Following the death of Agatha’s daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie’s private notebooks, seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.

And now it’s an award-winning nonfiction book – The Macavity Award. Come visit my review at Quirky Girls Read or click the button below.

Author

Publisher: Viking, 1938

Genre: Classic Fiction

Format: Hardcover

Source: Public library

My Rating: A+

For the last two weeks a group of bloggers, sponsored by the The Classic Circuit, has joined together to honor the writing of John Steinbeck. I’m happy to be a part of that group. Over the years I’ve read and enjoyed most of Steinbeck’s novels. I couldn’t recall reading his short stories so I signed up for this particular collection.

The title, The Long Valley, refers to the Salinas Valley in central California. This is where Steinbeck was born (1902) and raised. In this twelve-story collection the Salinas Valley was a major component in all but one of the stories. Steinbeck featured the people, the geography, the culture and possibly some of the events of this farm and ranching area

I was amazed at how much the landscape and geography of the Salinas Valley permeates the book. Nearly every story includes true-to-life descriptions of the world surrounding the characters. Here’s an example from the story titled “Flight.”

“. . . on the wild coast, the Torres family had their farm, a few sloping acres above a cliff that dropped to the brown reefs and to the hissing white waters of the ocean. Behind the farm the stone mountains stood up against the sky. The farm buildings huddled like little clinging aphids on the mountain skirts, crouched low to the ground as though the wind might blow them into the sea.

Can’t you just see what the place looked like from his words?  In The Long Valley, Steinbeck also created great characters. Each story reflects a different group of people that I believe Steinbeck must have known from years of living in Salinas Valley. Just from the first few stories, here is a sample of the great characters:

• Elisa Allen is a rancher’s wife with a gift for making things grow. She is especially proud of her showy chrysanthemums. And then a tinker man in a wagon came by . . .
• Mary Teller also has a gift for gardening. She could visualize the perfect garden and then she made it happen.
• There is also lazy Pepe who must flee into the mountains to try to save his life
• Dr. Phillips operates a lab in Monterrey. It’s filled with snakes and rats and other creatures. One day a young woman comes and wants to own one of the snakes.

The stories reflect the time of their writing – the 1930s – the Depression Years. It’s not that the stories are bleak or sad, but they do reflect those lean times. My favorite story is only four pages long and certainly reminded me of how things were for ordinary working people. The story is called “Breakfast.” I don’t know this for fact, but I believe Steinbeck must have had this experience like this. Here’s the first paragraph:

“This thing fills me with pleasure. I don’t know why, I can see it in the smallest detail. I find myself recalling it again and again, each time bringing more detail out of a sunken memory, remembering brings the curious warm pleasure.

Okay, that was a real teaser. The “thing” he’s referring to is breakfast – a very simple, meager one, but told so beautifully that I tasted it, smelled it, and saw the participants. I could hear their happiness, too.

Let me just mention two more stories. “The Murder” is a story of a rancher and his wife. She’s beautiful and a good housekeeper but not much of a companion. All I can say is that someone is murdered. I didn’t see it coming in spite of the  story’s title. It’s an award-winning tale and is well-known. Another popular story is the three-part “Red Pony”. These stories feature the young son of a rancher, the animals and people on the ranch.

I’d love to tell you about every one of these stories but that would spoil it for you. I urge you to find The Long Valley and read just one of these rich stories. It’s a wonderful way to get the flavor of John Steinbeck, especially if he is a new author for you. Of course, I’m betting you can’t read just one.

In addition to reading The Long Valley for the Classic Circuit’s Steinbeck Tour, I also read it for the Classic Bribe. For more information on these programs, press the buttons below.

Come read at the rest of my review over at Quirky Girls Read

If the answers to those questions are a.) within the past few months, b.) it had no taste at all, and c.) it came from the store or a restaurant, chances are you ate a modern-day relative of a real tomato.

“Perhaps our taste buds are trying o send us a message. Today’s industrial tomatoes are as bereft of nutrition as they are of flavor. According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fresh tomato today has 30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than it did in the 1960s. But the modern tomato does shame its 1960s counterpart in one area: It comtains fourteen times as much sodium.” – from Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabroak.

