Well, that's it. I'm a firm fan now of Hillary Manton Lodge. Giving her a label here on my blog and everything. I'm going to have to buy the last two books in her backlist that I don't already have, and I just might be elevating her to auto-buy status, right under Katherine Reay.
Cuz man, oh man, do I love her storytelling. Particularly her characters and her dialog.
Yeah. So, this is book two of the Two Blue Doors series. I've already read books three and one, in that order, because of reasons. (Reasons = librarians who cover up series info with barcode stickers. Because of their own reasons, I'm sure. But still, kind of low-level evil there.) I KNEW how this was going to end. Because of how book three begins. But it didn't matter because I love these characters and want to spend time with them as much as I can, even if I know how their stories are going to wrap up. This is a trilogy I look forward to re-reading.
In this middle book, Juliette and her boyfriend Neil spend quite a bit of time hanging out in France and Italy with her extended family. Juliette is starting to dig into her grandmother's past to learn the truth about her grandfather, and she's also making contact with some suppliers for the restaurant she and her brother Nico are opening back in Portland.
Speaking of back in Portland, Juliette's mother's battle with cancer spirals downward. Her long-distance relationship with Neil proves difficult. And the more she learns about her grandmother's life in 1940s France, the more questions she has. I'm really glad I'd already read book three, to be honest, because otherwise I think this book might have stressed me out some. Instead, I breezed through it chanting, "It'll be fine! It'll be fine!" as needed.
If you are looking for some delicious contemporary books with relatable Christian characters (who go to church routinely!!!), a smooth and realistic writing style that is a joy to read, and a smattering of historical romance sprinkled throughout it, you definitely need to read these books. And did I mention they have lots and lots of recipes included? I've earmarked several to try.
Particularly Good Bits:
My skills with an oven brush are slow-clap worthy. Children dream of one day being able to clean an oven like me. Old men weep (p. 27).
...do keep in mind that this may be your one opportunity to meet Gabriel before our parents have him conveniently murdered (p. 150).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for mentions of "monthly ladylike trials," some veiled references to married people's intimate activities, and sadness relating to a miscarriage. Also, the illness related to cancer could be distressing to younger readers. It's clean, but its not aimed at kids, is what I'm saying.
This is my 15th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020
Have you ever read the last book in a trilogy first? I accidentally read book 3 of the Two Blue Doors series first (Together at the Table). And I thought I could get the first two books from the library and that would be all okay... but then the library closed up. Argh. So I did what any self-respecting bookworm would do, and bought all three from Barnes & Noble's website because even a pandemic is not going to stop me from reading this series!
Turns out it was a good move because I really loved A Table by the Window too. And now I have Reservations for Two on my TBR pile waiting for me to finish one of the books I'm currently reading so I can start it. I didn't want to read it back-to-back with this one because sometimes that makes books in a series bleed together in my head, which I dislike.
Anyway. In A Table by the Window, Juliette D'Alisa is working as a food critic in Portland, trying to process her grief over her grandmother's passing, and supporting her mother in her battle with cancer. Also, she's tired of being alone and tired of people trying to set her up on dates, so she tries out a dating website and begins exchanging emails with Neil, a bacteriologist (I hope I got that right) from the Carolinas. They connect. They meet. Sparkage ensues. They can't figure out how to make a long-distance relationship work, but they want to try.
Through all this, Juliette is helping her brother Nico start a new restaurant, Two Blue Doors. He's a chef, and his sous chef keeps hitting on Juliette, who doesn't told her family about Neil for quite a while. And Juliette is also trying to figure out who the man is in the photo she found in her grandmother's cookbook and why he looks so much like Nico.
This book make me hungry. I wanted to eat all the amazing things the characters made and ate. Happily, Lodge includes a recipe at the end of many chapters for something mentioned in it. I haven't tried any yet, but... I will :-)
One of the things I appreciated most about this book was that, although Juliette and Neil do meet and are physically attracted to each other, and kiss several times, there was never any question of "are they going to fall into bed with each other." Neither of them considered that as an option, which was really refreshing, since most of the time single people in contemporary Christian fiction spend lots and lots of time either feeling guilty that they want to get into bed with someone and then doing it anyway and then being remorseful, or mourning the fact that there's just no way they can ever have sex because no one loves them or will ever marry them, etc. Y'all, this was refreshing, okay? And, judging by conversations I've had with my unmarried Christian friends, realistic. Very nicely done.
