My Life In France by Julia Child

My Life In France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
352 pgs
Published: my edition published June 2009
Source: I bought this one

Julia McWilliams was over thirty years old when she met and fell in love with Paul Childs. She couldn't cook, she couldn't speak French and she wasn't much of a foodie. Yet two years after the couple married in 1946, Julia found herself moving to France. She quickly set out to remedy both her language and cooking shortcomings. She roamed the streets of Paris, learning the language, local customs, and, mostly importantly, the food.

"This is the kind of food I had fallen in love with; not trendy, souped-up fantasies, just something very good to eat. It was classic French cooking, where the ingredients have been carefully selected and beautifully and knowingly prepared."

Paul was a gourmand and Julia, now in love with the food of France herself, enrolled herself in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school so that she could learn to prepare the kind of foods they loved. Although she found herself out of place at the school, she learned quickly and soon became lifelong friends with her teacher. In 1951 Julia met Madame Simone Beck Fischbacher (Simca as she would forever after be known). Simca was every bit as enthusiastic about food as Julia. Simca and Louisette Bertholle had been working on a cookbook. The three began working together, operating a cooking school out of Julia's kitchen. Soon Louisette and Simca invited Julia to help them with their cookbook, particularly once they decided that the book needed to be written in such a way so that it appealed to the American audience. The rest, as they say, is history. The first cookbook took years to write and have published. Julia was a a perfectionist when it came to making sure that the recipes were correct, that they would produce good results every time and that they were written in such a way as to make them doable for any cook. It was that first book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, the caught the attention of a public television producer in Boston and earned Julia her own cooking show. Soon Julia found herself every bit as well known as her cookbook.

Julia and Simca would remain friends for the rest of their days and compile a second volume of Mastering. But the two had vastly different methods of choosing and testing recipes for the books and Julia's fame was a thorn in the side of Simca who, no doubt, felt that she deserved equal attention. Despite the fact that the Childs spent their time in France in a house on land the Fischbachers owned, the relationship was often strained.

Paul and Julia spent the last years of their lives in the U.S. where Julia filmed her television shows in her own kitchen, a kitchen that became so famous itself that, when Childs moved to California, it was moved to the Smithsonian.

I picked this one up as a companion to Julie and Julia after seeing the movie of the same name. One of the things I loved about the movie was the back and forth between the two women's lives. I was surprised, then, to find that a lot of what was shown in the movie in the Julia parts did not actually happen. Julia didn't try her hand at hatmaking before she took cooking lessons, she didn't stumble across Simca and Louisette in the dressing room at a party, and she and her sister weren't close. I found myself repeatedly distracted by comparing the book and the movie.

Paul and Julia Childs certainly led an interesting life and the book portrays a fascinating look at Europe post-World War II. I can understand why so many people have enjoyed this book but I had some problems with it. Childs seems to have been under the belief that her readers also know French, frequently referring to things only by their French name or including sentences in French. How do I grasp how wonderful your meal was if I have no idea what the name of the dish means? I sometimes felt the book grew repetitious and often more detailed than was necessary. I can't say that I liked Julia very much. She was quick to point out the flaws of friends and family alike but never seemed willing to acknowledge her own faults. Still, I admire her tenacity, her passion and her deep love for her husband.

Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer

Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer
198 pages
Published The University of Arkansas Press October 2011
Source: TLC Book Tours and the publisher

Twelve-year-old Chess Morton lives in Rook, Arkansas, a speck of a town in the Black Bayou, with her widowed mother. Despite living deep in the south in the early 1940's, Chess lives her life largely oblivious to the world around her. Until her grandfather sells a piece of land that Chess inherited from her father to the U.S. Government. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government relocated thousands of Japanese Americans to camp throughout the U.S. Camp Nine, one of these camps, sprang from the land that had been Chess' and would serve to change her life.

Chess' mother offers to teach art lessons to the prisoners of Camp Nine, befriending many of the families, particularly the Matsuis. Although reluctant to have anything to do with the camp at first, Chess is soon fast friends with both of the Matsui boys. Her relationship with each of them will enrich and enlighten her but it will be many years later before David Matsui finally teaches Chess exactly what it was that she was protected from as she was growing up in the bayou.

This is one of those books that made me glad that I've always been willing to take a chance with books I've never heard of; thanks to TLC Book Tours for always bringing them to my attention. Schiffer's debut is lovely and charming in a way that is utterly unexpected given the very tough subjects that it tackles. She immerses her reader deep into the Mississippi delta and an area of open racism and brings to life the divide between black and white, rich and poor. Chess brings to mind an older Scout Finch as she comes to terms with the reality of the relationships between herself and those around her. Just as Scout came to view her father as a complete person, Chess comes to see her mother as someone more than just a mother.

"She never voiced her frustration about it to me, but I realize she could have picked up and left with me then, gone to another state, and fought him [Chess' grandfather]. But she understood that my place was on the plantation, whatever it might mean to her personal freedom. I wish I'd understood then all of the choices she made to preserve my interests over her own."

