It's that time of our virtual book club's cycle when we unveil the next four books selected by the co-hosts. This time, however, there is a twist: read on and you'll know more.
As always, we hope the reading will delight and inspire you. Ready? Let's go!
Claudia (Honey from Rock) opens the series: for the December 2024 / January 2025 edition, she chose C Pam Zhang’s novel Land of Milk and Honey (September 2023)
From the Publishers:
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef's boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
Claudia, Honey From Rock
Deadline for contributing your post is Friday, January 31, 2025
For the February / March 2025 edition, Debra (Eliot's Eats) has chosen the memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten (October 2024)
I really hadn’t thought of Ina Garten much these past few years and then this summer I reviewed Cooking in Real Life by Lidey Heuck. (Lidey was an assistant for Ina for many years.) Then I heard a recent interview with Ina on Fresh Air promoting her upcoming memoir. I pre-ordered it. I had no idea that she had worked in the White House, that she spontaneously bought a specialty food shop in the Hamptons, and that she was a very reluctant FoodNetwork Star. I guess I wasn’t much of a fan girl back in the days of The Barefoot Contessa. Long story short… my selection is Ina’s most recent book.
From the publisher:
Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose. From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
I hope you’re inspired by one of her personal tales like “1000 Baguettes” or “It’s Always Cocktail Hour in a Crisis." Perhaps you’ll choose a recipe from one of her thirteen cookbooks! Regardless, I think this will be a fun and interesting read.
Debra, Eliot's Eats
Deadline for contributing your post is Monday, March 31, 2025
Deadline for contributing your post is Monday, March 31, 2025
For the April / May 2025 edition Simona (briciole) chose the novel The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (May 2024)
Recently, 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 the challenges it posed to women, war veterans and the UK at large.
From the publisher:
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.
While the novel is not food-oriented, it includes a number of references to foods. I hope it will provide inspiration and above all an interesting reading.
Simona, briciole
Deadline for contributing your post: Saturday, May 31, 2025.
To round up the list of selections, for the June / July 2025 edition, guest host Wendy (A Day in the Life on the Farm) chose the historical novel A Bakery in Paris by Aimie Runyan (August 2023)
This captivating historical novel set in nineteenth-century and post–World War II Paris follows two fierce women of the same family, generations apart, who find that their futures lie in the four walls of a simple bakery in a tiny corner of Montmartre.
The first story is set in 1870 and the parallel story is set in 1946. Historical fiction is my favorite genre and this novel has the additional lure of being a "foodie" read.
Wendy, A Day in the Life on the Farm
Deadline for contributing your post: Thursday, July 31, 2025.
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. For more information about participating, click here.
As always, specific announcement posts can be found at Cook the Books at the beginning of each two-month period and the current selection is always shown on the right side of the homepage.
To recap:
February / March 2025: Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten (hosted by Debra at Eliot's Eats)
June / July 2025: A Bakery in Paris by Aimie Runyan (hosted by Wendy, A Day in the Life on the Farm)
Happy reading and cooking!
