Peanuts!

Couldn't have said this better myself......
Happy Reading:)

Freakonomics

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Aesop

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt
Stephen J. Dubner

Sometimes, when you pick a book for a book discussion, you hold your breath, cross your fingers and hope it's one where you don't get asked the question: "What the heck did you pick this book for?" I have usually been lucky. The book discussion group I moderate have liked, and sometimes loved, the books picked for discussion; it has been rare that I have had irate group members.


Freakonomics is one I held my breath, crossed my fingers and hoped. Just because I liked it, how would my book group feel about it? Economics can make my eyes glaze over, how would it be for some of the book group? On a miserable, cold rainy night fifteen brave souls came out to discuss this book, and what a discussion we had!


Dubner and Levitt have taken a subject, economics.... interesting,  but never something I could follow,  but it helped me, and it seems some of the group, to look and think about things in different ways. They put a spin on it that made it almost....fun and interesting.
.
Where else would you finally find out why drug dealers still live with their moms? That a crack gang works pretty much like the standard capitalist enterprise..it even has it's equivalent of a CEO. It's amazing to find out that what school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common is cheating! Is the Ku Klux Klan really like a group of real estate agents?Abortion and crime? Who knew that the decision about Roe vs. Wade just might be the reason crime decreased instead of becoming the out of control coast to coast crime wave that was predicted? It seems all those criminals that would have been born....weren't.


Interesting tidbit: When Ceausescu came to power in Romania, he outlawed abortions. He wanted a stronger Romania, and if women didn't get pregnant, they were charged a fine. When Ceausecu's regime was overthrown, he was lynched by young men....who might not have been born if it wasn't for Ceausecu.


We had a good time with this book for many reasons. While economics is about monetary, fiscal matters that shows how the world works; Freakonomics suggests that morality represents the way we would like the world to work, and that conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed. Yes, there was some skepticism about some of the data they analyzed in the book. We didn't agree with the finding on some of the topics, especially the part about parenting. Does it really make a difference to a child if Mom and Dad are home or not? Does nurturing children and reading to them every night make a difference in how they turn out? Or are they born to be what they will be? What does the name given to a child say about the parents?


Interesting tidbit: Two boys: One is African-American, abandoned by his mother, raised in an impoverished and unstable household, his family ran a cocaine-crack business from his aunt's house, his father was a drunk who abused him. During his high school years young man led a double life--excelled in sports at high school while selling marijuana and carrying a gun.
The young white boy grew up in a privileged home, the cherished son of parents who gave him everything he wanted or needed, including a house full of books and his having books read to him. Brilliant in school, especially in mathematics.
Both young men graduated from Harvard University with honors and because college professors.
The young African-American is a Harvard economic advisor who has been honored by President Obama, Roland G. Fryer.
The young white man is Ted Kaczynski, aka....the Unabomer.


I'm glad I read this book, and so was the majority of the group. It was pointed out that the cover should have been a give-a-way for the subject inside: a Granny Smith apple, cut open to reveal an orange inside.

Point taken away from the book? Look closely at what you see....it may not be what you think it is.

Happy Reading!

A Good Book and Some Good Food!

A Good Book! Good Food! Does it get any better?
Bev Wowak

As we come to the last month of our winter reading club, Get Cookin' with a Good Book!, here are some great cooking blogs and books to check out.

Cooking Blogs!

I love to visit the cooking blogs…yes there are hundreds of them but these are a few of my favorite. I have tried a recipe from just about every one of them! If you have a favorite cooking/food blog, feel free to share. Meanwhile, check one of these out and have fun.


http://www.cheftomcooks.com/


http://www.farmgirlfare.com/


http://www.hungry-girl.com/


http://www.simplydailyrecipes.com/


http://www.thecheapgourmet.com/


http://www.chocolateandzucchini.com/


http://www.orangette.blogspot.com/


http://www.everybodylikessandviches.blogspot.com/


http://www.pinchmysalt.wordpress.com/


http://www.zestycook.com/


http://www.pioneerwoman.com/


http://www.pioneerwoman.com/


http://www.davidlebovitz.com/


http://www.elenaspantry.com/
(gluten free recipes)


http://www.joythebaker.com/


http://www.diabeticgourmet.com/


http://www.joythebaker.com/

I have visited each of these blogs and made at least one recipe from them. I highly recommend them!

