Again, another work where the title pretty much explains the book's purpose. In 2003, Julie Powell was on the brink of turning 30 and about to enter a midlife crisis when she decided to cook all of the recipes from Julia Child's book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of one year. During that time, she blogged about each recipe and quickly gained notoriety with a large following on the 'Net. What's nice about this book is that Powell doesn't spend a lot of time rehashing her old blog entries; rather, she gives a behind-the-scene look about what went on during her year in the kitchen (i.e. her family struggling to accept that what she was doing was actually worthwhile, problems in her marriage, her growing waistline, etc) . Powell is a very funny writer, so readers can expect some laughs along with a great deal of "food talk" Most of the recipes sounded fabulous, with some exceptions. Calves brains, anyone?
Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story. One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...
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