Although this one took me a long time to finish, I really enjoyed it. It may be my favorite of the four Conrad books on the Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century — maybe tied with The Secret Agent, which I also liked.

Nostromo starts off interestingly enough, setting the stage by describing the imaginary South American country of Sulaco. Then it hits a slow patch when it goes into the details of the political situation. That’s where I slowed down. But the second half picks up again, with a real adventure tale of stolen silver and star-crossed lovers. Of course, the writing throughout is elegant Conrad.

American foodies owe a debt of gratitude to Alice Waters. She is the patron saint of California cooking, or new American cooking, or whatever you want to call it. She’s the one who gave us goat cheese croutons, roasted beets, mache, and so many other now-ubiquitous dishes. “Former Chez Panisse chef” is just as much a brand name as the brand named meats and produce she serves at her restaurant.

For those reasons, I actually read The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook cover to cover, the way one reads an MFK Fisher book – to get an understanding of the cook’s philosophy as well as recipes. Both women write in a formal style and have strong ideas about ingredients, preparation, presentation, and consumption. Unfortunately, Water’s writing is more spare, perhaps as befits a patron saint, and lacks the pithy humor that leavens Fisher’s books. Reading her prose is more like learning a lesson than being entertained.

Which may be why this book struck me as an essential book for someone who wanted to learn to be a restaurant chef, but not particularly useful for someone cooking at home. Most of the menus require some final preparation of the next dish after the preceding one has been served – possible in a restaurant, but not much fun at a dinner party if the cook wants to eat with the guests.

The individual dishes are also complicated or labor-intensive, causing me to often think as I read, “I’d eat that if someone made it for me.” Waters is particularly fond of leg of lamb, lobsters, and quail and her recipes for these show the difficulty in preparing them at home. First, most of the lamb recipes call for spit-roasting the leg of lamb. She even explains how to build a spit. In my spit-deficient kitchen, those recipes are not possible.

Second, while I find a steamed lobster to be a wonderful treat on a special occasion, Waters takes the fun out of it with instructions to semi-cook a lobster, then remove the meat and make a fumet with the shells – a process involving roasting the shells, making the broth, putting the shells in a blender, then straining the whole thing through a fine sieve – then finish cooking the lobster. Whew!

Finally, quail do not usually show up on my dinner table, but if they did, I do not think I’d have the dedication to follow Walter’s recipes. In most of her quail recipes she gives similar instructions: “Marinate the quail in a cool place overnight . . . turning the quail four to five times during this time.” No little boney bird is worth losing a night of sleep.

Reading this Menu Cookbook made me want to spring for dinner at Chez Panisse, but it did not make me want to don an apron and start cooking.

I was surprised some at how much I enjoyed this book. Because it is an epistolary novel consisting of only one, long letter from a 77 year old minister to his seven year old son, I thought it would be boring. It was certainly different from any contemporary books I’ve read, but it wasn’t boring at all.

In his letter, the father writes about his own youth and his relationship with his father, his scallywag of a grandfather, his best friend and that man’s ne’er-do-well son, the history of his Iowa town as a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, and his two marriages. Throughout, he ties in the themes of grace, forgiveness, and man’s fallibility.

I was particularly struck by the narrator’s discussions on how much he enjoyed his life. He writes the letter to his son knowing that he will not be around when his son is an adult. But, although he is approaching death and anticipating his heavenly afterlife, he makes it clear that he appreciated the temporal pleasures of his life — the beauty of the prairie, his books and education, falling in love, baseball, and his town.

It was wonderful.

A variation of this review is posted on Rose City Reader.

V. fun in manner of weekend with girlfriends.

Martin Amis’s Money is a stumbling, swirling, sodden romp though the protagonist’s brain. As anti-hero John Self bounces back and forth between London and New York, pursuing a questionable movie deal, he spins the hilarious tale of his drunken, pornographic life.

Comparison’s to Kinglsey Amis’s Lucky Jim are inevitable, as both are comic novels dealing with sad-sack, affable drunks. Where Lucky Jim is charming, with likable characters and a coherent plot, Money is chaotic, with abrasive characters and a shaggy, almost stream-of-conscience plot line. Money is also a little longer than it needs to be (it gets repetitive) and uses a few post-modern tricks that are too cheeky for my taste (Martin Amis is a character, for example). But what makes Money worth reading is that it is funny. Sometimes it is laugh-out-loud funny. That, and the feeling that John Self isn’t quite the ogre he makes himself out to be, keeps the pages turning.

Death by the Glass is the second of Nadia Gordon’s Sonny McCoskey mysteries. Sonny is the chef owner of a fancy lunch restaurant in Napa Valley, and an avid amateur sleuth with a grab bag of colorful friends.

Sharpshooter, the first book in what hopefully will be a longer series, involves grape growers and wine makers. This one involves Napa Valley restaurateurs. Both are like a cross between Sex and the City and Nancy Drew, with a big dollop of Kitchen Confidential mixed in. They are a little thin on plot, but thoroughly enjoyable, and the offbeat setting makes them definitely worth reading.

This struck me as a mix between Brideshead Revisited and Scoop. It starts off as an English country house drama, and ends up as an adventure story in the jungle. Huh? But it was entertaining through and through —- definitely Evelyn Waugh at his snarky best.

I want to like Annie Dillard, I really do. I think the world is a better place because Annie Dillard thinks and writes as she does. But, the bugs. Lots and lots of looking at, thinking about, and describing bugs. Some other creatures too, both larger and smaller than bugs, but mostly bugs.

As much as I appreciate the conclusions Dillard draws about the natural world and the nature of God, her minute observations about critters and plants could barely hold my attention. I took pious pleasure in finishing the book, like I had done something that, while a little boring, had it’s interesting moments and made me a better person – kind of like going to church.

This struck me as a mix between Brideshead Revisited and Scoop. It starts off as an English country house drama, and ends up as an adventure story in the jungle. Huh? But it was entertaining through and through —- Evelyn Waugh at his snarky best.

This struck me as a mix between Brideshead Revisited and Scoop. It starts off as an English country house drama, and ends up as an adventure story in the jungle. Huh? But it was entertaining through and through —- Evelyn Waugh at his snarky best.