 Readers will undoubtedly recall Jamie Ford's The Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet when reading Camp Nine, as both deal with the Japanese interment camps. But where Hotel dealt strictly with the situation from the Japanese point of view, Camp Nine details how the impact the camps may have had on the areas surrounding them as well as bringing to light life in these "camps."

Camp Nine would make a wonderful book club selection with much to discuss and a book to enjoy. For more opinions on this book, check out the full tour at TLC Book Tours.

Vivienne Schiffer

Sunday Salon - November 6

November, already? How did that happen while I wasn't looking? It's been such an unusual and busy year for me and my reading time has really taken a hit. Heading into the holiday season, I'm going to have to accept that it's not going to get any better the rest of the year. That being said, I'm tossing in the towel on all challenges. I'm going to try to read some of the books that I'd planned for them but I'm giving myself permission to "fail" without guilt.

Now for that promised picture from last month's Omaha Bookworms meeting. Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA is third from the left. What fun we had talking with Mary Helen about her books, her family and even baseball. Hmm, now that we've seen how great it is to have an author in our midst, I wonder how Timothy Schaffert (also from Omaha) would feel about joining us to talk about The Little Coffins of Hope?

Added to my wish list this week: Catherine The Great by Robert K. Massie, Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, The Wandering Falcon by Ahmad Jamil, The Boy In The Suitcase by Lena Kaaberol and Agnete Friis, and James Madison by Richard Brookhiser. It's probably bad to add this many books at a time given how little I've been reading lately!

Fans of Sarah Jio's, The Violets of March, will be happy to know that she's got a new book, The Bungalow, coming out this December. Here's a little teaser for you:



 I'm finishing Vivienne Schiffer's Camp Nine for a TLC Book Tour this week. Then I'm back to reading The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin, the Omaha Bookworms December selection. What are you reading this week? What books did you add to your wish list?

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How A Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn
304 pages
Published September 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

When Kathleen Flinn returned to Seattle from studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the premier cooking school in the world, she had no idea what she was going to do with that education. Then a chance encounter in the grocery store set her on a mission to teach every day women how to cook for themselves and their families. Thus was born the Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Flinn invited a group of volunteers to weekly cooking lessons, learning everything from how to properly use a knife to how to cook all kinds of meet. Along the way the women learned to hone their taste buds, experiment with spices, and even to make bread. They gained confidence in their skills in the kitchen, learned how easy and fast it can be to make meals from scratch and discovered how much healthier it is to avoid prepackaged foods.

Following on the heels of Four Kitchens and Julie and Julia, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this book reinforced the ideas I had learned in those books. Even more surprising for me, was how much this book made me rethink the way I cook. I may not quite packaged foods altogether (c'mon, some of them taste so good!), but I'm certainly thinking about how I can do more from scratch using fewer canned and boxed goods. The book has wonderful recipes but the reason it will stay in my kitchen, where it will be handy, is for all of the helpful hints. I had no idea I should be cooking down my cream in my cream sauces.There were some industry-related revelations (for me, at least) in the book as well. Did you know that Hershey's used to the biggest manufacturer of pasta in the U.S.?

This is one of those books that I won't be lending, just recommending!

Instant City by Steve Inskeep

Instant City: Life and Death In Karachi by Steve Inskeep
304 pages
Published October 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

On December 28, 2009 a bomb blew up on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan as Shia Muslims marched in their annual Ashura procession marking the death long ago of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Hussein.  Who placed the bomb? Who set the fires that destroyed blocks of nearby buildings the same day? In most cities, this would be a day that would long be remembered for its violence. For Karachi, it has almost become par for the course.

Inskeep uses the events of this day to look at the larger problem that is the instability in the country of Pakistan, most visibly in Karachi, which Inskeep calls an "instant city." He defines "instant city" as "a metropolitan area that's grown since 1945 at a substantially higher rate than the population of the country in which it belongs." According to conservative estimates, Karachi has grown at least 30 times larger than it was in 1945, most of the grow occurring in the weeks following the partition of India into two countries, India and Pakistan.

Using December 28, 2009 as a way of exploring the greater problems plaguing Karachi and Pakistant, Inskeep introduces his readers to a number of people, past and present, those who influenced Pakistan as it grew following Partition and those who were present the day of the bombing. Historically Inskeep looks at the divide between the sects of Islam, the friction between India's majority Hindu population and Pakistan's majority Muslim population, and the rifts between ethnicities and classes.

When I was approached about this book, I jumped at the chance primarily because I so enjoy listening to Steve Inskeep on NPR. The fact that it deals with a part of the world that fascinates me and that it fits with my goal of reading more non-fiction this year sealed the deal. Inskeep does not disappoint. By using the one event to tie all of issues that plague Karachi together and by introducing so many people involved that day, Inskeep has developed this work of non-fiction into something resembling a mystery that pulls the reader through the book in search of answers. In his debut novel, Inskeep exhibits the same mix of journalism and storytelling that I appreciate in this radio work. In his skilled hands, Karachi comes alive.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour! For more thoughts on this book, check out the full tour.