What Noisy Cats Are We » Books

Summer’s Best Food and Cookbooks: Bourdain, Emeril and More – WSJ.com

feedmittens — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:02:34 +0000

Two of my favorite things: Books and Food! (drr – same as everyone…). Anyway, here’s a list that was shared from the James Beard foundation and featured on wsj.com: Summer’s Best Food and Cookbooks: Bourdain, Emeril and More – WSJ.com.

If you can’t afford Bourdain’s new book, you can check out his older Kitchen Confidential or A Cook’s Tour on Amazon.Com – both are out in paperback and I think are less than $10 each.

Great Amazon.Com price on Michael Pollan’s new “Food Rules” – $5!

feedmittens — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:59:20 +0000

The Weekend In Books

feedmittens — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:34:26 +0000

This has been a stay at home weekend mostly filled with relaxing, kitchen cleaning, and book reading. (Okay, and a quick trip to the Blue Shirt Cafe over in Davis Square for lunch.) I managed to finish off two books that I had been in the middle of. The first one was the mass market paperback of Dan Brown’s ‘Angels And Demons‘. I picked it up because I assumed everyone else would be talking about it due to the movie’s recent release. I liked ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and ‘Digital Fortress’ somewhat, but they just seemed to ‘romance novel-y’ (for the lack of a better description) for me. This one was much the same, with great information about the Vatican (hugely embellished, I assume), but still caused me to cringe often when he wrote as if the characters should have been named Fabio. Cheesy to the max. I think that the same story could be written in a way that appealed to me, but that was not the intent of the author. I don’t think I’m alone in this opinion. Nonetheless, it’s worth a read, and you can get through it in a day or two.

The second book I finished is one that I enjoyed much, much more. Though Mark Kurlansky’s books are occasionally boring to the point of passing out after reading a page, I love them nonetheless. I started out with picking up ‘Cod‘ in 2000 or 2001 when on a trip to Tahoe. I loved it, and really enjoyed the style that the author used to cover the subject. He followed up that book with ‘Salt‘, and I read that on vacation a couple of years ago and liked it just as much. With ‘The Last Fish Tale‘, a book about Gloucester, MA and it’s fishing heritage, he delves into a place as much as he did with an object as he had in the other two books. It’s written with many interviews of locals, and many different stories of Gloucester past. A great read, and I can’t wait to pick up Mark Kurlansky BooksKurlansky’s other books soon.

I can’t decide what to start with next. I did snag both ‘Julia & Julia‘ and Julia Child’s ‘My Year of Cooking In France‘ just like EVERYONE else, and will probably start on both of those before catching the movie.

Book rec: Lobster Coast

admin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:12:49 +0000

Great book for summer / fall reading. I love our trips to Maine, and this helped open my eyes a little more about wha’ts going on up there and why. I don’t really eat lobsters, but still thoroughly enjoyed the book.

">Click here for Amazon link – test.

Quick Book Review: A Death In Belmont

admin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:12:43 +0000

I picked up Sebastian Junger’s “A Death In Belmont” at the Harvard Book Store a few months ago and just got time to get to it last weekend. I was bored after finishing off three or four books that I’d started and were languishing around and I couldn’t find anything on my shelf that I was particularly interested in.

At first I thought I wouldn’t like the book at all. I bought it because it had local connections, and I not read anything by the author before. I was pleasantly surprised by the content, and very impressed with Junger’s simple style. I was kept interested from beginning to end, and finished this book over the course of two Saturdays.

The book is related to the Boston Strangler, and one murder in particular for which a different man was convicted. It takes place in and around where I live, and I enjoy books that I have a connection to. Also, the book is part of the author’s life, as Albert DeSalvo himself had been doing a construction job on his house in 1962 when he was a small child.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Strangler case, anyone who was impressed by the writing style of “The Perfect Storm”, and anyone who wants an interesting look at the life of criminals, not just the Strangler.