The Secret Garden Cookbook by Amy Colter

I read Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden after my mother told me she had read it as a girl, and that her mother had read it as a girl. It was the only book my mother ever mentioned having read as a child.

The beloved children's classic story tells the story of Mary Lennox who had lived a life of ease in India; after cholera takes her family, she is sent to live in England. Adjusting to her new life, the lonely girl meets local boy Dickson and together they discover and revive a neglected garden. Although rife with dated colonialist and racist attitudes, the basic story of regeneration is timeless.

Food plays an important role in the book, and cookbook author Amy Colter shares recipes inspired by the story, newly revised and updated to appear with the release of the new The Secret Garden movie. Quotations from the novel regarding food are interspersed.

Colter's chapter introductions informs readers on many subjects from the typical Victorian meals to what was in a kitchen garden to the history of tea.

So many of these recipes are homely and wholesome and nostalgic. 

Chapters include: 

• Yorkshire Breakfasts; Coddled Eggs are so simple--why don't we made them every week? I do make my own cocoa mix--this recipe has a dash of cinnamon!
• A Manor Lunch; this casual meal could include Potato Snow, Roasted Chicken with Bread Sauce, or Welsh Rabbit.
• An English Tea; I am now dreaming of Warm Cranberry Scones with Orange Glaze and Fruit Tea Loaf!
• From the Kitchen Garden; Wholesome fresh food including Sweet Glazed Carrots and easy Summer Berry Pudding.
• Dickon's Cottage Food; Tattie Broth, Pease Pudding, Yorkshire Oatcakes--this is my idea of comfort food!
• A Taste of India; Exotic recipes from Colonial India includes Fruit Lassi, Mulligatawny Soup (which I make frequently!), and Fresh Magno Chutney.
• Garden Picnics; Including the easy to transport Cornish Pasties, brought to my home state of Michigan by immigrants working in the copper mines--a complete meal.

This is a delightful book.

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:
Experience the magic and enchantment of The Secret Garden whenever you like, right at home in your kitchen. The Secret Garden Cookbook, now newly revised, is the only cookbook that celebrates the delicious and comforting foods that play such an important role in the novel and its world.

Frances Hodgson Burnett's wonderful tale The Secret Garden celebrates its young heroine, Mary Lennox, as she brings an abandoned garden back to life. It also delights in good food, robust appetites, and the health and strength they can bring. It describes a world where water, light, and loving care bring soil and plants back to life—and also one in which fresh milk, homemade currant buns, and hearty, simple fare renew and bring pleasure to the novel's complex and fascinating characters.

Amy Cotler serves up in these pages 50 recipes, all updated for the modern kitchen, that are at once true to Mary's world and completely appealing for today's tastes. You will find a bounty of baked things, including English Crumpets, Cozy Currant Buns, Jam Roly Poly, Dough Cakes with Cinnamon and Sugar, and The Best Sticky Gingerbread Parkin. (A parkin is a cake rich in molasses, honey, and sugar that often is served on Guy Fawkes Day.) There is more-substantial and savory fare for teatime and dinnertime, too, and for breakfast and brunch, along with drinks and snacks for the daily whirl—all guaranteed to keep the magic of this beloved tale alive for years to come.

The Secret Garden Cookbook is an essential companion—and the pitch-perfect gift—for anyone, young or old, who loves the book.

The Secret Garden Cookbook, Newly Revised Edition
Inspiring Recipes from the Magical World of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden
by Amy Cotler
Publisher: Harvard Common Press
Publication: Jan 14, 2020
Hardback, 112 Pages, $19.99 / £12.99
ISBN: 9781558329935

Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Kiley Reid's debut novel Such a Fun Age offers an original and unique perspective on race and class through a page-turning story that is deceptively entertaining.

The setting was familiar--Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square and Kensington. My husband once worked at the corner of Rittenhouse Square and we spent 1980 living in Kensington. The two neighborhoods could not have been more different. The historic Rittenhouse Square and the upscale shops around it, ethereal sounds of music wafting from the Curtis Institute of Music; and Kensington with its empty factories and yardless rowhouses built to house textile factory workers. Money and privilege and the working poor. After we left, Kensington declined even more.

Reid's character Emira has graduated from my Alma Mater, Temple University, with a B.A. in English--as I did. I often proudly said that I held a degree that prepared me to read intelligently while impoverished. Emira has other complications: she has no idea what she wants to do in life and she is African American.

