Fun For Foodies on DVD

--by Hanje Richards

As a companion piece to yesterday's post on "Top 10 Food Books of 2011" from Booklist, here's a partial reprise of Hanje's "Fun For Foodies" blog from March that highlights movies from the library's collection related to food. Yum!

Babette's Feast - Some films can only be described as delicious. Written and directed by Gabriel Axel, from a short story by Isak Dinesen, this Oscar-winning film offers "an irresistible mixture of dry wit and robust humanity" (Newsweek). On the desolate coast of Denmark live Martina and Philippa, the beautiful daughters of a devout clergyman who preaches salvation through self-denial. Both girls sacrifice youthful passion to faith and duty, and even many years after their father's death, they keep his austere teachings alive among the townspeople. But with the arrival of Babette, a mysterious refugee from France's civil war, life for the sisters and their tiny hamlet begins to change. Soon, Babette has convinced them to try something truly outrageous — a gourmet French meal! Her feast, of course, scandalizes the local elders. Just who is this strangely talented Babette, who has terrified this pious town with the prospect of losing their souls for enjoying too much earthly pleasure?

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Big Night - Actor Stanley Tucci cowrote, codirected, and stars (along with Tony Shaloub) in this touching and funny parable about two brothers, Italian immigrants, who run an unsuccessful restaurant on the Jersey shore in the 1950s. Convinced by a thriving rival (Ian Holm) that jazz great Louis Prima will be stopping by their eatery for a late dinner after a show, the brothers pull out all stops and spend their last dollar organizing a banquet that ought to make culinary history.

Eat Drink Man Woman - Trouble is cooking for widower and master chef Chu who's about to discover that no matter how dazzling and delicious his culinary creations might be, they're no match for the libidinous whims of his three beautiful but rebellious daughters. A master in the kitchen, Chu is at a loss when it comes to the ingredients of being a father. Every Sunday, he whips up a delicacy of dishes for his ungrateful daughters, who are so self-consumed that they don't see his attempt at showing them love gastronomically. So, as relationships sour and communications break down, Chu concocts a sure-fire recipe that will bring his family back together: He creates his own love affair to rival his daughters' affections!
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Mostly Martha - Martha (Martina Gedeck), the domineering chef at a fancy restaurant, has her rigid routine broken when her sister dies in a car wreck, leaving behind her 9-year-old daughter Lina (Maxime Foerste). Martha takes the girl in, but has no gift for maternal expression; she offers Lina food, but Lina refuses to eat. Meanwhile, her control over her kitchen is threatened when her boss hires a buoyant Italian named Mario (Sergio Castellitto) to assist, and Martha finds herself flailing in an effort to reestablish control of her life.

Ratatouille - Our hero is Remy, a French rat (voiced by Patton Oswalt) with a cultivated palate, who rises from his humble beginnings to become head chef at a Paris restaurant. How this happens is the stuff of Pixar magic, that ineffable blend of headlong comedy, seamless technology, and wonder.

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Woman on Top - When Isabella decides to break free from her rocky marriage and move to San Francisco, she discovers the perfect recipe for coming out on top — her own hit TV cooking show. But when her producer (Mark Feuerstein, What Women Want) falls in love and her ex-husband (Murilo Benicio) comes to town to win her affection back, who knows which man will end up on the bottom?

Booklist’s Top 10 Food Books: 2011

--titles chosen by Brad Hooper (article first published in Booklist and individual reviews published in earlier Booklist issues by their writers)

It seems as if foodies are everywhere these days. And that is definitely a good thing. Everyone eats, and if we can elevate the quality of ingredients and experience, more power to all of us. However, many people, not simply avowed foodies, will appreciate these 10 outstanding food-related books, which Booklist has reviewed over the past 12 months. —Brad Hooper

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVoto; Food, Friendship, & the Making of a Masterpiece (Joan Reardon, editor) — Many Julia Child followers already know the story of her extensive letter writing to “pen pal” Avis DeVoto, which began when DeVoto replied to a fan letter Child had sent to her husband, Bernard. But this volume marks the first appearance of their complete correspondence. Painstakingly compiled by editor Reardon (thanks to new archival access), the letters tell the incredible story of the rocky development of Child’s chef d’oeuvre, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). Child and DeVoto’s relationship-on-paper began as a cooking one; living in Paris, Child enlisted DeVoto’s help in determining what ingredients were available to housewives in the States, her target audience. Their talk of solely “cookery-bookery,” cutely named by Child, quickly turned to friendly discussions of much more: family, social circles, and the politically taut McCarthy era. DeVoto, plugged into the American literary world, played an integral role in publishing Mastering. Helping one another through hardship (failed publishing attempts) and tragedy (Bernard’s death), the women’s frank, tender letters are an absolute delight to read, as much for their mouthwatering discussion of cuisine as for the palpable fondness they portray for one another. In an early note, DeVoto calls Child’s evolving manuscript “as exciting as a novel to read,” and, indeed, so are their conversations. — Annie Bostrom

