I am a foodie; I always have been, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s possible that anyone who has read the mini-bio in the sidebar will have guessed that already, as two of the things Jen and I first bonded over were cake and cheese, but my love of food goes back much further than that; as soon as I was capable of talking, I named my favourite teddy Scrambled Egg, after my favourite dish du jour, and, after a brief period as a fussy eater, I’ve been experimenting with food for years, with, admittedly, mixed results. That being said, I can completely understand why someone would want to write a memoir focussed around food, or even to chart the progress of an entire relationship based on the meals eaten, and that’s why I was so pleased to come across three such books this month: Cooking for Mr Latte by Amanda Hesser, Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard, and French Milk by Lucy Knisley.

I’ll talk about Cooking for Mr Latte first, the book I enjoyed slightly less than the other two, for the simple reason that I didn’t like Amanda Hesser, or at least the way she presented herself in the book, as much as the other two writers. The book itself covers the period between when Amanda Hesser, a food writer by trade, first meets her future husband, Tad Friend, a fellow writer, and the day of their wedding; that’s all on the back cover, by the way, so I’m not spoilering. The individual chapters of the books were originally written as articles, so there is a kind of piecemeal feel about the book, but that doesn’t really matter too much, as each chapter ends with a selection of the recipes that Hesser was talking about, either from dinner parties, dates, or restaurant visits, in the preceding pages, which disrupts the flow of the narrative in any case.

Although not many of the recipes are vegetarian, thereby doing me no good at all, most of them sound quite tasty, so they weren’t the problem for me. What I found a bit annoying at times was that Hesser often came across as a bit too opinionated about food for me. On one occasion, talking to a man she had just met, she launches into a sustained diatribe against his plans to open a chain of boulangeries in Spain, so that he could get a decent croissant when he was there, as he put it. While I’m not sure about that as a business plan, I couldn’t help but feel that Hesser was being a little bit hypocritical in declaring that people shouldn’t eat croissant in Spain whilst she tucks into Thai, Italian, and French food, among others, in her New York surroundings.

Still, it was an interesting enough look at the life of a food writer, and if you eat meat or fish there are probably quite a few recipes that a moderately skilled home cook would be interested in, but I really just come up with a lot of enthusiasm about the romantic elements of the story, and so, in the end, I really just didn’t care that much about a lot of the people in the book.

French Milk is a rather different book to Cooking for Mr Latte, being Lucy Knisley’s graphic novelesque travelogue of a month long vacation in Paris that she took with her mother. The reason I put this book with the other two is that Knisley is almost totally obsessed with food, and a good portion of the book is devoted to recounting what Knisley and her mother had eaten that day, and describing her love for various foodstuffs, including the fresh whole milk that gives the book its title. That said, there is still a lot about the cultural life of Paris, and various meetings with friends and acquaintances that took place throughout the month.

French Milk almost comes across as a diary, in many ways, but the unusual format means that it comes across in a quirky, charming manner, and the quite simplistic drawings support that feeling, at least for me. There are times when I felt that the book slipped dangerously close to angst-ridden teen territory, despite the fact that Knisley was in her early twenties when she wrote French Milk (and we all know there’s a massive difference between people in their teens and early twenties. Ahem.), but those instances are few and far between, and the portrayal of the close relationship between Knisley and her mother, and the miniature portraits that Knisley paints of the people they come across more than made up for any small issues I had with the book as a whole. The only criticism I have of the book, really, is that I wish it had been longer, but I got the impression Knisley had made as much of her material as she could, and so I’m just going to look out for more work from her in the future. In the meantime, I will content myself with looking at the stuff Knisley posts on her website, which is well worth a visit.

Even though I loved French Milk, though, of these three books, Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard, is by far my favourite. The book covers the first few years of Bard’s life after she moves to Paris to live with a man she barely knows, and begins when Bard is still living in London, having moved there from her home city, New York. There are, of course, many little episodes of culture clash, and many points at which Bard questions her decision to live thousands of miles from her family, but, as the book is subtitled ‘A Love Story, with Recipes’, and Bard’s paramour, Gwendal, seems like a thoroughgoing chap, there is little doubt about the end of the book.

At points, though, it is difficult to discern exactly which love story Bard is most concerned with; that with her partner, Paris itself, or food. All three relationships make for good reading, but it is Bard’s relationship with Paris, and its elusive citizens, that make for the stormiest parts of the book. Nevertheless (and rather predictably), it is the parts of the book that deal with food that really caught my imagination. Unlike Amanda Hesser, Elizabeth Bard approaches food as an enthusiastic amateur, rather than a professional chef and food writer, and her writing, for me, has a lot more warmth, making me feel more interested in what was happening.