Also, these characters actually go to church. Regularly. I'm pretty tired of Christian fiction where no one ever attends church. Also not realistic, folks! Christians do go to church. Kind of a thing. I mean, right now most of us are attending online, but ordinarily... they might not go every Sunday, but many of us do.
Particularly Good Bits:
My world had become unpredictable, but at least I could rely on the goodness of the Lord and the consistency of green vegetables (p. 117).
"Any experience that ends in knowledge is not a waste" (p. 249).
I came from a long line of women who wrote their own stories (p. 295).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG. No violence, no cussing, no real innuendo, though there are some scenes where characters enjoy kissing each other.
Because I had to buy this in order to read it, it counts as my 12th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020 right? I say it does.
I got this from the library not knowing that it was book three in a trilogy. Oooooooops. In my defense, the library barcodes and such had totally covered up all but the numeral 3 on the back cover, and that's the only place the cover mentioned it was part of a series, so I thought it was a stand-alone like Jane of Austin.
But it was totally okay -- I figured out what was going on with no trouble at all. Lodge is too good a writer to let new readers who stumble into the series midway be confused.
And y'all... she is a very good writer indeed. Within a few pages, I wanted to be friends with restaurateur Juliette D'Alisa, hang out at the Two Blue Doors restaurant she runs with her brother, go on genealogy-tracing adventures with her to Chicago and Europe.
Juliette goes through a lot of relationship upheaval in this book. Proposals. Breakups. Make-ups. But none of it was... overwrought. Or rushed. Or sappy. It all unfolded in a way that felt very believable to me. The central romance was refreshingly realistic. And there's a wedding in the middle of the book, not at the end, which was awesome! Also, Juliette has two men in her life in a romantic sense, and neither of them is a jerk. Or a creep. Or a "bad boy." They're both nice guys. I can't remember the last time I ran into that. Even in Jane Austen one guy ends up being secretly skanky or an opportunistic fortune hunter or whatever. Lodge sidesteps all the love-triangle tropes so beautifully, and I applaud her.
All during her relationship changes, Juliette is also dealing with a lot of changes at the restaurant, plus she's trying to solve a mystery about her grandmother's experiences during World War II in France. You know I also love things that involve WWII, so I really enjoyed that aspect of the story. It's the one part where I really felt like having read the first two books would have been nice, but not to the point where I wanted to put this down and go find the earlier books and read those before finishing this one.
Eventually, Juliette's grandmother's own words, via letter, fill in a lot of gaps and answer a lot of questions. We learn her own story of love lost and love found. Her story doesn't mirror Juliette's too neatly, and yet they are both stories of "lost love and second helpings" as the title puts it.
Also, Juliette's family is awesome. She and her sisters are my people. Their conversations are so much like things my brother and I say, dropping stuff like the Kobayashi Maru in very naturally, and just... can I please hang out with them?
I'm going to have to read the first two books now. Our library is offering curb-side pick-up for materials to minimize contact, and I think the kids and I are going to have to try that this week. If I end up loving those two as much as I loved this one, I'll have no choice but to buy the whole set so I can have it on my shelf and hug them as much as I want. And reread them.
Particularly Good Bits:
I didn't answer. I couldn't. There were only questions in my head where answers used to be (p. 58).
Was that what it meant to be a grownup? To finally realize that your parents weren't invincible, but that they had challenges and struggles of their own? (p. 80).
So often I feel worry is a heavy, wet, wool blanket we wear about our shoulders (p. 255).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some discussions of sexual matters in dialog, some frank and some veiled, all tasteful and the sorts of things adult sisters would really say to each other, or wives to their husbands. There are no descriptive sex scenes, and I would consider this a clean book, but some might not. There is no cussing or scenes of violence, though the WWII parts involve some dangerous situations.
This is a refreshing book. It's sweet, salty, full of likable characters and enough problems to keep things interesting. It's also a retelling of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, set in Austin, Texas, in the present day.
People told me I would love this book. I got a copy. Then I resisted reading it for months because I was afraid I wouldn't actually love it.