Cooking with Italian Grandmothers: Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily (Jessica Theroux) — Grandmotherly cooking summons up images that virtually define comfort food. Grandmothers across Italy invited Theroux into their kitchens, allowing her to record a smart selection of unique and utterly appealing dishes that will leave readers of all ethnicities yearning for an Italian grandmother in the family lineage. Without traveling to Italy, cooks can turn to recipes for some extraordinary dishes such as Milanese involtini, thinly sliced steak nestling a stuffing of pork, chicken, beef, and cheese slowly braised in the simplest of tomato sauces. To accompany this, nothing could surpass the elegance of a layered creation of mashed potatoes, prosciutto, and cheeses bound together with eggs. Desserts range from cornmeal cookies through a showstopping hazelnut pastry. Instructions are clear, but experienced cooks may realize that some recipes can be simplified by using a food processor. Those obsessed with authenticity will relish Theroux’s detailed instructions for brewing one’s own walnut liqueur, a two-year endeavor. — Mark Knoblauch

Homemade Soda (Andrew Schloss) — Making sodas at home may be uncharted territory for even the most serious foodies. Schloss’ exhaustive menu of recipes and tips, however, shows just how approachable it can be. Cataloging more than 200 recipes, from such time-honored staples as root beers, colas, cream sodas, and ginger ales to newer types like sparkling teas, herbal sodas, and the über-trendy kombucha, Schloss leaves no stone unturned. Along with those basic concoctions, Schloss includes such truly imaginative examples as blueberry cinnamon soda and cardamom apricot soda. For each, he proffers detailed instructions for turning syrup into actual soda with either seltzer water, a soda siphon, and/or through brewing with yeast. Throughout the recipes, information is provided on such hidden constituents as caffeine, working with kombucha, and the eternal debate over calling the stuff soda or pop. The back third of the book is devoted to incorporating carbonated beverages into both savory and sweet dishes; recipes include ginger ale braised pork shoulder and cola meatloaf (savory) and chocolate root beer cheesecake (sweet). Plenty of similar books exist, but this gorgeous collection is in a class by itself. A must-have for budding soda jerks and brewing pros alike. — Casey Bayer

Ideas in Food: Recipes and Why They Work (Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot) — Say “molecular gastronomy,” and chances are that people will think of either Bravo’s Top Chef or Spanish restaurateur Ferran Adria, chef of El Bulli. Now, six years after Harold McGee’s ground-breaking scientific investigation, On Food and Cooking, comes a more consumer-friendly and recipe-packed (75) series of essays by husband-and-wife Talbot and Kamozawa. Several features interact to seduce reader-cooks. First is the authors’ exuberance and passion for the subject. No longer, for instance, will hydrocolloids be items of fear and loathing; they’ll be an acceptable ingredient that forms a gel when water is added. Second is the brevity of their 50 essays, whose length rarely exceeds five pages. Third is that the scientific explanation, even though communicated in the vernacular, is immeasurably bolstered by the inclusion of at least one relevant recipe. A bonus for foodies and professionals alike. — Barbara Jacobs

The Joy of Cheesemaking: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding, Making, and Eating Fine Cheese (Jody Farnham & Marc Druart) — Brush up on Chemistry 101 and be prepared to master all kinds of new techniques, beginning with mesophilic and thermophilic starter cultures and including the creation of a cheese-aging environment in your own home. In between the scientific lingo and the critical procedures of learning about the art of cheesemaking come some great color photographs, a few dozen recipes (e.g., Texas cheese soufflé, fromage flatbread), and introductions to “rock star” cheesemakers around the country that include personal histories, a cheese-featured dish or two, and contact information. And lest we lose sight of the end results, enjoying le fromage has its day in two chapters covering the how-tos of building a cheese board and pairings with wine or beer. The authors — one American, the other French — are affiliated with the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese, one of a handful of similar accredited educational institutions in the U.S. — Barbara Jacobs

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (Nathan Myhrvoid) — The brave new universe of molecular gastronomy is just one facet of today’s cooking revolution that has the food world reeling. Innovative kitchen equipment transforms raw ingredients not just through heat but also through extreme cold to open up fresh and barely explored culinary possibilities. This magisterial multivolume compendium rationalizes food science and technology for the new century. Compiling and systematizing data about virtually every known ingredient and technique that cooks have exploited since the dawn of time, it documents novel approaches that even now illumine new vistas for daring professional chefs and seriously venturesome home cooks. This set’s reference value within any serious cookery collection cannot be overstated. Culinary apprentices will find answers to just about every imaginable question in cooking science and practice. Supplementary online text and video resources will prove crucially helpful to librarians and researchers. Stunning, dramatic color photographs transform every page into a visual banquet. Libraries should be aware that the set’s sixth volume has spiral binding. — Mark Knoblauch