That quote came from a new book that has caught my attention in a big way. I’ve noticed for quite some time that supermarket tomatoes have zero taste. But I like tomatoes in salad and other favorite dishes. I know they aren’t like “real” tomatoes from the garden or the farmers market, but I still buy them.

Not any more. Tomatoland made me take a good look at the tomato industry and I didn’t like what I saw at all. The author, Barry Estabrook decided to find out why we can’t buy a decent fresh tomato and discovered that it’s not a simple question and answer.

He learned that Florida “accounts for one-third of the fresh tomatoes raised in the U.S., and from October to June, virtually all the fresh-market, field-grown tomatoes..” It’s an example of industrial agriculture at it’s worst.

In addition to growing a taste-less fruit, many Florida tomato growers are responsible for some very shameful practices: modern-day slavery and inhumane treatment of the tomato workers. There are shady legal and political practices as well. Numerous herbicides and pesticides are sprayed on the tomato fields, often right on the workers.

Besides learning how awful these growers are, Tomatoland taught me a lot about plant biology and the genetic and political history of our beloved plant. For instance, I had no idea tomatoes originally came from Peru and were the size of peas. The book is filled with the stories of the people surrounding the subject of tomatoes. Barry Estabrook brought them all to life.

There is no doubt about it – this is good reading. It’s part expose, part history, and all very good journalism. I dare you to read this book and not want to DO something. That’s what happened to me.

I’m now calling myself a Tomato Activist. What does that mean? For me, here’s how I’m defining it:

1. For one thing, I’ll never again buy or eat a fresh tomato unless I know exactly where it came from and under what conditions it was grown.
2. I will ask at restaurants where their tomatoes came from. If I’m not satisfied, I’ll ask to have the tomato removed and I’ll let them know why.
3. I have letters drafted to my senators and congressmen asking them to stick their noses into the working conditions for Florida tomato growers.
4. I’ll can enough tomatoes to keep us supplied with tomatoes until the next season.
5. I’m telling everyone I know to read Tomatoland.

I hope you’ll join me and become your own Tomato Activist.

About the author:

James Beard Award-winning journalist Barry Estabrook was a contributing editor at Gourmet magazine for eight years, writing investigative articles about where food comes from. He was the founding editor of Eating Well magazine and has written for the New York Times Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Men’s Health, Audubon, and the Washington Post. He lives and grows tomatoes in his garden in Vermont.

Ask for this book at your local library and/or your local bookstore. Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook is also available at Amazon. (I am an Amazon Associate.)

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking, a weekly feature at Beth Fish Reads. Click the button below and it will take you there..

Author

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2010

Genre: Non-Fiction / Bioghraphy

My Rating: A+

Summary (from the publisher):  Mary Delany (1700-1788) was the witty, beautiful, and talented daughter of a minor branch of a powerful family. Married off at sixteen to a sixty-one-year-old druncken squire to improve the family fortunates, then widowed by twenty-five, she would spurn many suitors over the next twenty years, including the charismatic Lord Baltimore. She cultivated a wide circle of friends, including Handel and Jonathan Swift. And she painted, she stitched, she observed, as she swirled in the outskirts of the Georgian court. In mid-life, she finally found love, and married again.

Upon her second husband’s death twenty-three years later, she arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors and, at the age of seventy-two, created a new art form, mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany created an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers – so accurate that botanists still refer to them, and now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica.

My thoughts:

First, let me say that this actual, physical book is a treat. It’s exactly what I want when I spend money on a hardcover book. It’s just a bit heavier than most books and it’s printed on high-quality paper. There are colored prints of some of Mary Delany’s “mosaicks” and other pictures throughout. The book is the type of treasure that I feel compelled to wash my hands before opening it. It will stay on my shelves.

The story of Mary Delany is true but it reads like a great historical novel. The New York Times said it read like a Jane Austen novel. I’m not sure about that, but Mary Delany was a strong-willed woman who managed to do very well in spite of whatever negatives life might throw at her. It’s a life to be examined and a works of art to be enjoyed.

Photo Credit: British Museum

Every word, sentence, and paragraph of The Paper Garden reads like a well-crafted prose or poem. This is Molly Peacock’s art form, her craft, and she’s very, very good at it. In this book Ms. Peacock talks about the art of Mary Delany but also about the importance of art or craft in one’s life that I completely agree with. She said:

Craft is engaging. It results in a product. The mind works in a state of meditation in craft, almost the way we half-meditate in heavy physical exercise. There is a marvelously obsessive nature to craft that allows a person to dive down through the ocean of everyday life to a sea floor of meditative making. It is an antidote to what ails you.