But I put it specifically on my Autumn To-Do List as something I wanted to read this fall, so I made myself start reading it despite my worries. After all, the worst that could happen would be that I didn't love it. Then I'd sell it to the used bookstore and move on with my life, right?
Well, I loved it. I really did! It had quite a few surprises to it, not the least being that it's told alternately from the POVs of the Marianne character and the Colonel Brandon character. They're not named that here, but that's who they are. And it's really neat to hear the story from a different angle, because in the original, Elinor is pretty down on Marianne, and because I'm more like Elinor than Marianne, I kind of go with that. But now I think I understand the Mariannes of the world a little better, and that's awesome.
In this, sisters Jane and Celia Woodward must find a way to support themselves and their little sister Margot when their father has to skip the country after getting caught with his hand in the cashbox, so to speak. They start a tea shop in their native San Francisco. Celia falls in love. All goes well.
And then it doesn't go well, and they move to Austin, Texas, to start over again. There, they meet retired Marine Callum Beckett and charming musician Sean Willis, and they try to find a new place for their tea shop, and of course, one of the new men in their lives turns out to be a skunk, and yeah... it really is Sense and Sensibility in Texas. No big surprises. Nothing where they swap up the characters -- and that's my favorite kind of retelling, one where I can connect the dots to the original and have a good idea how the new version is going to wind up, but I thoroughly enjoy the ride to get to the end.
Oh, and this book has a whole bunch of recipes in it that I want to try. Especially the one for Cranberry Vanilla Scones. Nom nom nom.
Particularly Good Bits:
"You're weird."
"I'm idiosyncratic," I retorted. "That's different." (p. 50).
Celia's mouth eased into a sideways smile. "Not everyone has your passion for dead leaves" (p. 62). (I suspect this whole book was born of the idea of a new way to make this line work. I love it.)
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussion of a man getting a woman pregnant. Also, quite a bit of kissing. Nothing really racy, but not exactly a book I'd hand my pre-teen to read, either. No bad language.
I picked this book up earlier this month when I was in Colonial Williamsburg with my kids to see all the Christmas decorations. I spent all day looking in various shops there for some kind of cool Christmasy book and not finding one. The last place we went was the big bookstore over in Merchants Square, and I spotted this book right when we walked in. Exactly what I was looking for!
This book explains what Christmas celebrations were like in the colonial era, that they were really much more subdued than our own. It talks about where our own various decorating and celebrating customs come from too, and then about how old and new are combined in Colonial Williamsburg now.
The book is chock-full of great photos. It also has a bunch of recipes for things like hot chocolate and Twelfth Night Cake and a non-alcoholic version of syllabub. And it has some ideas for Christmastime crafts too, like decorating wreaths and making cool gingerbread houses.
On a whole, the book is a little bit aimed at school children, but I learned a lot from it too. I'll definitely be trying some of the recipes out. And I'll probably use this book to teach my kids some history at some point.
This is my second book read and reviewed for the Literary Christmas link-up hosted In the Bookshelf. I signed up to read at least two books, so I've hit that mark now, but I'm hoping to get another Christmas-oriented book or two in before the end of the month. Here's hoping!
Meanwhile, Merry Christmas!
I've got a guest post up today on Ashley's blog, A to Z. It's my review of the Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker, and you can read it here. Ashley asked me to write up the post as part of her Little House Blog Party that's running all this week, and I was happy to be able to contribute :-) I've loved the Little House books for as long as I can remember!
If you haven't checked out the blog party yet, please do so! The kick-off post is here, which includes a giveaway and a tag to copy and fill out. I posted my tag answers here on my other blog :-)
I'm taking a break from the party games to review this splendid cookbook. You can take this opportunity to "fill in the cracks" with any leftovers from your own Tolkien celebrations.
I bought it a few months ago and have really been enjoying trying out new recipes from it. That is, after I finished reading the whole thing, cover to cover. It's a charming read, both humorous and full of interesting historical tidbits. Oseland clearly knows her Tolkien, and also her classic English cookery. She strives to provide foods that are mentioned in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but also that Tolkien would have eaten when he was young, the sort of food he thought Hobbits would have. She sticks to ingredients Hobbits could have access to, with no New World foods except potatoes, which Tolkien specifically wanted to be part of Shire cooking.