One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking (Molly O’Neill) — This is One Big Book, filled to the brim with anecdotes, references, information, memorabilia, and 800 recipes that are truly representative of all U.S. cultures and ethnicities. O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food columnist, respected author (New York Cookbook, 1992), and TV host, has outdone herself. It’s difficult not to stop and savor every page, from the gee-whiz type of historical illustration and mouthwatering food photography to the stories of new and well-honed cooks. In fact, the documented recipes often seem like footnotes, even if they’re preserved lemons, borscht, cioppino, or feijoada (Brazilian black-bean stew), simply because of the powerful stories. Take a minute to meet painter-waterman Bobby Bridges, living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, who imparts the secrets of his clam clouds (aka clam fritters), or Chicago’s Mark Reitman, a self-made expert on hot dogs as well as the founder of the Hot Dog University. Read more about Michigan celery, a subtle variety called Golden Hue. Flip to the pages celebrating the soul and food (barbecued chicken) or Gee’s Bend, Alabama, natives, a community made famous by its quilts displayed at New York’s Whitney Museum of Art. Perhaps no better and more humble quote summarizes O’Neill’s attempt to capture the spirit of our eating past and present than these comments from Alabamian Mary Lee Bendolph: “Old clothes have a spirit in them. I see that scrap of apron in a quilt and I remember the woman who wore that apron thin. Cooking is like that, too. I make my cornbread to remember all the cornbread that was made for me.” — Barbara Jacobs

Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (Joan Nathan) — If the very act of cooking connotes love, then the combination of recipes with stories is an open acknowledgment of the emotional bonds that food creates. As is her wont, TV host and award-winning cookbook author Nathan (Jewish Cooking in America, 1994, plus eight others) not only plunges into her collection of 200 recipes but also narrates, factually and with no small sentiment, the history of Jews in France. First, it’s a highly personal mission, prompted by her stay as a teenager in France in the 1950s. It’s also a motley narrative, filled with stories of persecution as well as joy, documented with personal accounts of the Holocaust and memories of kosher cooking (i.e., adhering to Jewish dietary laws). Food items represent the influence of Alsatian, Provençal, Moroccan-Tunisian, Algerian, and Eastern European cuisines — a well-functioning melting pot that yields brik (a North African turnover), borscht (the French equivalent of this Russian beet soup), Alsatian pear kugel (noodle casserole) with prunes, and cholent, a Sabbath beef stew. Just as compelling are the people who populate these pages: Ariel, a Jewish policeman in Auch, France, who craves a kosher version of lasagna; the Baroness de Rothschild; Daniel Rose, a young American chef in Paris whose 16-seat Spring restaurant is garnering raves. Historical and recipe photographs plus illustrations round out this very memorable collection. Appended are a sampling of French Jewish menus, a glossary of terms and ingredients, and a source guide. — Barbara Jacobs

The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adria’s elBulli (Lisa Abend) — Until very recently, Spain’s elBulli has been pretty much the consensus best restaurant in the world. Led by Ferran Adrià, the restaurant has been honing the cutting edge of avant-garde cuisine, exploring and often subverting the expectations of what food can be. For the six months a year that it’s open, elBulli works as a sort of cross between a da Vinci workshop and a Ford factory. Thirty-five stagiaires from around the world come to work for free (except for the chance that a bit of Adrià’s greatness rubs off on them), but the blunt reality soon hits them that working in this haute-cuisine kitchen/laboratory is really a crushing tedium of minutely precise and stiflingly repetitive tasks. Abend spent the 2009 season (one of elBulli’s last, as it will soon cease being a restaurant and become a sort of culinary think-tank) among the stagiaires, and if her strategy of profiling the experiences of the bit players while the Picasso of modern cuisine burns so brightly just offstage at first seems a bit coy, what she’s really doing is finding qualities in each young cook that reflect, amplify, and illuminate who Adrià is and what he’s doing at elBulli — crossing and even demolishing the lines between food and art. Anyone interested in the very vanguard of creativity in any medium, aside from the ever-growing ranks of foodies and celebrity-chef watchers, is certain to be enchanted. — Ian Chipman

The Vertical Farm: Feeding Ourselves and the World in the 21st Century (Dickson Despommier) — Despommier, an award-winning professor of microbiology and public and environmental health sciences, adds his voice to those calling for agricultural reform. It’s time to confront agrochemical pollution, he declares, and to convert waste into energy, conserve water, stop cutting down forests for fields, and make cities the equivalent of healthy ecosystems. It’s time, Despommier believes after more than a decade of study and brainstorming, for vertical farming. Farms that “would raise food without soil in specially constructed buildings”: energy- and water-efficient high-rise greenhouses using hydroponic and aeroponic growing techniques. The challenges involved are many, Despommier cheerfully concedes, but the advantages he cites are profound. In making his case, Despommier offers a fresh look at the history of farming, a staggering overview of the health and environmental problems associated with industrial agriculture, and a sobering report on current food and water shortages soon to be exacerbated by rapid climate change and exponential population growth. A visionary known the world over, Despommier believes that the “vertical farm is the keystone enterprise for establishing an urban-based ecosystem” and for “restoring balance between our lives and the rest of nature.” A provocative introduction to a pragmatic approach to growing safe, nutritious, local food. — Donna Seaman

Booklist's Top 10 First Novels: 2010

--titles chosen by Donna Seaman (article first published in Booklist and individual reviews published in earlier Booklist issues by their writers)

The top debut novels of the past year display remarkable imagination and artistry as they take us from Alabama to the Azores Islands, Appalachia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Manhattan, as characters journey from childhood to adulthood, rags to riches, confusion to revelation.

