Review: Cooking for Kings - The Life of Antonin Careme

Cover via Amazon

I really enjoyed Ian Kelly's biography of Beau Brummell when I read it in 2006 and so when I saw Cooking for Kings:  The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef soon after reading Brummell, I snatched it up.  And then let it languish on my shelf for over three years before finally picking it up to read.  But every book has its day and I've finally met the French culinary genius!
This is a fairly short biography- only 225 pages, and several of those pages are full of illustrations.  There is an extensive list of recipes at the back of the book, all of which Careme detailed in his many cookbooks.


The biography portion of the book is actually quite scant on details of Careme's life.  No one knows exactly when he was born, why he chose to marry who he married, why his daughter felt such animosity towards him or what his private thoughts on his many illustrious employers are.  All we know is that Careme started in the slums, rose through patisserie shops during the French Revolution, became a general chef who commanded the attention of such august personages as Bonaparte, the Prince Regent, Talleyrand, the Russian Tsar and the Rothschilds.  He invented the chef's hat.  And souffle.  He also was one of the first chefs to write his recipes down and share them with people- and to make a great deal of money by doing so.  Sounds like he must have had a pretty fascinating life, right?  But he is mum on his relationships with employers and mum on a great deal of subjects besides his own recipes.  So... what we get in the biography is a list of menus, some interesting anecdotal information on his employers and a lot of food commentary.  While I personally love looking at historic menus and reading detailed food descriptions, I wish that there was more information about Careme himself.

Review: Anansi Boys

Image via WikipediaAnansi Boys by Neil Gaiman is a companion novel to American Gods.  Fat Charlie Nancy's father dies suddenly, and when Charlie goes back to Florida for the funeral, he finds out that he has a brother he never knew about, Spider.  He's also told that his father was the god Anansi, the keeper of all the stories, and that Spider got all the magic in the family.  Chaos ensues- Spider wreaks havoc on Charlie's life, upsetting his romantic relationship, his career, his police record and his home.  But this all serves to help Charlie come into his own, and as the two brothers confront each other and some common enemies, they do as Anansi would have wanted and learn to tell their own stories.
I thoroughly enjoy Neil Gaiman's novels.  I loved American Gods and The Graveyard Book and also really liked Stardust.  He writes so elegantly.  He's got panache.  I think even if you are not a fantasy fan, if you started reading a book by him, you'd have difficulty putting it down.  If you are familiar with the American Midwest and haven't read American Gods, you are missing out on a fantastic experience.  Have you ever read a book and thought, "Ohmigoodness, this author has lived my life.  He knows everything I did as a child and has the exact same memories I do!"?  Well... if you're from the Midwest, that is the exact reaction you will have to American Gods.  The House on the Rock plays a major part in the book, that's all I have to say.
But back to Anansi Gods.  I can't be sure, but I think if you live in Florida and have some Caribbean blood in you, then you might have that same affinity for this book that I had for American Gods. 

Review: The Lacemaker & the Princess

The Lacemaker and the Princess is a young adult book set on the cusp of and during the French Revolution.  Isabella is 11 years old and works as a lacemaker in the town of Versailles.  One day, her grandmother sends her to the palace to deliver lace to a customer.  Isabelle takes the opportunity to wander around the palace and manages to catch the attention of Marie Antoinette, who promptly takes Isabelle to befriend her young daughter, Therese.  Therese and Isabelle become friends, spending their days together along with another young girl, Ernestine.  But Isabelle hears about stirring discontent from her older brother, George, and life at the palace becomes increasingly tense as the French people begin to rebel against the King.

TSS: How important is the WRITING to you?

Well, here I am, back in the proverbial Sunday Salon saddle!  I've thus far had two posts in my "How important is..." series, and I've really enjoyed the discussions they've led to.  I hope you have, too!  So here we go with another aspect of the book reading process- the writing!

To me, if a book has beautiful, evocative language, it goes a long way towards making up for lacks in character development or plot.  I can sometimes get lost in lovely language.  (It even makes me alliterate.)  I love it when it's done well, such as in Kate Grenville's The Secret River, which is one of my favorite books mainly because of Grenville's fabulous use of the English language.  Words can do seriously amazing things, and when she wields them, she wields them well.

That's not to say that beautiful language is always necessary for the writing to be good.  In some cases, beautiful language would make no sense.  But as long as the narratorial voice comes through strong and I feel a connection, I can still enjoy a book.  I may not fall in love with it the way I would with the lyrical style noted above, but I'd still like it.  An author who I think has a great voice in this more frank and open manner is Sherman Alexie.  He has my attention at the first sentence and pretty much never loses me after that, even though his language is completely different than Grenville's.

Writing can obviously make-or-break a reading experience- if I don't like the writing style, then I am unlikely to like a book, regardless of how intricately woven the plot is or how smart the author may be.  I think many people feel the same way.  But I think one genre where writing style is far too under-appreciated is non-fiction.  Non-fiction has this stigma of being dry and fusty and boring, but there are many, many writers out there compiling facts and presenting them in engaging and witty and clever ways.  More than in a novel, quality writing in non-fiction can really get me far more interested in a subject than I might ever have conceived.


What about you?  Does writing make or break a book for you, or is there something else more important you look for?

Half-Way Discussion: To Say Nothing of the Dog

Marg at Reading Adventures and I read To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, together a little while ago and had such a great discussion we decided to break it up into halves!  What follows is our discussion of the first half of the book.  Marg will post our discussion about the second half of the book on Reading Adventures on Friday, so look for it this weekend!

To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science fiction book about time travel and the havoc it can wreak on people's lives.  It confronts the issues of fate vs. free will, expounds on the deplorable Victorian tendency to do everything in excess, and cheerfully makes multiple references to literary figures ranging from Montmormency the dog to Lord Peter Wimsey.  I can't say much more than that it is a very funny and witty book and I highly recommend it.  For more details on why, see below!  Marg is in blue and I am in green.

Review: For the King's Favor

I was very excited about Elizabeth Chadwick's For the King's Favor because I had been briefly introduced to the two main characters in previous books (most recently The Scarlet Lion) and was excited to learn more about them. 
For the King's Favor is about Ida de Tosney and Roger Bigod.  Ida was mistress to King Henry II while a teenager and bore him a son, William, before marrying Roger.  Roger spends much of the book trying to win back and then protect his land holdings, all of which had been in jeopardy since his father rebelled against Henry.  The two meet at court, marry, and then embark on a life together during a tumultuous period of English history.