I learned so much from this book! For instance, it taught me the difference between high tea and low tea, which I've always wondered about. Oseland says,
"...in Tolkien's day, there was a social distinction between high tea and low tea. High tea was more like a working man's early supper complete with plenty of cold cuts, hearty breads, and filling chunks of cheese with whatever sweets the family could afford on the side. Its name came from being eaten around a high table, as often as not, the only table the family owned.
Low tea, on the other hand, was an aristocratic snack time of dainty pastries and tiny pieces of cake served in the parlor, arranged on a low table -- hence the name" (p. 76).
What do you know? I always thought high tea was the fancy one! Now I know better.
Oseland also includes vegan variations of many recipes, and an appendix lists which recipes are or can be changed to be gluten free (18!), Paleo/primal (12!), vegan (21!!), and vegetarian (40!!!).
So far, I have tried five recipes: lemon and pepper baked fish (yummy), hot buttered scones (so good, I've made them twice), rosemary skillet peas (Cowboy loved them, I liked them, the kids hated them), mushroom soup (delicious), and lavender and lemon bread (addictive). I hope that eventually, I will have tried every single recipe in this book, because they all look so tasty!
My one quibble with this cookbook is that there is no alphabetical index of recipes. I'm going to have to make one myself, I guess. But it's a small matter -- the wonderful recipes and laughter-inducing text more than make up for it!
Tolkien talks about eating and drinking a lot, but he doesn't often describe what's being consumed. But I found ten times in The Lord of the Rings where he did describe food or drink. (I'm leaving out The Hobbit so this doesn't get too complicated.)
Your job is to figure out who was eating or drinking what he described and leave a comment with your guesses. I've told you in parentheses how many named characters are eating or drinking in the scene. You get 1 point for each correct character name and 1 bonus point if you can name which of the three books it is in. Possible high score of 46!
I'll post the answers and scores on Monday. And be sure to read all the way to the end for a free gift from one of our giveaway sponsors!
1. The food was mostly in the form of very thin cakes, made of a meal that was baked a light brown on the outside, and inside was the colour of cream. (1)
2. ...there was bread, surpassing the savour of a fair white loaf to one who is starving; and fruits sweet as wildberries and richer than the tended fruits of gardens; he drained a cup that was filled with a fragrant draught, cool as a clear fountain, golden as a summer afternoon. (4)
3. "...this is first-rate salted pork. Or I can cut you some rashers of bacon and broil them, if you like. I am sorry there is no green stuff: the deliveries have been rather interrupted in the last few days! I cannot offer you anything to follow but butter and honey for your bread." (5)
4. There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese... (4)
5. ...to drink pale yellow wine, cool and fragrant, and eat bread and butter, and salted meats, and dried fruits, and good red cheese, with clean hands and clean knives and plates. (3)
6. There was beer in plenty, and a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon... (5)
7. The drink was like water... and yet there was some scent or savour in it which they could not describe: it was faint, but it reminded them of the smell of a distant wood borne from afar by a cool breeze at night. (3)
8. They got there bread, and butter, and cheese and apples: the last of the winter store, wrinkled but sound and sweet; and a leather flagon of new-drawn ale, and wooden platters and cups. (2)
9. The drink in their drinking-bowls seemed to be clear cold water, yet it went to their hearts like wine and set free their voices. (6)
10. Then men came bearing a chair and a low stool, and one brought a salver with a silver flagon and cups, and white cakes. (3)
(Yes, this is a hard game. Tomorrow's will be really easy, though!)
Now for that gift I mentioned. It's from Sarah Rees, who runs the wonderful Etsy shop The Ring and the Lion and has donated a prize to this party every year. This year she is also giving away PDF copies of Recipes from the Shire, a collection of recipes she has adapted or created to reflect food you would eat if you were a hobbit. Click here for the downloadable PDF, which she is giving to this party's participants for free! Thank you so much, Sarah -- you are an awesome Tolkien fan and lovely friend!
As usual, this series is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, I'm listening ten books I've recently acquired, and by "recently" I mean "since the beginning of the year." I basically scanned my TBR shelves and pulled off ten things I could remember acquiring since Christmas :-)
Brick Shakespeare: Comedies by John McCann, Monica Sweeney, and Becky Thomas. Cowboy bought me the tragedies version of this as a gift a few months ago (cuz it has Hamlet in it, of course), and although I haven't finished reading that one yet, when I found this in the clearance section of Barnes & Noble's website, I pounced. These are so funny! But not for children -- they don't bowdlerize the stories any. Sam is really annoyed that I won't let him read them yet, since he's obsessed with all things Legos. One day, kiddo!