As for the recipes, their were a lot more vegetarian recipes, or recipes that could be adapted to suit a vegetarian diet. Added to this, there was much talk of ingredients that I am now desperate to use, and foods I really want to try, including the wonderful peche plate, flat “white” peaches, which are usually called doughnut peaches, or Saturn peaches, in England, and which, by pure coincidence, I saw in my local fruit and veg shop for the first time ever a couple of days after finishing this book, and which are absolutely, unspeakably delicious. Even my mother, who is a confirmed peach-hater, thought they were gorgeous. I’ve also got my eye out for a spice called ‘grains of paradise’, which was recommended by Hesser as well, and that is what I really loved about Lunch in Paris; for days afterwards I was walking about thinking about the recipes in the books, or where I might find various ingredients. Bard’s passion for food was genuine, and very contagious, and I found that wonderful to engage with, which is why I would recommend Lunch in Paris for any other foodies out there, as it really is a lovely book.

I’ve just got back from a much-needed holiday, before taking off for another – still needed! – trip. All serving both to clear my head before I dive into exams and to get me reading lots again, after wading through a massive non-fiction tome recently. But more on that another time, I feel.

I finished a book way back in July which I still haven’t written about, and it’s partly because I was unsure what to write or how to approach a discussion of it. This uncertainty stemmed partly from a reading slump (which I appear to have passed on to Fliss, sorry!) but also because it was a very unusual book for me to read. One might say… unexpected.

The short, fairly unexciting, story behind this is that my sister bought me a copy of The Exception by Christian Jungersen, which is probably best described as a ‘psychological thriller’. I haven’t read anything that could be termed a thriller in so long – because I’m far too excitable and jumpy to read thrillers generally – that I really wasn’t sure how to approach it.

I enjoyed it! I can’t compare it to other novels of its type, but while it wasn’t perfect in its execution, it was a really interesting approach. Basically it focuses on four women, who work at an institution for genocide studies in Denmark. The story is told from the voices of the four women, in turn. What at first seems like a case of fairly simple office politics takes on a more disturbing angle as we begin to hear events from different perspectives. Various unpleasant messages are received and events take place, but nobody is sure whether the culprit is internal, external, or both. It’s not really a book of action so much as of analysing people’s characters, past and actions, and realising how these can be interpreted and reinterpreted based on the other characters wishes, preconceptions and prejudices.

What’s interesting about it, then, from this respect is that not only is it a book which has an ‘unreliable narrator’: it has four. Which, naturally, draws the reader into making their own judgements and analyses alongside those of the characters in the novel, which in itself feels quite disturbing. At the beginning, they each individually seem quite credible, but more and more doubts seep in. Another aspect is that, as they are geared towards the analysis and research of genocide, including the psychology of those involved in genocide both as those who support without controlling event (think of Nazi soldiers) and those who individually have an impact upon events and are a direct cause of atrocities (such as various war criminals) and the whole array of individuals in between, that kind of research is then brought to bear – however inappropriately – upon the people around them, as a way of understanding events.

It does keep you going with it, whether you like it or not, and explores characters who can act in both humane and cruel ways without necessarily noting any contradiction in their behaviour.

One of the interesting points about the book, from a ‘gender’ angle, is that while it’s fairly usual as a reader to come across book after book in which male characters and their motivations are at centre stage, with weak female supporting characters sometimes serving little purpose other than as a means by which the male protagonists can exercise their own autonomy, it’s less usual to find it the other way round. Often you find that even where a book has a female protagonist, the actions and inner workings of the key male characters are quite fully explored; their character development isn’t neglected. With The Exception, there are only a couple of male characters and while they play key roles in terms of the plot, it’s more in the sense that they provide particular motivations. As characters, they’re almost completely undeveloped and rarely discussed except in this incidental way. It was an interesting thing to note. So much of the written word has been given over to analysing the behaviour and inner workings of various male minds, that it was almost a shock to the system to have very peripheral male characters. I don’t, in the context, think it was necessarily a failing in the book; in fact, it enhanced it in a few respects, although I don’t want to give spoilers. Suffice to say that it highlighted perhaps that the actual identities of the men involved was pretty incidental to the action: catalysts but never actors, with the main psychological action all centred around the workplace and the interaction between the women.

Just a few thoughts! It was definitely something that was quite unusual for me, and it reminded me that I used to read a fair bit of ‘crime fiction’. Labelling books in various ways often does seem a bit arbitrary, but there is some excellent fiction out there which has a mystery or crime at the centre but I suppose that when most people think of ‘mystery’ or ‘crime’ books, quality is not the first item that comes to mind. I’ve always liked good books, and sometimes separating it out into all these genres does (some!) books a disservice. I tend to browse ‘general fiction’ in bookshops, but very rarely look at crime fiction to sift the quality from the chaff and consequently have read less and less over the years, just because I’m not looking specifically for something that has a crime in it, just a good book.

So, yes, I should probably take more time to seek out different kinds of books. Sometimes it’s good when you get given a book that you wouldn’t have found for yourself, but end up enjoying; and who knows, maybe it can change your book buying habits in the future?

Has anybody else been branching out, recently?

This book counts towards the Chunkster Challenge, being a tasty 576 pages long! Nearly there!