Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie
Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the
Art of French Cooking and saved her soul.
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and
working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs
something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged
assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961
classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes.
In the span of one year.
At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage
Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crpes,
she realizes there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the
eye. With Julia's stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local
butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night
runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers
how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from
bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.
And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a
miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life's ordinariness
through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.
Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Both home cooks and devotees of Bridget Jones-style dishing will be caught up in Powell's funny, sharp-tongued but generous writing.
Kirkus Reviews
Powell is a softy at heart, appreciating Child because, she says, Child "wants you to remember that you are human, and as such are entitled to that most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life." Powell clearly enjoyed hers, with all its madness and pleasures.
Booklist - Vanessa Bush
Hilarious. Powell discovers incredible determination and hidden talents in cooking, writing and living. This is a joyful, humorous account of one woman's efforts to find meaning in her life.
TIME Magazine
Powell is not a domestic goddess; she's emphatically, unembarrassedly a domestic mortal. But she is also a genuinely gifted thinker and writer about food. As we learn in the account of her culinary marathon, Child's gastronomical masterpiece teaches Powell precious lessons about herself.
Ann Beattie Julie and Julia has all the ingredients of a tasty novel: it's
original, funny, and slyly provocative. I also learned a lot, and I will channel
Paul Child when I renovate my kitchen.
Mario Batali, cookbook author and 2005 James Beard Awards' Outstanding Chef of The Year.
Julie Powell's homage to Julia is inspiring, poignant and engaging. A
magnificent introduction into the lives of two very interesting women.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Last American Man
A feast, a voyage and a marvel. Julie Powell writes about cooking the
way it always needed to be written about - in big, buttery, honest and lusty,
gravy-dripping-down-your-chin gulps of rhapsody.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less...
The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
I rarely read anything before this. Years ago I picked this one up and couldn't put it down. It changed me into a book nut. It was a wonderful ...
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I can't believe I waited so long to read this book. Shame on me. This book was wonderful, lyrical, entertaining - all the makings of a wonderful ...
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The book held so much for the reader but in the end I felt robbed. The evolution of Trudy was disturbing and somewhat insulting. She came across as ...
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Justice Department still has issues with Google Settlement(Feb 05 2010) The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this...
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Hachette formally adopts 'agency model'(Feb 05 2010) Hachette Book Group USA became the second major U.S. publisher to officially announce its intention to move to an agency model for the sale of e-books....
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Julie & Julia
Ann Beattie
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