My life-long craft has been knitting which, for me, is pure meditation. But I’ve also had fun with crewel embroidery, sewing, quilting, creative cooking, and, now with blogging, a little bit of writing. I started to erase the last two sentences about my own life but then thought better of it. In The Paper Garden the author tells us in great detail about the life of Mary Delany and a little bit about herself. I liked that. Molly Peacock made this biography personal and linked it to herself and to me.

Speaking of personal, there’s the fact that Mary Delany’s best known work didn’t begin until she was in her seventies. You can be sure I saw the parallels to my own life. Who can say that a person in their seventies or eighties or nineties can’t do intricate art work? Thank goodness Mary Delany didn’t believe that.

Every time I open a new book I wonder what kind of new friend I’m going to meet inside. In The Paper Garden I met two new friends that I like equally. I want to spend more time with them. I have lots of passages with sticky notes for re-reading. This book is thought-provoking as well as meditative. I also want to find some prints of Mary Delany’s flower collages. And then I’m going to read more of Molly Peacock’s writings. Yes, it was that kind of book for me – a window-opening book. And, I want more.

For more information on this book:

• The TLC Book Tour Schedule is HERE
• Last Sunday’s NY Times Book Review of The Paper Garden HERE
• Molly Peacock’s website HERE

Thanks so much to Lisa of TLC Book Tours for asking me to read and review this beautiful book. Thanks also to Bloomsbury for my copy. The publisher is offering one copy as a GIVEAWAY (US and Canada only) to someone reading this review. Please let me know in the comments section of your interest. I’ll keep the GIVEAWAY open for one week.

My review is over at the group blog, Quirky Girls Read. Please drop by and visit HERE

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“The horizon was like a perfect circle, a great embrace, and within it lay the cornfields, still green, and the yellow wheat stubble, miles and miles of it, and the pasture lands where the white-faced cattle led lives of utter content,” wrote Willa Cather in The Best Years.

Among those fortunate enough to have been born and raised in the Midwest, this is how we think of it. The Heartland holds us, comforts us, makes us stand up straight. Even if we leave, it still claims a place in our hearts.

Thus begins a new book just out this month that completely spoke my name. Heartland: The Cookbook by Judith Fertig is, yes a cookbook, but it’s a lot more. This book celebrates everything that is so wonderful about the very center, the heart of the United States. That would be it’s soil, all it’s vegetation. it’s rivers and lakes, it’s weather, it’s animals, and all the people who live and have lived there.

The first sections of the book makes for very good reading. The Introduction is everything a person wants to know about the Midwest. It’s very interesting, even for those of us who have lived there. The Pantry section sets out some key techniques and recipes that are basic for many of the other recipes in the book. The remaining chapters are about breads, breakfast, appetizers and drinks, salads and soups, main dishes and desserts. Finishing the book was a good listing of resources and an index.

There are so many dishes I want to try but let me just show you my top ten. My plan is to share them with you as I make them.

1. Sweet Potato Waffles With Whipped Orange Butter
2. No-Knead Clover Honey Dough for various rolls and breads
3. Grilled Pear Salad with Bleu Cheese and Honey
4. Beet Queen Salad with Smoked Goat Cheese (including how to smoke the cheese)
5. Two Drinks: Farm Girl Cosmo and Garden Gimlet
6. Crisp Refrigerator Dill Pickles
7. Blackberry-Lavender Syrup
8. Apple-Smoked Trout with Horseradish Creme Fraiche
9. Carmalized Cabbage Rolls
10. Honeycrisp Apple Upside-Down Pie

I received this book from the publisher, Andrews McMeel, via NetGalley. That means I have the digital book for only 60 days. But, I loved this book enough that I am going to buy my own copy. It’s one I know I’ll read, use, and treasure for a long time. It’s perfect for people like me with a Heartland heart.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking, a weekly feature at Beth Fish Reads. Click the button below and it will take you there.

FATAL GRACE AT QUIRKY GIRLS READ