Anthill (Edward O. Wilson) - Wilson, world-famous biologist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of such seminal nonfiction books as Consilience (1998) and The Creation (2006), writes a first novel about an Alabama boy and his love for an old-growth forest. Raphael Semmes Cody of Clayville, Alabama, nicknamed Raff, wants to please his mismatched parents, but he isn’t comfortable with his working-class father’s rules for manliness or the ambitions of his mother’s wealthy family. He instead finds meaning, beauty, and a calling in a tract of old-growth longleaf pine forest surrounding Lake Nokobee, a rare and vulnerable swath of wilderness Wilson describes with bewitching precision and profound appreciation. A foremost authority on ants, an eloquent environmentalist, and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his exceptional nonfiction, Wilson has written a debut novel of astonishing dimension, acuity, and spirit. As Raff evolves from an ardent boy naturalist to a zealous student enthralled by a mound-building ant species to a Harvard-trained lawyer, Wilson dramatizes conflicts of great complexity and consequence within “parallel worlds,” becoming the veritable Homer of “Antdom” as he brings ant colonies in peace and at war to startlingly vivid life. As gentlemanly Raff walks a fine line in his heroic efforts to save the precious, pristine Nokobee Woods, violence, a force Wilson perceives as intrinsic to “this pitiless world,” percolates. With lyrical exactitude, empathy for all life, and a shocking conclusion, Wilson’s wise, provocative novel of the interaction between humankind and the rest of nature expresses a resonant earth ethic. — Donna Seaman

Barnacle Love (Anthony De Sa) - A novel divided into two distinct halves ordinarily suffers from problems due to the interruption in the narrative. Not so here; the two parts of this intelligent yet passionate novel merge seamlessly into a double-layered, twice as effective, doubly meaningful story, which is usually what is intended by such a structure, but which in other authors’ hands, too often fails to materialize. Granted, the theme is not new: the emigrant-immigrant experience from Europe to the New World. But the particular circumstances that De Sa creates in which to let these experiences play out, as well as his presentation of a deeply flawed main character nevertheless performing the heroic act of leaving home for an unforeseen future, give the tale its distinctiveness. As a young man, Manuel Rebelo leaves his hometown on the Azores Islands (a territory of Portugal), embarking on a fishing boat to flee the confinement of his limited prospects. He jumps ship in Nova Scotia, eventually settling down in Toronto with his wife and family to do what immigrants always intend: to seek a better life. Bringing family history full circle, and in the process cementing the novel’s two halves, Manuel impresses his confinement on his son, who, in turn, wants to make his escape, in this instance from the Portuguese neighborhood of Toronto. A beautiful musical piece stating and repeating its profoundly moving melody. — Brad Hooper

Bloodroot (Amy Greene) - This stunning debut novel is a triumph of voice and setting. Following one impoverished family from the Depression up through the present, the story is told in six voices and set in a remote region called Bloodroot Mountain, so named for the rare flower that grows there, which can both poison and heal. The family’s struggles with poverty and human cruelty and their endless search for connection are set against the majestic Appalachian landscape, which is evoked in the simplest and most beautiful language. At the center of this dramatic story is Myra Lamb, raised by her loving grandmother and born with sky-blue eyes and a talent for connecting with animals and people. Allowed to run free on the family’s mountaintop, Myra is a charismatic figure who eventually draws the romantic interest of John Odom, the wealthy son of business owners in town. Their marriage, which starts out with so much promise, gradually turns abusive as Myra is imprisoned in her new home and prevented from seeing her grandmother. The long repercussions of their violent relationship, on both Myra’s children and Myra’s own sanity, are played out through the decades as each family member speaks to the lasting effects of John Odom’s hot temper. With a style as elegant as southern novelist Lee Smith’s and a story as affecting as The Color Purple, this debut offers stirring testimony to the resilience of the human spirit. — Joanne Wilkinson

Born Under a Million Shadows (Andrea Busfield) - In her indelible first novel, Busfield, a British journalist who has lived in Afghanistan, describes post-Taliban Kabul from the viewpoint of precocious, 11-year-old Fawad, whose impossible losses are commonplace: “My father was killed, my brothers are dead, and my sister is missing. But in Afghanistan, that’s a big ‘so what.’” When his mother secures a job keeping house for three foreigners, Fawad moves from their impoverished relatives’ home into the Westerners’ compound. Over the following year, the foreigners begin to feel like family to Fawad, but Busfield never romanticizes the intractable challenges of cross-cultural understanding: “In many of their ways the foreigners were just like Afghans. . . . But in other ways they were just plain crazy and trying their absolute hardest to burn for all eternity. Worse than that, they all seemed so damned pleased about it.” Fawad has a deep crush on Georgie, a beautiful NGO worker whose passionate affair with a powerful Afghan man prompts Fawad to ask the largest life questions about love, religion, friendship, and identity. Poetic, bawdy, hilarious, and achingly wise, Busfield’s debut is a love story many times over: between a man and a woman, the author and Afghanistan, and an irrepressible boy and the wild world at large. — Gillian Engberg

