October 2023 Reading Recap

First of all, I'm sorry for the quality of the picture. I was sitting outside and the play of light and shadow on the page was too tempting for me not to take advantage of, but my phone camera apparently doesn't translate very well to blog posts.

My reading goal for October was six books; as you'll see, I only read five. Still, not too bad!

The Comfort Food Diaries, by Emily Nunn

★★

I kind of feel like I wasted my time with this one, although it wasn't bad enough to make me put it down before the end. There were parts I enjoyed, but overall I felt like it was a self-pity rant in book form. The writing didn't stand out to me, the story was depressing, and the recipes incorporated into the book were a little forced.

Blood, Bones and Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton

★★★

*SPOILERS AHEAD* – I found this book to be very sad. First, Gabrielle talks about her parents' divorce when she was nine, and her subsequent degeneration into the world of smoking, alcohol, and drugs at a very young age. She talks about her horrible relationship with her mother and then her horrible relationship with her husband. There were redeeming points in the book: her sister, Melissa; her job at the summer camp; her mentor in Michigan, Misty; the opening of her restaurant, Prune; her sons, Marco and Leone; her yearly summer trip to Italy. But everything was attended by a bit of sadness: her other siblings were pretty much estranged, the lobsters died at the summer camp, Misty left without a word to open her own restaurant, and the Italy trips were attended by her disgust with her husband and her feeling of loneliness in the midst of a family she loved, but felt she didn't belong to.

The organization also confused me at points. She goes chronologically, starting from her parents' divorce, until she suddenly jerks back in time to her early 20s to recount her trip around the world (focusing on her time in France). I suppose one way to put this would be that I felt the seasons of her life were disconnected; it was all one story, but it didn't always flow well from one stage to the next. Life often doesn't, to be fair, but I felt the story could have been crafted better.

What I liked about this book: Gabrielle's story is not typical, and so I enjoyed the slight departure from the Food Memoir Formula (although it did still have quite a few of the elements–parents divorced, trip to France, whirlwind romance). I also enjoyed Gabrielle's storytelling style, and I liked that she didn't try to shoehorn recipes into the text. In fact, the food took a backseat to Gabrielle's wins and woes, but it was still very much there, so that was kind of refreshing.

 The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

★★★★

These last three are all so good, I'm just going to talk about them in the order that I read them. 

The Shadow of the Wind was totally not what I was expecting. It reminded me a little bit of The Goldfinch, a little bit of The Middle Window, and a little bit of The Phantom of the Opera. A marvelous Gothic tale, with betrayals, romance, scandal, and quite a bit of murder. I'm very glad I waited to read this book, though, as I definitely would have been horrified by some of the content a few years ago. In my opinion, the story is worth pushing through the language, sex, and violence for. I won't give any spoilers for this one; I'll just say that I thought it was going to have a terrible ending, but Zafón surprised me with the beautiful way he wrapped everything up.

Here's my favorite quote from the book:

"Julián had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."

My Kitchen Year, by Ruth Reichl

★★★★

I found this book at a used bookstore in Albany, NY last October, and because I love Ruth Reichl's writing, I sat down right where I was and flipped through it. I didn't buy it, but even months after walking out of that bookstore without it, it would come to my mind occasionally. So when I saw it on a shelf at my local library, I snatched it up immediately. And it did not disappoint! (Ruth Reichl never does.) This is a cookbook-cum-memoir following her book Save Me the Plums, which is the tale of her time as editor of Gourmet magazine. It's chock full of pictures, which I love, and it's heavily tied to the seasons (each "chapter" is a season, starting with fall). Many food memoirs (like The Comfort Food Diaries, ahem) feel like they're shoehorning the recipes into the story, sometimes tied to the narrative by the most tenuous of threads. Not so with My Kitchen Year! Because food is such a huge part of Ruth's life, and because the book follows the course of one year, and because the recipes are the main focus, it really works. Do I need to go on to let you know how much I adored this book?

Evelina, by Frances Burney

★★★★

Every time I pick up a classic, I do so with reluctance. Most of the time, however, once I'm into it, I find that I really enjoy it. So it is with Evelina! In fact, I'm liking it so much that I'm considering writing a screenplay based on the book. There really should be a film adaptation of it! As I read on another writer's blog, "Fanny Burney is, 'Jane Austen before Jane Austen'." I love that because it's so true! While I do prefer Pride and Prejudice to Evelina, I stilled enjoyed Evelina quite a lot. It made me snort with laughter a few times.

Here's a quote that I thought has remained impactful and relevant:

"Yet I cannot but lament to find myself in a world so deceitful, where we must suspect what we see, distrust what we hear, and doubt even what we feel!"

That's all for October! I'm excited to share my current reads with you in my November post ... but we'll all have to wait a few weeks for that one! Who knows what I'll come up with for next week 😜