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.  

October/November selection: Cooking with Fernet Branca

For the October / November 2022 edition I chose the novel Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson (September 2005)

Right around the time when we started talking about our next selections at the beginning of this year, I read an article on The Guardian titled Top 10 cooks in fiction written by Annabel Abbs. Number 10 is Gerald Sampler, protagonist of the novel I chose:   

Gerald is a ghostwriter for C-list celebrities who likes inventing recipes. From his Tuscan hilltop he cooks with great gusto, using copious amounts of an Italian digestif called Fernet Branca. The plot is fast-paced but daft, the characters ludicrous but hilarious, and the recipes imaginative but ridiculous. Mussels in chocolate, garlic ice cream, a pie made from cat and kerosene, all doused in Fernet Branca, and described by one reviewer “lingering in the mind like poems”. This farce of a novel is a perfect reminder that no cook should take themselves too seriously.  

The New Yorker's review clarifies that two expats are the novel's main characters:

In this comic novel, two expats try to live on the same Tuscan mountaintop for the summer without killing each other: Gerald, an effete English snob and amateur cook who makes his living as a ghostwriter; and Marta, a bohemian composer from a crime family in a former Soviet republic. Hamilton-Paterson quickly seduces the reader with the perfectly captured acerbic tone and timing of Gerald and Marta’s badinage. 

I'm looking forward to reading how Gerald uses Fernet Branca in the kitchen, since when I was growing up in Italy it was strictly drunk as a digestivo (digestif).

Simona, briciole

Deadline for contributing your post: Wednesday, November 30, 2022.

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.  

October/November selection: The Secret, Book and Scone Society

The novel The Secret, Book and Scone Society by Ellery Adams (October 2017) caught my attention first because of the words "book" and "scone" in the title (aren't they perfect together, a book in one hand and a scone in the other?),  then because it revolves around a bookstore, and finally, because it is a mystery.

The bookstore's owner, Nora, having once been healed by books, has chosen to do the same to other people. But healed from what? (I cannot say: it's part of the mystery)

Besides Nora, the society of the title includes three other women, quite different from each other, each with a secret to share, a story to tell. One of them is a baker with a special gift (which you will find out about when you read the novel). 

From the author's website:

Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a place of healing. Strangers flock here hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. If none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked “comfort” scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That’s Nora’s special talent—prescribing the perfect novel to ease a person’s deepest pain and lighten their heaviest burden.

The novel is therefore a mystery on more than one level: there is a murder to be solved, but there are also the mysteries of the women's past, which are slowly revealed, just as the plot that led to the murder is also slowly revealed. 

There are no recipes in the book, but food and hot drinks play an important role in it and I hope the story will inspire you.  

Simona

Deadline for contributing your post: Monday, November 30, 2020.

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

Remember that anyone can participate in Cook the Books: simply pick up a copy of the selection from your local bookstore or library, take inspiration from said reading, cook and post the inspired dish. We look forward to having you read and cook along with us in this selection period and beyond. New participants are always welcome. (Leave a comment here or check out our Guidelines page if you have any questions.) 

February/March selection: Pomegranate Soup

I saw the novel Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran (2005) at the annual Berkeley Library sale last year (a great chance to stock up on books). I remembered reading good reviews about it, so I added it to my purchases.

Pomegranate Soup is a story of people who have fled from their country of origin and recreated their lives in a different one. In the case of the three Aminpour sisters, the first country is Iran, the second Ireland. From the kitchen of an old pastry shop in the village of Ballinacroagh, County Mayo, the sisters share foods of their native country, like red lentil soup, abgusht stew, rosewater baklava. Not everybody like the "wafts of cardamom, cinnamon, and saffron float through the streets," though, and therefore, as you can imagine, adventures ensue.

From the publisher's website:

Infused with the textures and scents, trials and triumphs of two distinct cultures, Pomegranate Soup is an infectious novel of magical realism. This richly detailed story, highlighted with delicious recipes, is a delectable journey into the heart of Persian cooking and Irish living.

Ms. Mehran died in Ireland in 2014, aged 37, while she was working on the third book of the Aminpour sisters' series (the second, Rosewater and Soda Bread, was published in 2008). I am even gladder to feature Pomegranate Soup as our selection: reading what she wrote and shared with the world is, in my view, the best way to honor her memory.

Simona

Deadline for contributing your post: Tuesday, March 31, 2020.

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

Remember that anyone can participate in Cook the Books: simply pick up a copy of the selection from your local bookstore or library, take inspiration from said reading, cook and post the inspired dish. We look forward to having you read and cook along with in this selection period and beyond. New participants are always welcomed with open arms! (Leave a comment here or check out our Guidelines page if you have any questions.) 

This selection brings to a close the current set of four: be on the lookout for a post where we announce the next four selections.