Non-Fiction Books with Recipes


*American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads
641.8652 Led Pascale Le Draoulec


*Heat: an amateur’s adventures as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany
641.5945 Buf Bill Buford


hallelujah! The welcome table: a lifetime of memories with recipes
641.5973 Ang Maya Angelou


*Under the Tuscan Sun
Bella Tuscany
Bio May Frances Mayes


In Tuscany
945.5 May Frances Mayes


*Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
*Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
Bio Rei Ruth Reichl

Garlic and Sapphires
641.5092 Rei Ruth Reichl


Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet
641.5 Rei Ruth Reichl


*I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti: a memoir
Bio Mel Guilia Melucci


*Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball
Bio One Molly O’Neill


Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen
641.5 Cor Patricia Cornwell


Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader
641.5 Kar Jan Karon


*Kitchen Confidential
Bio Bou Anthony Bourdain


*Book Club Cookbook: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club’s Favorite Cooks and Authors
641.5 Gel Judy Gelman & Vicki Levy Krupp


*A Year in Provence
944.9208 May Peter Mayle


Toujours Provence
944.9083 May Peter Mayle


*Animal, vegetable, miracle: A year of food life
641.0973 Kin Barbara Kingsolver


*Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl

641.5976 Dru Ree Drummond


*Cultivating Delight: A Natural history of My Garden
508 Ack Diane Ackerman


Food Matters
613.2 Bit Mark Bittman

Cozy Up Mysteries with Recipes


Joanne Fluke
Hannah Swenson Mysteries


M.C Beaton
Agatha Raisin Mysteries


Diane Mott Davidon
*Goldy (Bear) Schulz Mysteries

G. A. McKevett
*Savannah Reid Mysteries


Philip R. Craig
Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries


Tamar Myers
Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries


Virginia Rich/Nancy Pickard
Eugenia Potter Mysteries

Laura Childs
*Tea Shop Mysteries


Fiction Books with Recipes


*Like Water for Chocolate
Laura Esquivel


*Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe
Fannie Flagg


The Recipe Club
Andrea Israel, Nancy Garfinkel


*Garden Spells
Sarah Addision Allen


*Some Days There’s Pie
Catherine Landis


Recipes from the Dump
Abigail Stone


*Beach Music
Pat Conroy

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Jorge Amado


Scarpetta’s Winter Table
Patricia Cornwell


*Ladies of Covington Send Their Love
*Gardens of Covington
Joan Medlicott


*World of Pies
Karen Stolz

She Flew the Coop

Michael Lee West

Book of Enchantments
Patricia Wrede

*Mark the ones I have read.

I hope you have been enjoying the book club...
Happy Reading!

"Stick to Your Bones Books"

I often feel sorry for people

who don’t read books;

they are missing a chance

to lead an extra life.

Scott Corbett

This is the time of year when you want winter to go away…you’re ready to enjoy the outside without freezing. Spring is just around the corner...summer is a few months away…but for now, we have the cold, damp, last of the winter weather to contend with. (As I write this, we are having another of one of our many snowstorms.) One of the best ways to while away the rest of this winter is with a “stick to your bones” book. These are books over 500 pages that you have to commit some time to. They can be slow going in the beginning, you need to read at least 100 pages and when you do, you will be glad you did. Curl up with one of these (big) novels and they will help the time will fly by.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Meet Lin; an Australian who was imprisoned for stealing to support his heroin addiction. He escapes and goes to India. A wonderful insight into the culture and people of India. and a trip through the underbelly of Bombay that you won’t soon forget. Yes, it has the violence and death, but it also has love, beauty, and hope…there’s always hope.

This is a novel based on the life of the author, Roberts. Some of the things that happen to Lin happened to Roberts…as well as the love that both Roberts and Lin have for India. One of my favorite lines in the book, “the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life,” will come back to haunt you.