Crossing (Andrew Xia Fukuda) - It’s freshman year for Kris Xu. But those annual fantasies of remaking himself from the quiet Chinese kid with the voice that is “Jackie Chan cumbersome” are dashed when the usual indignities resume: bullying, racism, and underestimation. Even his best friend and secret crush, Naomi—the only other Chinese student—seems to be pulling away. Then two things happen: he stumbles into an audition for the school musical and finds the glorious voice he thought he left in China, and other students start showing up dead. Although it has the plot outline of a thriller, this semifinalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest has the careful language and fine observations of a book with much more on its mind. Wrapped up ever more tightly in the plot is Kris’ sense of racial and emotional identity, and his battle with self-loathing begins to test his reliability as a narrator. Even his name is a feint; those who know him call him Xing — but who really knows him? There are a handful of suspects to the increasingly grisly crimes, and though the ultimate revelations are a tad rushed, they contain enough heartbreaking truths to deliver a significant punch. Sad, elegant, and creepy, this is a deft debut. — Daniel Kraus

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (Heidi W. Durrow) - When we are in pain or danger, we hold our breath and move with caution, which is how Durrow’s measured and sorrowful debut novel unfolds. Rachel has yet to get the hang of the American hierarchy of skin color when she arrives in Portland, Oregon, to live with her father’s mother and sister. Although considered black like her father, she is “light-skinned-ed” and has blue eyes, thanks to her Danish mother, whose shock and despair over the racism confronting her children after they moved from Europe to Chicago contributed to a mysterious tragedy only Rachel survived. Smart, disciplined, and self-possessed, Rachel endures her confounding new life, coming into her own as she comes of age. Meanwhile Jamie, the neglected son of a prostitute and the only witness to the Chicago catastrophe, has an even rougher time. Durrow fits a striking cast of characters and an almost overwhelming sequence of traumas into this compact and insightful family saga of the toxicity of racism and the forging of the self. As the child of an African American father and a Danish mother, Durrow brings piercing authenticity to this provocative tale, winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction. — Donna Seaman

Ilustrado (Miguel Syjuco) - In this dazzling debut novel, Syjuco portrays the history, politics, and arts of his native Philippines in the semiautobiographical story of two Filipino authors — both members of the ilustrado, or intelligentsia — living in New York. Once the literary lion of his home country, Crispin Salvador is teaching and working on his breakthrough exposé novel, The Bridges Ablaze, when his body washes up in the Hudson River. Wanting to know whether his mentor committed suicide or was murdered, his student and friend (who, like the author, is named Syjuco) sets out on a quest that takes him back to the Philippines for both the truth and the missing manuscript. In this literary collage — of Salvador’s work (fiction, memoir, and poetry), interviews, the biography of him in progress by his acolyte Syjuco, e-mails, blogs, old school jokes, and a bizarre hostage situation that captures the Filipino imagination and is threaded through the novel—the lives of the two writers become intertwined. As an unpublished manuscript, Ilustrado won both the Palanca Grand Prize, the Philippines’ highest literary award, and the Man Asian Literary Award in 2008. It is a virtuoso display of imagination and wisdom, particularly remarkable from a 31-year-old author; a literary landmark for the Philippines and beyond. — Michele Leber

Kapitoil (Teddy Wayne) - It’s October 1, 1999, and young, brilliant, self-taught programmer Karim Issar is transferred from the Doha, Qatar, office of Schrub Equities to Manhattan for three months to help the high-flying firm get past Y2K without calamity. He finds the work worthwhile but routine, and his always-active mind studies cultural differences and the idiomatic English of his podmates. Within three weeks of his arrival, he has developed a program that predicts oil futures. Schrub’s profits rise dramatically, and Karim gets a plush new office, a 300 percent salary increase, and the personal attention of CEO Derek Schrub. As his stock soars, he embarks on a relationship with Rebecca, his former podmate; with her help, Karim begins to see that making money for the sake of making money isn’t a fully rewarding way of life. Told through Karim’s journal entries, this wonderfully assured debut novel, at once poignant, insightful, and funny, details Karim’s passage through a new world of corporate sharks, Manhattan clubs, museums, Bob Dylan lyrics, and personal growth. Karim’s English, always grammatically correct but stilted with terms from science, mathematics, computing, and business, is a delight. Best of all, however, is simply being inside Karim’s head as he ponders Jackson Pollock’s paintings, baseball, programming, and the mysteries of love and life in the U.S. — Thomas Gaughan

