April/May selection: The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

For the April / May 2025 edition I chose the novel The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (May 2024)

At some point last year, upon returning a book to the library via the Libby app, I was offered the option to "skip the line" and borrow a sought-after novel with a long, intriguing title. I accepted the offer and soon I found myself drawn to the story and even more so to its historical background: the period post-WWI and Spansh flu pandemic, and the challenges the time posed to women, war veterans and the UK at large.

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel...

But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

I enjoyed Simonson's style so much that after finishing this novel, I borrowed her earlier ones: The Summer Before the War (where again the war in question is WWI) and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

While the novel i selected is not food-oriented, it includes a number of references to foods. I hope it will provide inspiration and, above all, an interesting read.

Simona, briciole

Deadline for contributing your post: Saturday, May 31, 2025.

 

Leave a comment below with a link to your post or email me at simosite AT mac DOT com

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Remember that membership in our book club is open to anyone and we hope you will join us by reading these selections and creating inspired recipes. New participants are always welcome and so are returning ones. For more information about participating, click here.  

Our August / September 2017 Pick: Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Coming off of a spate of foodie memoirs, it's my pleasure to kick off our grouping of foodie fiction books, with Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder, our Cook the Books August/September 2017 selection. 

Like many children growing up in the United States, the Little House on the Prairie books were a big part of my childhood. They were favorites of my mom, who loved pioneer stories and she read them to and with us over the years. The television series first came on when I was in elementary school and it stayed on the air into my high school years--so I definitely grew up with the stories and the characters. 

When I was younger, I was not that interested in the character of Almanzo Wilder--much preferring the stories with Laura as a young girl and life with the Ingalls family and so Farmer Boy is the book I am least familiar with out of the nine books in the series.  A few months ago I was exchanging foodie book recommendations with friends on a favorite book site and someone brought up Farmer Boy and what a great foodie book it was. That sentiment was shared by a few different people and I decided I needed to reread this children's classic and the surest way to make it happen was to select it as my Cook the Books pick. 

Farmer Boy is the second book of the Little House series and was first published in 1933. It is the only book that does not focus on the childhood and life of Laura Ingalls and instead focuses on the childhood of her future husband, Almanzo Wilder. Set in the 1860s in upstate New York, before Laura Ingalls was even born, it begins just before Almanzo's ninth birthday and details life on the Wilder family's farm. Almanzo is pretty much constantly hungry and apparently quite the foodie, so I think we'll have a lot of fun exploring the food and recipes of America in the 1860s as we step back into childhood with this selection. I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

Submissions for this round of Cook The Books are due by end-of-the day Saturday, September 30, 2017. Anyone can join in the fun by reading the current selection, preparing a dish inspired by its contents, and writing about it. Let me know when your entry post is up by commenting on this post and/or sending me an email at: debinhawaii@gmail.com. 
 

New to Cook the Books? Welcome! Check out our About and Guidelines pages or leave a question in the comments on this post 

Aloha,

Deb