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

Pulitzer-Prize winning novel that took Kantor over twenty years to write. If you love books about the Civil War, this one is one of the best. Extensive research was done about the infamous prison in Georgia where over 50,000 Union soldiers suffered and over 14,000 of them died many for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the South. The South didn’t have enough food for their soldiers much less their prisoners; a commanding officer who took pleasure in the fact he killed more enemy a day then those on the battlefront; and the only Confederate officer who was tried and executed for his war crimes, Henry Wirz. Heartbreaking in the knowledge that this novel is based on truth, but filled with side stories of those who tried to alleviate the horror. (This was a banned book in Texas when it was first published in 1956.)

*If you haven’t read MacKinley Kantor and love a good civil war novel, you're in for a pleasant surprise.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

I became a big fan of Lehane with his Patrick Kenzie/Angie Gernaro crime series that began with A Drink Before the War. Loved it and I was hooked. Two of his books, Gone, Baby, Gone and Mystic River, were made into great movies; and now his book Shutter Island is hitting the big screen. ( I say.... read the books before you see the movies.)

In The Given Day, he has written a novel that takes place in Boston right after WWI; the Great War is over, the Tzar is being overthrown, the Spanish Flu has taken off…and Babe Ruth’s train breaks down in Ohio…the one taking him to the Boston Red Sox. Full of events that happened, the historic figures that make appearances in the novel, the Boston Irish…

Lehane historical novel has much of the same style as his crime novels; sympathy for the underdog, strong blue collar ethics, irony for how events change, or make, your life. Two of the main characters are Danny Coughlin, an Irish cop, and Luther Laurence…a fugitive on the run from Tulsa, he goes to his friend’s house in Boston….

A great historical novel ….savor and enjoy.

One Thousand White Women: the Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

A “what if” book about a “deal” between President Grant and the Cheyenne Indian chef, Lone Wolf: Would the government give one thousand white women to the Cheyenne, so that they could intermarry, have a baby and therefore bring peace between the two very different people? In return, the Cheyenne would give the government one thousand horses? This book is based on a meeting that did take place between Grant and Lone Wolf. It’s a great story about the American West, the gold rush, the Indians, the soldiers at the forts and outposts, full of colorful characters that you feel you get to know, all told from May Dodd’s point of view through her journal… and what might have happened if the deal had been agreed upon.






Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

England, 1520…and Henry the VIII is king. He wants Anne Boleyn as his queen, more importantly…he wants, needs, a male heir. Enter Thomas Cromwell, who will do anything, at any price, to make his king a happy man. Tudor history at their best, which means the Tudor’s are at their worst…with Cromwell the perfect man to do Henry’s dirty work, encourage Henry to go after his heart’s desire, regardless of what the Church thinks. Henry VIII era is always fascinating, and this is English history at its best.


Winds of War by Herman Wouk

Wouk’s epic about WWII. The winds of war are blowing in Europe as we follow “Pug” Henry, a Naval Officer and confidant of President Roosevelt, and his family. It begins just before the German invasion of Poland. The effect the coming of war has on Henry’s family and those that they know and come in contact with. Wouk also interjects the German perceptive of the war from German general Armin von Roon “book” that Henry came across after the war. This book ends with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and if you are up to continuing, pick up the sequel, War and Remembrance, which takes us all through the war.


The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

What happens when a 16 year old girl sets out to find the truth about her mother and father and what happened to them? When she comes across a medieval book in her father’s procession and asks him about it, the tale he tells her opens up quite a can of worms…then he disappears. This book is actually quite the travelogue of historical Europe as well as present day. We travel across Europe while our unnamed female character sets out to find the truth about Dracula! When she realizes what her father had been doing and what really happened to her mother, that the stories about the horrors that took place weren’t stories at all but were true…If you like a good vampire story that will make you want to keep turning the pages, and maybe make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, this one’s for you. Kostova’s

*This is Kostroma’s first novel.

Hopefully you will cozy up with one of these books and enjoy the last few months of winter. Keep in mind….soon we will be moaning about the dog days of summer!

Happy Reading!