Rich Boy (Sharon Pomerantz) - Pomerantz’s compelling, finely crafted debut novel chronicles one man’s journey from the blue-collar suburbs of 1950s Philadelphia to the high-society of 1980s New York. Robert Vishniak grows up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood, often at odds with his frugal, distant mother. Blessed with good looks and possessing an uncompromising ambition, Robert learns at an early age to use his physical appearance to his advantage. Eager to leave behind his humble upbringing, Robert is accepted to Tufts University, where he quickly falls in with a group of privileged students led by the enigmatic Tracey, Robert’s roommate and subsequent lifelong friend. Moving forward in time, Pomerantz chronicles Robert’s varied adventures as he copes with the panoramic complexities and rewards of rebellion, self-renewal, and heartache. Over the course of four decades, Robert becomes entrenched in the upper echelon of Manhattan’s elite, ultimately succeeding as a real-estate lawyer and marrying into a family of old money. He is finally enjoying the success he so desired as a young man, until a random encounter with a woman from his hometown begins to erode Robert’s carefully crafted persona. Pomerantz’s sweeping tale captures the intimate truths and hypocrisies of class, identity, and one man’s quintessential American experience. — Leah Strauss

Ruby’s Spoon (Anna Lawrence Pietroni) - Motherless 13-year-old Ruby Tailor wants nothing more than to live by the sea; instead, she lives in the English town of Cradle Cross, which is still reeling from the Great War, dominated by the fortunes of a button factory, and surrounded by canals polluted by industrial runoff. Raised by her emotionally distant grandmother, Ruby has her young life upended with the arrival of an exotic stranger. With her bold white hair, a skirt covered with tiny, glinting mirrors, and a hometown situated by the sea, Isa Fly immediately entrances Ruby with her story: she is looking for her lost sister at the behest of her dying father. Others in the close-knit town are not so enamored of the charismatic stranger. And when the town’s fortunes start to dim with the impending collapse of the button factory, they feel as if their bad luck coincided with Isa’s arrival and begin to think she may be a witch. This enthralling, suspenseful debut novel, which has the feel of a grim fairy tale, is written in the poetic dialect of the Black Country and is thick with the vocabulary of the fishing and button trades. Of the many riches it offers, it is the winning lead character, a lonely teen brave enough to have a dream despite her impoverished circumstances, who will capture readers’ hearts. — Joanne Wilkinson

So Many First Novels, So Little Time...

--by Sarah Watstein (first published in Booklist Online)

So much is written about first novels — from reviews to author biographies, lists, blogs, and websites. Indeed, there is even a Facebook community page about authors’ first novels. The first challenge ... is where to find reliable and readable information on the web about first novels.

For those seeking an overview of first novels in a given year, or those seeking recommendations for the “best” first novels in a given year, several sources are available. By all means, bookmark Nancy Pearl’s website. Librarian, bookseller, and tastemaker extraordinaire, Pearl is widely recognized for her passion for books and equally widely respected for her knowledge of books. First novels are one of the many categories Pearl tracks.

... [A]lso count on National Public Radio (NPR) for their coverage of arts and life, and within this category, for their solid coverage of all things “book.” Note in particular their annual Best Debut Fiction roundup. NPR is truly “always on”; [those] seeking to keep up with books in general can choose from audio stories, Podcasts, RSS feeds, Book Notes Newsletter (book reviews and stories), and more.

Exploring the blog universe can be a rich resource for information about first novels. [Don't] underestimate the value of a Google blog search. Whether the topic is debut novels or the training-wheel novel, blogs offer a rich resource ... and a Google blog search is the place to start. The blog search’s coverage includes every blog that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom) and will help [to] explore the blogging universe more effectively. Four options are suggested: creating an e-mail alert for “first novels”; searching Google News for “first novels”; adding a blog-search gadget for “first novels” to your Google home page; and/or subscribing to a blog search feed for “first novels” in Google Reader.

For those seeking to keep up with the commercial marketplace, The First Novels Club is a good place to start. Here is information about writing, reading, and “adventuring” from a group of first-time novelists. Book reviews and co-reviews, interviews, conference updates, and more are available. The club’s list of recommended blogs covers the proverbial waterfront and is a handy resource.

Tracking first-novel awards is another way to keep up. Note, for example, the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. Established in 1955, this annual award is presented to the most promising debut novel written by a British author and first published by a British publisher in the previous year. The Authors’ Club awards three annual literary prizes: the Best First Novel Award, the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, and the Banister Fletcher Award for the best book on art or architecture. The Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award is another example. Even Amazon.ca is in the mix with the Annual Amazon.ca First Novel Award. When navigating the book publishing awards’ landscape, discernment is essential. Not every award is awarded annually. Occasionally, the discerning reader or librarian will note bending of the criteria.

... [T]o connect with friends who are equally passionate first-novel readers, check out the Facebook community page Authors First Novels, a collection of shared knowledge about authors’ debut works. Last, and from the “wait-and-see” category, check out the new debut fiction list, To Hell with First Novels. Launched in 2010, this list comes ... courtesy of To Hell with Books, which is part of the To Hell With site on independent publishing.

And, finally, Booklist Online subscribers know that they can limit any fiction search, whether for starred reviews or for award winners, historical fiction or horror, to first novels only. It’s a powerful, easy-to-use tool.

First novels can mean the discovery of a whole new world. To all our librarians and readers — enjoy the fresh new world of reading that first novels offer! You’ll soon discover that finding reliable and readable information on the web about first novels can be fun.