My first job out of Temple was working Christmas Rush at Strawbridge & Clothier's downtown; my second job was customer service at a Bala Cynwyd insurance company. Emira is a part-time typist for the Green Party and takes a part-time job as a babysitter. She shares an apartment in Kensington and hangs with her friends, wishing she had more disposable money like they do. Emira will soon be 26 and the impending loss of her parent's health insurance looms over her head. She needs a 'real job'.

The woman who hires Emira to babysit is Alix Chamberlain who has built a career as an influencer, married an older, well-off television newsperson, and has two children. She carries the heartache of her first love with Kelly, who dumped her just before prom over a misunderstanding and her ill-formed decision that proved disastrous for Kelly's African American buddy.

Emira has great affection for Alix's child. And, she badly needs the babysitting money. So when she gets a call for an emergency late-night sitting job she leaves her friend's birthday party at a bar. Dressed inappropriately, with a few drinks under the belt, hanging with a white child, Emira strikes the security guard as suspicious and she is nearly arrested. A white man records the incident and encourages Emira to prosecute. She isn't interested. But when they met up again later, they become involved personally. That man is Kelley.

Meantime, the incident causes Alix to take a closer look at her babysitter. She becomes emotionally attached to Emira, losing the boundary between the professional and the personal. This escalates to the point that Alix interferes with Emira's personal life with disastrous results for everyone. Except for Emira; she comes out the better, finally finding herself.

The interactions between races depicted in the novel were startling to me, first because I had not encountered them before in fiction, and secondly because they felt very true.

Do we white people really understand the implications of our behavior when we try to help, endeavor to show we are not prejudiced, are color blind or woke? Do people with comfortable lives really know what those who are struggling want from us? I mean, Alix sends leftovers and wine home with Emira! Is that helpful when what she really needs is health insurance?

Such a Fun Age reads like popular women's fiction but hits on important and relevant issues. It would be a great book club read.

I won a free book on Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK PICK

Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
G. P. Putnam & Sons
ISBN-10: 052554190X
ISBN-13: 978-0525541905

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

Wrong book--wrong time--There are many reasons for me to walk away from a book. 

Marie Benedict is a best selling author who writes historical fiction about remarkable women. I had previously read her novels The Other Einstein and The Only Woman in the Room. I am not a huge fan of her writing style, but commend her for bringing the women she writes about to a public who might not know their stories.

Lady Clementine is about Winston Churchill's wife, usually portrayed as long-suffering and anxious for Winston to put aside politics and enjoy his life--and give her more of his attention. Benedict shows a woman who understood what she was taking on in marrying Winston.

"In that moment, I knew with utter certainty that I could make a life with him. It would not be an easy life--no, it would be one of striving and ambition--but it could be an important and purposeful one.~from Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

Twenty-three-year-old Clementine married the thirty-four-year-old Winston, with wanting to "write my own chapter." The novel takes their story through WWII, told by Clementine, in episodic scenes.

I just did not feel compelled to pick up the book, and half-way through decided to move on.  It just couldn't compete with the other books I was reading at the time.

Read an excerpt and judge for yourself:
https://www.sourcebooks.com/uploads/1/1/5/5/115507011/9781492666905.pdf

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband.
Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

Lady Clementine
by Marie Benedict
SOURCEBOOKS Landmark
Pub Date 07 Jan 2020
ISBN 9781492666905
PRICE $26.99 (USD)

2020 Goals, WIP, and TBR

Hello to a new decade! 

I have a full schedule of book reviews coming these next few months and a long list of TBR galleys and books to read!

Right now I am reading the newly published Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, a lovely Goodreads win.

I am also reading biographies Fannie Lou Hamer by Maegan Parker Brooks and Frida in America by Celia Stahr, and Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen.  Also, Deeds Not Words, art quilts on women's suffrage from Schiffer Publications.

Just arrived in the mail is Country by Michael Hughes.

On my TBR galley shelves are:

• John Adams Under Fire by Dan Abrams
• Miss Austen by Gil Hornby
• The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
• Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
• Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zach
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Paris Never Leaves by Eileen Feldman
• American Follies by Norman Lock
• They Called it Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton
• Beyond the Horizon by Ella Carey

And, finally in the mail are LibraryThing wins is Inland by Tea Obreht.