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini. I remember liking the Errol Flynn movie, and I always like a good pirate story! Found this at the library's last used book sale.
Cowboy Metaphysics by Peter A. French. I know this is gonna be fascinating, when I get to it! All about western movies and the kinds of ethical problems they grapple with.
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I recently saw the BBC miniseries (my review here), and while I know the series is based on more of Gaskell's stories than just this book, when I saw this at the used book store, I grabbed it.
Ellen by Heidi Peterson. I've read her Tales for Little Ears, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she writes for older readers.
I, Claudia by Charity Bishop. I haven't read any of her books yet, but I will soon remedy that!
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I won this in a giveaway from Reading in the Dark, and I know it's about WWII, and that's really all I know about it.
The Slaying of the Shrew by Simon Hawke. I bought this at an estate sale, and it looks to be a whodunit with Shakespeare as the detective? And it's part of a series? I was intrigued.
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez. I don't even remember who recommended this to me anymore, but it looks so sweet and complex.
An Unexpected Cookbook by Chris-Rachael Oseland. I stumbled on this on Amazon toward the end of winter, when I was still deep in the throes of Hobbit Sickness (like Dragon Sickness, only you're obsessed with the Hobbit movies, not gold), and I am so glad I bought it. I've read a little of it already, and all the recipes here are hearty, simple fare that Hobbits might have eaten! All made with ingredients you could have acquired in a rural world like that of the Shire. We haven't tried any recipes yet, but I'll be sure to do so before I write up a full review on this book.
My best friend gave me this last fall, and I have finally finished reading it! Yes, I read cookbooks. Ones like this, anyway :-) It's full of fun photographs of real cowgirls from days gone by as well as today, and every recipe has a little anecdote about its origin and uses. There are also quotes from real-life cowgirls, including famous ones like Dale Evans and Calamity Jane.
Many of the recipes are hearty and what I think of as old-fashioned, with simple ingredients and uncomplicated prep. I've earmarked these ones to try:
Annie Oatley Bread
Chuckwagon Doughnuts
Saddlebag Crackers
Cackleberries on Toast
Rio Brazos Salad
Leather Cookies (supposedly they look like leather, not taste like it)
Mustang Chocolate Cake
Rose Petal Jelly
Kathy's Orange-Cranberry Cake
That gives you an idea of the wide range of recipes in this collection :-) Some explain how to make them while camping, and there are even instructions for making a cardboard oven for using in the great outdoors! Something I'm tempted to try just for fun this summer, hee.
I kind of collect cookbooks that involve something I'm into, so this book goes on the shelf beside True Grits (all recipes inspired by the titles of John Wayne movies) and my All-American Cowboy Cookbook (all recipes donated by the stars of western movies and TV shows).
I read a cookbook every year or so, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've really reviewed one. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter is part cookbook, part memoir, and was so fun to read that my husband finished it before I did. Reese has a homey, humorous style, and some of her escapades reminded me of my friends who are/were raising chickens and bees and ducks and sheep. Most of her writing centers around a time when she was between jobs and decided that surely she could make most foods at home cheaper (and better) than their store-bought counterparts. She learned that some things are just too hard or too messy or too expensive to make at home. And that many things are far, far cheaper to make -- like vanilla extract, which she made 12 ounces of for $7, while the equivalent amount at the store would be more than $50. She provides the math on major brands versus these recipes, and also a note on how much hassle is involved in making each thing.
I smiled a lot while reading this, and laughed a few times. I also copied down nine recipes to try myself, recipes for such varied things as vanilla extract, clotted cream, hummus, and truffles. The chocolate kind, not the mushroom kind. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but when I do, I'll try to remember to comment on this post with a note or two on how they go. I'm especially eager to try the clotted cream, as I've read a lot of books about people living in England and eating clotted cream on their scones while drinking tea. I'd quite like to try that.
I learned about this book on Emily Coleman's blog Classics and Beyond, and you can read her review of it (and some of the recipes) here.