Booklist's Top 10 Literary Travel Books: 2011

--titles chosen by Brad Hooper (article first published in Booklist (September 15, 2011) and individual reviews published in earlier Booklist issues by their writers)
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Ardent travelers are not about to give up traveling or reading about other travelers’ experiences. There is much to appreciate in each of the following exciting travelogues, all reviewed in Booklist over the past year.
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Andes (Michael Jacobs) - On average, the Andes range is second only to the Himalayas in elevation. The Andes is also the longest continuous mountain range in the world, stretching more than 5,000 miles from Panama to the southern tip of South America. Jacobs, author of several travel books, inherited his interest in the Andes from his grandfather, who spent extensive time there and later enthralled Jacobs with his tales. So this book is a saga of Jacobs fulfilling his dream of traveling the full length of the range that is filled with encounters with diverse, colorful characters as well as the ghosts of near-vanished Native American civilizations. Historical figures who have made their mark on the region, including Simón Bolívar and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, flit in and out of the narrative. As Jacobs travels, he seems alternately laid-back and awed as he becomes overwhelmed by the immensity of the landscape. This absorbing and charming travelogue will be of particular interest to those who have already visited or plan to visit South America. — Jay Freeman

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War (Annia Ciezadlo) - “I cook to comprehend the place I’ve landed in,” muses Ciezadlo early in her first book, a vividly written memoir of her adventures in travel and taste in the Middle East. Like any successful travelogue writer, she fills her pages with luminous, funny, and stirring portraits of the places and people she came across in her time abroad. But there is also, always, her passion for food, and through it, she parses the many conundrums she faced in her wanderings, such as the struggle to define identity, ethnic and personal, and the challenge of maintaining social continuity in wartime. The capstone to all her thoughtful ruminations is a mouthwatering final chapter collecting many of the dishes she describes earlier in the book. She does this all in writing that is forthright and evocative, and she reminds us that the best memoirs are kaleidoscopes that blend an author’s life and larger truths to make a sparkling whole. — Taina Lagodzinski

India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking (Anand Giridharadas) - The author’s parents, from India, lived a comfortable, professional life in the U.S. “Shaker Heights [Ohio],” Giridharadas says, “was a warm and generous place.” While growing up, Giridharadas recognized his mother's and father’s continued love of their ancestral homeland, but at the same time he witnessed that “they accepted and came to savor the American way of life.” Hearing an inner call to reverse the migration process of his folks, he flew, as a new college graduate, to Mumbai to work, having already secured a position in the local office of an American management-consulting firm. He plunged into Indian life in the midst of the country’s awakening as an economc and technological giant, as an ancient culture surfacing as a world power. The author is now a New York Times and International Herald Tribune columnist stationed in India. His perambulations around the subcontinent have revealed to him significant aspects of India’s changes to meet modern ways, and this anecdote-rich account of what he did and saw is as well expressed as it is well informed. — Brad Hooper

Molotov’s Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History (Rachel Polonsky) - British writer Polonsky moved to Moscow and took up residence in a once-opulent old building that had been a favorite of the Soviet elite, including the monstrous Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s second in command. Invited into Molotov’s apartment, still owned by his granddaughter, Polonsky is morbidly fascinated by Molotov’s belongings, including a magic lantern and a stash of books from his formerly enormous library. And so begins Polonsky’s book-steered journey through modern Russian history. Cogently descriptive, empathic, plucky, and acerbic, Polonsky begins with a tour of Moscow’s grim landmarks of the Stalin era, then ventures out into the countryside, excavating the tragic and heroic stories of writers and scientists who suffered banishment and worse, many the victims of Molotov’s industrious murderousness. She visits the site of Dostoyevsky’s dacha and Rostov-on-Don, the world of the Cossacks, which Isaac Babel so bravely infiltrated. She travels north to the formidable Kola Peninsula, then to Siberia, the realm of shamans, exiles, and prisoners; a Buddhist enclave along the Mongolian border; and imperiled Lake Baikal. Polonsky is so steeped in Russian history and literature that everywhere she goes, her inner magic lantern projects the past onto the present, the imagined onto the real, and what we see is an illuminated land of immense brutality and beauty, suffering and spirit. — Donna Seaman

Saved by Beauty: Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran (Roger Housden) - Both readers new to Housden and fans of his poetry will treasure this memorable account of what may be a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Even better, his insights are also sure to inform and maybe even re-form preconceived notions many hold about Iran. Housden acknowledges he has long been fascinated by this ancient country, its culture, and its poets but had not visited it until the winter of 2008–09. His fine prose constructs an enchanting picture book of Iran’s majestic architectural achievements. From his visit to the locale where writing was invented to his conversations with Iranian artists and philosophers of today, Housden shines a light on an Iran few Westerners will ever glimpse. These are young, creative people who are striving to marry the best of Iran’s culture, its 6,000-year-old roots, with the best of a new, secular culture that prizes the freedoms of speech and religion as well as gender equality. He is much inspired by Iran’s gleaming mosques and these sophisticated individuals, even though he is interrogated and threatened with imprisonment by representatives of Iran’s paranoid government. It is impossible not to lose oneself in Housden’s many-faceted narrative. — Donna Chavez

