not only on her descriptions of food and meals, but also Hamilton’s evocative writing about the people she has met and the places she has been.

If you enjoy cooking and eating, you will particularly enjoy this memoir.  Moreover, anyone who relishes a good coming of age story will likewise eat up Blood, Bones and Butter: the Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef.

October: National Reader's Group Month!

As national book club month nears closer to its end here are a few books I've heard about from verious local and far books clubs.  Enjoy!

AUTHOR EVENT: Alyson Richman

Attention readers!!

If you are interested Alyson Richman will be speaking and signing copies of her book The Rytham of Memory.  She will be the Lake Grove Barns & Noble at 7pm tonight.  If you enjoyed her book novel The Lost Wife in March when we read it as the Long Island Reads pick, you will be captivated by her other works.  Richman is a local author and loves these events, because she gets to meet so mnay of her beloved readers.

Make some time tonight and take a trip to the Lake Grove Barns & Noble, you wont be disapointed.

For more information or to learn more about Alyson Richman's other titles visit her website at http://alysonrichman.com/.

Reader's Suggestions

A WellRead reader's Suggestion:


"I just finished Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt and I enjoyed the book immensely, you may want to add it to your list."

This story is a dazzling debut novel about an unlikely friendship between two suspicious characters. June, a 14-year-old girl, grieving over the loss of her uncle and godfather, suspiciously watches Toby, her mysterious uncle’s partner.  Toby’s curious actions force June to watch him closer despite her family’s references to Toby as a murderer.

Blended in among June’s grief is a mixture of other themes as well, secrets, loyalty and art, as well as June’s frustration and distrust towards her sister aide this story in truly holding your hand as you discover that the past, present and future may very well all be the same and that for June poking your nose where it doesn't belong really may have its advantages after all.

A wonderful reader's suggestions. Thank you for reading WellRead and we look forward to knowing what else you are enjoying!

Tell the Wolves I’m Home
By Carol Rifka Brunt
Pub Date: June 2012

Reader's Suggestion's

A WellRead Reader's Suggestion:

"I Was given Shine, Shine, Shine by Lydia Netzer as a gift and I enjoyed it!” This debut book is an enlightening collection of perspectives, giving readers the opportunity to look at what it means to be human and have human experiences from the viewpoints of several people who are somewhat not.

A wonderful reader's suggestions. Thank you for reading WellRead and we look forword to knowing what else you are enjoying!

Shine, Shine, Shine
by Lydia Netzer
Pub. Date: July 2012

The Last of Summer Reading....

 

On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves

Not yet ready for the warm, sunny days of summer to end?  Looking for that last great summer read?  On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves is just that.  It’s a story about Anna Emerson, a 30-year-old English teacher and private summer tutor who is hired to help 16-year-old, cancer surviving teen T.J. Callahan catch up on all his high school assignments so he can return to school in the fall.  But On the Island is not your typical shipwreck story; this book is about survival, determination, loyalty and romance.  It is a fantastically unbelievable story made believable.

The story begins with Anna telling readers that the plane they were flying on crashes into the Indian Ocean.  There is also much foreshadowing as Anna and T.J. embark on their survival adventure; T.J.’s instant liking to Anna, Anna’s insistence that T.J. pack an extra bottle of water, Mick the pilot devouring a greasy cheese burger and fries before the flight.

After their plane crash-lands, they drift in the dangerous shark infested waters. Their life jackets keep them afloat.  T.J. clings to an unconscious Anna, in attempts to keep her head above water.  As the sun rises in the sky Anna and T.J. awake on an uninhabited Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Anna bleeding and in and out of consciousness from a huge gash in her head and T.J. desperately trying to keep her alive.  From this time forward they unknowingly form an unbreakable bond.  As the sun dips through the sky they begin planning their survival strategy: stay alive until the rescue planes come.  Days soon turn into weeks and their weeks soon turn into months as Anna and T.J. realize help is not coming and they must work together to endure the heat of the sun, gather fresh water, food and build a fire and shelter.

Both Anna and T.J. must rely on their knowledge, natural skill, wit and even luck to survive.  With their basic needs met, and the months on the island turning into years Anna and T.J. find themselves encountering plenty of obstacles; tropical storms rage, the surrounding waters have dangerous unseen depths, illness affects both their lives and supplies threaten to run out.

Besides all the dangers and near death experiences time passes on the island rather predictable.  T.J. turns nineteen on the island and soon after makes his feelings for Anna known.  Despite her better judgment and all her cautiousness Anna falls for the man T.J. has become.  They grow even closer and soon a slow building and strong burning romance binds their story.

There is no doubt both Anna and T.J. fought hard to survive; between the trauma of the crash itself, long, hot sunburned days, the dangers in the water and their hope of being rescued; Anna and T.J. gave more than they thought they had to survive for each other.

On the Island is a quick, easy read with a sweet, romantic story at its center.  Tastefully written, about an older woman and a younger man’s romance Tracey Garvis Graves gives you the opportunity to join Anna and T.J. on the island as a witness of their survival and love.  On the Island is fully equipped with romance, a compelling conflict and a satisfying ending.  If you’re planning on reading one last summer read choice On the Island.

Upcoming Fall Releases

Keep an eye out for this fall's highly anticipated releases.

September 3rd
Zoo by James Patterson

September 4th
The Time Keeper by Mitch Album

September 5th
A Wanted Man by Lee Child

September 11th
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice by Michael Brandman

September 18th
Winter of the Worlds by Ken Follett
The Lincoln Conspiracy by Timothy O'Brien
Severe Clear by Stuart Woods

September 27th
Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

Ocrober 2nd
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
Phantom by Joe Nesbo
Unstoppable by Nick Vujicic
Reflected in You by Sylvia Day (Crossfire Series)
The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

October 8
NYPD Red by James Patterson

October 16th
Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
The Bone Bed by Patricia Cornwell
The Panther by Nelson Demille
Twelve by Justin Corin (The Passage Trilogy)

October 23rd
The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro
The Racketeer by John Grisham

October 30th
Astray by Emma Donnoughue
Sins of the Mother by Danielle Steel
Elsewhere: A Memoir by Richard Russo

November 6th
Collateral by ellen Hopkins

November 12th
Merry Christmas Alex Cross by James Patterson

November 13th
Cross Roads by Wm Paul Young
Dear Life by Alice Monro (short stories)
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Meacham
The Last Man by Vince Flynn

November 20th
The Forgotten by David Baldacci
Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich

November 26th
Black Box by Michael Connelly