COOK ONCE, EAT TWICE by Nadiya Hussain offers “Time-Saving Recipes to Help You Get Ahead in the Kitchen.” This is a great concept from a much-beloved chef who is a past winner of The Great British Baking Show. In her latest cookbook, Nadiya presents seven chapters with each focused on a theme: Back to basics; Lovin’ your leftovers; Ready meals (cook ahead at home); Two dishes (transforms to two different meals like carrot soup / carrot and cod curry); Never wasted again (using frequently discarded ingredients like ripe bananas for Banana Peanut Bark); Easy Bakes; and Waste not, want not. Her emphasis is on delicious food made easily with minimum waste to help save money. A few examples that I am looking forward to trying are Scissor Cut Pesto Pasta (looks and sounds delicious) OR Sloppy Joes which is followed by directions of how to incorporate leftovers into Cheese and Lamb Samosas OR Mongolian Beef with Sticky Rice. Borrowing from a variety of cultures, she also suggests an easily freezable Chicken Tikka Masala and a Lasagna Soup! Most recipes are accompanied by full color photos although nutritional information is not provided. There is a helpful index, also, as well as a kitchen toolkit list.
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Sunday, March 30, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal
Friday, March 28, 2025
The Library of Lost Dollhouses by Elise Hooper
THE LIBRARY OF LOST DOLLHOUSES by Elise Hooper shares the stories of Tildy, a young librarian living in present day San Francisco, and Cora, a talented artist who lived in the early twentieth century. Their connection is the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library where Tildy discovers two long hidden dollhouses. As the alternating stories enfold, readers learn about Cora’s early life, travels in Europe, love affairs with both men and women, and her time during and after World War I when she began creating the miniatures. Although the story is sometimes a bit too slow-paced, Hooper certainly motivates her readers to reflect on the contributions of little recognized female artists (for a novel with a similar theme, see Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Vreeland). For me, the best part of Hooper’s book was the description of the intricate, detailed work on the dollhouses and their contents. Both the Thorne Rooms (on display in Chicago) and Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House (near London) are mentioned in the book and Hooper explains that “there's actually a psychological rationale to explain our affinity for small things: dollhouses offer us a sense of control and imagination. They can provide a feeling of agency. Miniatures allow us to create the world as we'd like to see it.” The audiobook is narrated by Emily Rankin and Caroline Hewitt who provide a clear and entertaining account of Cora’s and Tildy’s adventures. THE LIBRARY OF LOST DOLLHOUSES is a bonus fiction pick for LibraryReads in April 2025. Booklist recommends it for fans of Kate Morton and Fiona Davis.
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Three Minutes for Mom and Growing Together
GROWING TOGETHER by Carson Meyer contains “Doula Wisdom & Holistic Practices for Pregnancy, Birth & Early Motherhood.” Meyer is a Los Angeles based childbirth educator and photographer who has created this text in order to share material from her online and virtual classes. She splits the text into four primary sections, one for each trimester of pregnancy and then one for the first 100 days after birth. Her tone is quite conversational and she offers homeopathic remedies and common sense advice to numerous questions (e.g., How long should each feed be? Do I need to switch breasts each feed? Help! My breasts hurt!). Meyer includes weekly activities such as writing “a love letter to yourself” at week three after birth to help with “treating yourself with the same compassion and patience you would [for] your baby.” While new parents might be too overwhelmed to reach for this text, having read earlier sections might cause them to continue to seek out Meyer’s calm advice (“have a code word with your partner so that you can politely send away any visitor who is overstaying their welcome” or her discussion of elimination communication with their baby). Throughout, she provides charts (e.g., innate knowing vs. modern knowing), introspective questions, and frank discussion (e.g., “those first trimester feels” or “tending to the family nervous system”). GROWING TOGETHER contains recipes, endnotes, and a list of additional resources.
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Banned Together compiled by Ashley Hope Pérez
It’s not often that one sees a title with starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, but a new book intended for high school students achieved just that. Dedicated to “brave readers everywhere who persist when cowards try to erase stories and communities from libraries,” BANNED TOGETHER is edited by Ashley Hope Pérez and illustrated by Debbie Fong. In order to chronicle “Our Fight for Readers' Rights,” Pérez has compiled contributions (essays, poetry, drawings) from sixteen authors like Ellen Hopkins, Kyle Lukoff, and Nikki Grimes whose work has been challenged or banned. Also included is a short graphic novel type story about The Vandegrift Banned Book Club in Leander, Texas. Booklist says, “this collection movingly reminds readers of the power they have against censorship.” Check out a copy today.
Another tool for restricting information is to limit library funding as evidenced in a recent executive order intent on dismantling "the only federal agency dedicated to sustaining the entire museum and library ecosystem in the United States." Please see the American Libraries Association page of FAQs about the recent executive order impacting IMLS, The Institute of Museum and Library Services. The ALA suggests several actions to take now. More information is available through news stories such as those found at The Conversation, the Associated Press, and NPR or from other advocacy groups like EveryLibrary.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Revenge of the Tipping Point by Gladwell
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Seven Social Movements that Changed America
SEVEN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Linda Gordon is a penetrating look at events and happenings during the twentieth century. Gordon, an author and historian who has won numerous prizes for her biography of Dorthea Lange, reflects on several movements that still reverberate today. For example, one is the early work on old age pensions, eventually included in the Social Security Act of 1935, and highlighting the elderly as an activist political force. Other chapters discuss the efforts to unionize farm workers, promote civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, and the subsequent women’s liberation movement. A more distressing example is the influence of the Ku Klux Klan (developed even further in Gordon’s 2017 text The Second Coming of the KKK) – and echoed, sadly, in the “very fine people on both sides” comments about the white nationalists protesting in Charlottesville. Gordon writes, “I am telling these stories [the seven social movements] in a way designed to reveal their commonalities as well as their distinctiveness.” Her tone is rather academic, and she argues that “‘followers’ often exerted vital but less often-recognized leadership.” Whether she is exploring early settlement houses and the fight against poverty, or efforts to establish job programs in the 1930s, her text offers researchers and scholars a thoughtful analysis and many details of value. At least a fourth of the book lists references and footnotes.
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We are in the midst of migrating book reviews to this new blog. To see past reveiws and comments, please visit Book Talk ... A Conversation...
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I CHEERFULLY REFUSE by Leif Enger has a beautiful, eye-catching cover which reflects the many layers involved in this latest story from an ...
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Here (in no particular order) is our compilation of some of the “Best of the Year” lists, updated for 2024: National Public Radio provid...
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GROUNDS FOR MURDER by Betty Ternier Daniels is a debut mystery in the Jeannie Wolfert-Lang series. I am grateful for the free preview copy ...