My Christmas presents included Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion by Hillary Davidson.

And The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians by David M. Rubenstein.

My library book club finished up 2019 with A Gentleman in Moscow! This month we are reading Kirk W. Johnson's The Feather Thief and coming up this quarter are dynamite reads--Karen Dionne's The Marsh King's Daughter, Angie Kim's Miracle Creek, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. 

 I accepted a challenge to finally frame this needlepoint I made in 1973.

This year I am planning to continue to hone down my pile of quilt tops by getting them quilted, and to finish the tops I started, and to make the quilts I bought specific fabric for.

One of those incomplete projects is Love Entwined. I couldn't face the next border. 

Then there is Hospital Sketches and my Yellow Roses Sampler to finish! And the Thicket animals to quilt.

I also want to use stash fabrics. I'm not getting any younger and it's 'use it or lose it'! I love this Eastside Detroit find. I would like to take some of my vintage fabric stash and create something free and awesome along this line.

Our weekly quilt group had two weeks off for the holidays, then I missed a week. But look at what I got this week: a wonderful gal gave me these vintage fabrics, including some feedsacks and a Disney print of Alice and Wonderland!!!

 And on the 'free' table I found these books.

It's been a crazy winter here in Michigan with little snow. This snowman I made years ago is pleading, Let It SNOW.

But it's been cold enough that this squirrel seemed to be at the doorwall begging to be let in.

Our son's girlfriend's cat took over a basket and for Christmas I made her a pillow. Hazel the cat is pleased.

 And we gave our grandpuppy Ellie a Barkbox toy of a mug with squeaky marshmallows, which she took to bed.

The new news is that we will have another grandpuppy soon! Another puppy mill rescue from Safe Harbor, but this one a puppy!

Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak

Maddow has impressed me with her cogent and reasoned narratives in explaining news stories. Earlier this year I read her book Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russian, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth in which she explains the gas and oil industry's influence and power and how Putin's goal of becoming a gas and oil supplier to Europe and the world has impacted current American politics. I count it as one of the best 2019 books I read..

I was late to discovering Rachel Maddow in spite of her popularity as I don't care for most cable and network news shows featuring a personality. I prefer print media sources.

In 2015, I followed the Michigan online newspaper Bridge stories on the Flint, Michigan lead water crisis. Maddow turned this local story into national news. She publicized the decisions by Flint's emergency managers which bought about the contamination and hosted a live Town Hall meeting in Flint. Maddow caught my attention at this time.

When St. Martin's Press offered me a chance to read Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak I was very pleased. I knew I had a lot to learn about Maddow.

I was disappointed when Rogak's coverage of Maddow's involvement was a few sentences. I hoped for more insight, especially since this showed Maddow's activist side as well as her penchant for finding buried news.

I did learn about Maddow as a person, her early activism, her work habits, and her overall career. It was no surprise to learn that Maddow's deep intelligence and perfectionist drive was manifest from childhood.

The portrayal leans heavy on the personal. I had no idea of Maddow's struggle with depression or even of her earlier activism in AIDS and LBGT organizations. I knew she was lesbian and have noted her handsome, no-frills style. Maddow's wardrobe choices take up too much space, her preference for hoodies and sneakers mentioned several times. I appreciate that Maddow found the love of her life.

I preferred the sections which described her ability to put personal politics aside and her reasoned interactions with people whose political views were vastly divergent from her own.

I wish the author had been able to include a section on Blowout.

I loved the quote about Maddow's dislike of cable news hosts as 'brands' and her comment on how some even profess opinions just for attention and to draw viewers. Maddow sees her role as offering "a useful analysis" to help viewers "come to their own conclusions." I love that! That is my ideal.

The biography has reinforced my estimation of Maddow.

I was given an Advanced Reading Copy by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt here.

About the author:LISA ROGAK is the author of numerous books, including And Nothing But the Truthiness: The Rise (and Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert. She is the editor of the New York Times bestseller Barack Obama in His Own Words and author of the New York Times bestseller Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart. Rogak lives in New Hampshire. Learn more on her website.