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road (Paul Theroux) - As a travel writer, Theroux has few contemporary rivals and no peers. His many books have hammered home the axiom that in meaningful travel the destination is never as significant as the journey itself. Theroux’s descriptive faculties and his deft, if often pitiless, eye for the insincere and the dishonest in the array of characters he encounters on his worldwide voyages leave readers indelibly haunted. Theroux’s admirers will welcome this anthology of those travel accounts that he himself has found admirable or influential or enlightening for his own literary achievements. A fecund resource for anyone who might wish to follow in Theroux’s footsteps, this is a remarkably perceptive and incisive annotated bibliography of travel books. Having surveyed this array of literature and having pursued the peripatetic existence, Theroux arrives at a destination: 10 brief commandments that serve as a vade mecum for travel and for life itself. — Mark Knoblauch

Through the Eyes of the Vikings: An Aerial Vision of Arctic Lands (Robert B. Haas) - Aerial photographer Haas continues his magnificent Through the Eyes series, following volumes on Africa and Latin America with an on-the-wing tour of the Arctic Circle. Why through the eyes of the Vikings? Because of their “hardy and adventurous spirit of exploration and enterprise.” Not to mention pillaging. While humans are rarely in evidence in these dramatic aerial views, the fact is we are everywhere in this seemingly pristine realm in the insidious form of pollution and the rapidly increasing effects of global warming. That concern aside, Haas’ exquisitely patterned panoramas invite awed contemplation. The stunning variety of landscapes is a surprise, the grand spectrum of turquoises, whites, and earth tones an astonishment. Haas’ gaze reaches whales beneath the sea, and caribou, polar bears, Dall sheep, and Icelandic horses on vast vistas of ice, peatland, and mountains. Haas invites us to contemplate the Arctic’s forbidding yet endangered glory in the belief that the battle between those who would exploit it and those who would protect this wilderness will “test the contours of the human spirit itself.” — Donna Seaman

To a Mountain in Tibet (Colin Thubron) - Kailas is a sacred, snow-capped mountain of the Himalayas in a remote area of western Tibet. There have been no recorded attempts to climb it, in deference to Buddhist, Hindu, Bön, and Jainist beliefs. Award-winning British travel writer and novelist Thubron (Shadow of the Silk Road, 2007) traveled along the Karnali River (a tributary of the Ganges) by foot with only a guide, a cook, and a horse man on a long and often treacherous trek to visit this mystical peak, considered holy by one-fifth of humankind. The journey is the reward, for both writer and reader, in this rich, beautiful account of the landscape, people, culture, and politics of Tibet. Much more than a travel guide or history lesson, this engrossing and gorgeously written book is also a stirring memoir tinged with the author’s own grief, reflecting on the joys and losses he’s experienced. Thubron is the steward of his father’s legacy and keeper of his mother’s memories, sharing familial recollections on a pilgrimage toward one of nature’s precious jewels, and his own parentless future. — Chris Keech

To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China and Korea (Tessa Morris-Suzuki) - The Diamond Mountains, located primarily in North Korea, are renowned for their beauty and have been an object of interest, even adoration, by sages, poets, spiritualists, and ordinary Koreans for centuries. Currently, the region has been a site of increased tension between North and South Korea, as they had shared administration of a tourist park there. Morris-Suzuki, an Australian professor, recently traveled through northeast China and the two Koreas; she was retracing the route of Emily Kemp, an extraordinary writer, artist, and intrepid adventurer who wrote about her experiences a century ago. Morris-Suzuki, like her predecessor, is a keen observer and a fine writer; she has combined the disciplines of history and travel writing in an absorbing analysis of the past, present, and future of this volatile region. China and South Korea, with their dynamism, seem a world apart from the repressive, static North Korea, but Morris-Suzuki succeeds in putting a human face on the long-suffering people of that pariah state. — Jay Freeman

The Year We Seized the Day: A True Story of Friendship and Renewal on the Camino (Elizabeth Best & Colin Bowles) - They barely knew each other — Best a young writer just starting off and Bowles a middle-aged writer of several books. She suggests he accompany her on a 500-mile walk on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrimage on the Spanish coast to the tomb of St. James. They set off on a 36-day journey that will test them physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. They met fellow pilgrims of all nationalities, shape, sizes, and dispositions, from devout to flighty, and their hosts ranged from kind to exploitative — and then there was the screaming nun. Bowles was to be her rock, get her through the pilgrimage, but within weeks, his demons were roaring. Their alternating perspectives run the gamut from hilarious to tragic as they reveal more and more of themselves on a wrenching journey across endless wheat fields, forests, roadways, and small villages, suffering blisters, dehydration, fever, and murderous fights. This is more than a travelogue, though the beautiful scenery and intriguing history are here. This is a journey of self-examination, a tortured experience of friendship developed and strained to the breaking point, then repaired, as two individuals prepare themselves to resume life after the Camino. — Vanessa Bush