Announcing our next four book selections

While we are all still traveling through time with chocolate, we have also traveled into the next several months to plan the upcoming editions of our book club. Here are the next four book selections:

Deb (Kahakai Kitchen) opens the series with the memoir Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop

I had heard so many great things about Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China and its author Fuchsia Dunlop that when it was a Kindle Deal several months ago, I snapped it up. To prompt myself to read it and not let it languish on my TBR pile, I chose it as our April/May 2018 Cook the Books selection. 

Dunlop is a British cook and food writer who specializes in Chinese cuisine—in fact she was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine and she has spent much time exploring China and its food. She has four award-winning cookbooks focused on Chinese cooking; Land of Plenty (originally published as Sichuan Cookery in the U.K.), Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, Every Grain of Rice, and Land of Fish and Rice. 

Published in 2008, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper chronicles her experiences cooking and eating in China. From the book blurb:

An extraordinary memoir of an Englishwoman’s attempt to immerse herself in Chinese food and Chinese culinary culture. In the course of her decade-long journey, Fuchsia undergoes an apprenticeship at a Sichuanese cooking school, where she is the only foreign student in a class of nearly fifty young Chinese men; attempts, hilariously, to persuade Chinese people that ‘Western food’ is neither ‘simple’ nor ‘bland’; and samples a multitude of exotic ingredients, including sea cucumber, civet cat, scorpion, rabbit-heads and the ovarian fat of the snow frog.

It’s been quite a while since Cook the Books has traveled to China and I am looking forward to seeing the dishes that this book inspires!. 

Deadline for this selection is Thursday, May 31, 2018

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For the June/July edition, Claudia (Honey from Rock) chose Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl 

Ruth Reichl, recipient of four James Beard awards as well as numerous other prizes, has written five memoirs and a novel, done TV shows and edited several cookbooks. Out of those, I frequently refer to my Gourmet Today.  Garlic and Sapphires stands out as my favorite of her memoirs. 

From her Publishers: 

As the New York Times's restaurant critic for most of the 1990s, Reichl had what some might consider the best job in town; among her missions were evaluating New York City's steakhouses, deciding whether Le Cirque deserved four stars and tracking down the best place for authentic Chinese cuisine in Queens. Thankfully, the rest of us can live that life vicariously through this vivacious, fascinating memoir. 

I love the way she assumed various disguises to find out how all sorts of customers were really treated — not attracting special service for a well-known critic — and she pulls no punches. She can be truly hilarious, and is such a descriptive and evocative food writer.

Deadline for contributing your post is Tuesday, July 31, 2018

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For the August/September edition, Debra (Eliot's Eats) has chosen Sourdough by Robin Sloan  

I'm excited to announce the August/September selection: Sourdough by Robin Sloan (September 2017). A recent NPR report by Jason Sheehan describes the novel in this way: 

Think of it like Candide without the pirates. And set in San Francisco. Wait, that's not quite right. It's like Fight Club meets The Great British Bake Off. It's like Fight Club if no one got punched. It's like Fight Club if Fight Club was written by someone concerned with a different, quieter kind of revolution, and if Fight Club was all about bread.      

With a review and description like this, I cannot wait to read it! I was obviously taken with the title but was absolutely and totally intrigued when I read the publisher's blurb. The main character, Lois, is a software engineer working at a robotics company. Two of her few friends run a diner that Lois orders-out from every day. They unexpectedly close up shop but ask Lois to take care of their sourdough starter. 

She's not a baker but this sourdough gift starts her on a new journey and brings her into contact with the area farmers market vendors. Intrigued? Remember, Lois is a software designer and there is a sci-fi/technology twist to the plot. Sourdough is Sloan's second novel, a followup to the well-received Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (October 2012). He currently is a partner in Fat Gold, a California Olive Oil Company. Hope you enjoy this wild ride of a read. I am anticipating lots of yeasty recipes. I personally, am ordering some starter now. 

The deadline for Sourdough is Sunday, September 30, 2018.

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To round up the list of selections Simona (briciole) picked The Cooking Gene, A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty

I was glad to see this book mentioned on our suggestion page, as it was already on my TBR list. I have had to pleasure to meet Michael and hear him speak, so I am thrilled to read his book and share the experience with others.

From the publishers' page:

A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom... 

As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.

Deadline for contributing your post: Friday, November 30, 2018.

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Remember that membership is open to anyone and we hope you will join us by reading these selections and creating inspired recipes.  For more information about participating in our virtual book club, click here.  

As always, specific announcement posts can be found at Cook the Books as the year marches on.

To recap:

April/May: Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop (hosted by Deb at Kahakai Kitchen)

June/July: Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl, (hosted by Claudia at Honey from Rock)

August/September: Sourdough by Robin Sloan (hosted by Debra at Eliot's Eats)

October/November: The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty (hosted by Simona at briciole)







Happy reading and cooking!