I'm way overdue for an update here, so I'll start with two pretty special books I edited that have recently come out:
First, I got to edit another one of Jacques Pépin's cookbooks! This one was a thoroughly updated version of his Cuisine Économique from 1992, which I still own somewhere and which was all about cooking tasty, interesting, satisfying meals without being wasteful—by using less expensive cuts of meat, shopping seasonally, using as much of a vegetable as you can, etc. It was revamped from head to toe into Jacques Pépin Cooking My Way: Recipes and Techniques for Economical Cooking, and you know that with Chef Pépin you will always get tried-and-true recipes (and his lovely watercolor illustrations, of course!).
But I don't always edit cookbooks, y'know! I got to edit the latest collection of essays from one of my all-time favorite writers/thinkers, Anne Lamott. This one is called Somehow: Thoughts on Love, and it's just beautiful throughout (big surprise there, right?). She talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to partner love, mother love, best friend love, and everyone in between, and of course you know you're going to quite literally laugh and cry as you read—sometimes within the same passage. I guarantee you will be hard-pressed to pick your favorite piece in this lovely collection.
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Lessee ... the best novel I read recently was The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash. From the title you might think it's about a harsh season in the wilderness, but in fact it's about the Winter family that lives at the famed Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. Son Anton has just returned from a stint in the Peace Corps, and his dad Buddy, a beloved late-night TV talk show host, is recovering from a nervous breakdown and wanting to revive his show. Because of Buddy's career, the Winter family thinks nothing of hobnobbing with the rich and famous, mostly show biz types, and these real celebrities figure throughout the book—think Johnny Carson etc. It's a novel but it reads like a memoir in that respect—all of their interactions are obviously fictionalized, but they read like the real thing. (In this sense—and this sense only—it reminded me of Any Human Heart by William Boyd.) But most importantly for the plot of the novel: Because the Winters live at the Dakota, they are neighbors with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. John figures prominently in the book, as he and Anton strike up a sort of a friendship, and Anton is trying to help Buddy start a new show and hoping to have the Beatles reunite on it. But because it's 1980 ... well, as the kids say, if you know you know. So it was kind of a disturbing sensation going along with all the fun while knowing that an unthinkably awful thing must happen at the end of the book. I really loved it, and I especially liked the way the author portrayed life in NYC in that era—I imagine that New Yorkers of a certain age will get even more out of it in that respect than I did.
A book that was in fact about a harsh season in the wilderness was Homestead by Melinda Moustakis. It's the story of Marie and Lawrence, who marry almost immediately after meeting and move to Lawrence's homestead in Alaska in 1956, just before statehood. They have to figure out who are they are as a couple—the couldn't be more different as individuals—as they try to survive in near isolation and under very difficult conditions. I found the writing lovely—the nature descriptions are incredibly vivid—but I can't really say I loved this book. It got rave reviews elsewhere, so give it a try if you like historical fiction where the setting is a character on its own.
One more: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt has nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie. It's about Sibylla, a brilliant graduate student who ends up having a baby and raising him on her own, barely squeaking by transcribing old magazines. Her son Ludo is a genius—can read several languages by the time he's three, understands physics and astronomy, and more—thanks in large part to his mother's rearing style. The only thing she doesn't want him to learn is the identity of his father, so of course that's the one thing he most wants to find out. At age 11 he sets out on a quest to find his father or, really, any father that will do. Since he and his mother rewatch parts of The Seven Samurai almost every day, Ludo uses that as the framework for his journey. This is an incredibly long, incredibly erudite book, and I can't really think of too many people I would say must read it, but I'm sure glad I did. You will have to gloss over entire sections in Greek or Japanese and endless pages of mathematical equations ... but it's just really enjoyable to be in Ludo's company.
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I'm so far behind in movie reviews that I'll just briefly review the last three new releases I've seen:
The Beekeeper: This one stars Jason Statham, who is always a pleasure to watch, as a beekeeper but also a Beekeeper—that is, a member of super-secret special ops group. He sets out to avenge a certain crime, and it all plays out well—except that I didn't find the portrayal of the FBI agent, played by Emmy Raver-Lampman, very believable for a lot of reasons. If you like a good shoot-em-up, you'll like this.
Dune 2: We rewatched Dune 1 in preparation for this, and I was glad of that because I had forgotten some stuff that had happened. I loved this almost as much but had a big problem with the way the ending was handled, specifically in terms of Paul. I'm told that if I had read the book it would have made more sense to me. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll leave it at that and you can message me to discuss! I'm also threatening to cover my face with Bene Gesserit tattoos like Paul's mom (Rebecca Ferguson), because WOW.
American Fiction: Jeffrey Wright stars as a serious novelist who is frustrated by his lack of audience. On a lark, he takes on a pen name and new persona and writes a very typical "Black novel" that embodies everything he hates about popular culture. And, you guessed it, it's a hit. This is a clever skewering of the literary world, and Wright is excellent.
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The last thing I want to mention is a phone app called Be My Eyes that I've had for a couple of years. It's perhaps the greatest use of technology and globalization that I've heard of yet: Volunteers sign up to be "on call" if a visually impaired person needs help seeing something. Here's how it works: I hear a notification on my phone and can choose to respond or let someone else take it. (Indeed, I've occasionally grabbed my phone within one second and still missed my chance—someone else got to it before me! Which isn't surprising, as there are about half a million visually impaired people on the app and nearly 7 million volunteers waiting to help out!) Once you're connected, you can talk (when you sign up, you choose which languages you can speak—there are currently 180 languages offered, and over 150 countries represented!) and you can see through the person's phone camera, as with FaceTime. There's also a flashlight button if they're in the dark. I helped one guy who had rearranged his freezer and didn't remember which frozen meal was which—all I had to do was read the labels. I helped another guy find where his adorable puppy had peed on the floor. I helped a woman recently who had a bunch of ice packs, some of which were for food and some were for first aid, the kind that you can also heat up in the microwave, and she didn't know which were which. And so on—I've had only a handful of calls so far. It is just the greatest feeling, and I only wish I got to do it more often, as it leaves me on a high for the rest of the day. If this appeals to you, I encourage you to sign up.
I've wanted to see several of those films! That sounds like a very worthwhile and helpful app.
Posted by: Margaret | May 22, 2024 at 05:57 PM