Rachel Maddow: A Biography
by Lisa Rogak
Thomas Dunne Books
St. Martin's Publishing Group
On Sale: 01/07/2020
$28.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9781250298249

Cesare: A Tale of War-Torn Berlin by Jerome Charyn

They would embroider, multiply, manufacture, until I was their Caligari with his slave, Cesare, who strangled enemies of the Reich at will and then returned to his coffin at Tipitz-Ufer. ~Admiral William Canaris in Cesare by Jerome Charyn

From the beginning, I knew I had entered a noir world of tales and terror where fantasy and fact spun a deeper journey into the known, for surely nothing can convey truth better than fiction.

Reading Cesare by Jerome Charyn I knew I had to see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari again, for the imagery of the doctor and his sleepwalking murderer is central to the novel. It is set in a world gone mad and filled with madmen. Yes, I am talking about the movie--and I am talking about the novel.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German film in which horror builds upon horror, the action set against contorted Expressionist Art sets. A doctor is monomaniacally obsessed with controlling a somnambulist, Cesare, who in his sleep murders on command. In the end, we are unsure who is really mad.

We were all madmen at the Abwehr. We had to be. How else could we have survived the Furher's fiery wind day after day? ~ Admiral William Canaris in Cesare by Jerome Charyn 

In Jerome Charyn's Cesare, we met the orphan Erik Holdermann, raised by whores who pool their money to send him to school. There he is discovered by a benevolent department store baron who sends Eric to his an estranged uncle--only to be treated like a household slave. But the Uncle's daughter, the imperious Lisalein, bewitches the boy. Lisalein is fierce and beautiful, a cruel Estella toward men; under the Nazis she becomes a crusading angel for the Jews.

While at cadet school Eric unwittingly saved the life of Admiral Canaris, the head of the "asylum called the Abwehr," the German Military Intelligence. Canaris brings Eric into the Abwehr to eliminate their enemies, becoming Dr. Caligari to Eric's Cesare.

Dr. Caligari's will controls Cesare in his coffin

Eric is Admiral Canaris' liaison with the Nazi Gestapo and SS; the Abwehr was at odds with them, hiding and protecting select Jews, one Jew at a time. Eric was protected and feared by his reputation, for the enemies of the Abwehr disappeared.

Hitler's mad dominions meant nothing to Erik. He was loyal to Uncle Willie and played Cesare for him. ~ from Cesare by Jerome Charyn

To rescue Lisalien, Eric enters the contorted reality of Theresienstadt, a PR facade constructed to hide the truth of the Nazi death camps.

The book reads like a twisted dark fairy tale, stepped in the details of a time in history so chillingly horrific some deny it ever happened. And like all good horror stories, it will disturb your sleep.

I was given access to an egalley by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for a fair and unbiased review.

Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin
Jerome Charyn
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication January 7, 2020
ISBN: 9781942658504, 1942658508
Hardcover $26.99 USD, $35.99 CAD, £19.99 GBP

Polite Society by Mahesh Rao

When I read the opening of Polite Society on the First Look Book Club I was intrigued, and when I won a copy of the novel I was pleased.

The story is inspired by Jane Austen's Emma, only set in Dehli among the upper strata of society.

Early on I was laughing out loud. I even selected a sentence to share on David Abram's Sunday Sentence on Twitter. Roa's satire permeates the story.

In some ways, Ania's initial interest in Dimple's affairs could be placed on the same spectrum of charitable instincts as the one that left her to the animal shelter. When Dimple stared in confusion, widening her large brown eyes, Ania's heart gave a little flip. But over time she had become genuinely fond of Dimple and didn't see why the girl shouldn't reap the rewards of a superlative Delhi social life just because of her unfortunate beginnings.~ from Polite Society 

I was halfway into the book when I picked up another book to read for my library book club and afterward found it hard to get back into this novel. I realized I did not know what it was 'about', other than the absurdities of the wealthy. I also realized that I didn't like the characters.

I kept reading because I had already read 75% by this time. I was disappointed in the end.

On the plus side, Rao can be very viciously funny. I had not realized how sophisticated and worldly India's rich are, a mirror of Western society. There are comments about the legacy of British Colonialism and the conflict between Hindi and Muslin. There were some interesting twists to characters, bringing their story into the 21st c.

On the negative side, the growth of the characters does not mirror that in Austen's Emma. I found some actions distasteful, especially a scene near the end involving masturbation. I did not feel the satisfaction of Austen's happy ending.

Updating a classic Austen novel is not easy. This one didn't work for me.