Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™

MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE by Taylor Jenkins Reid

November 9, 2015

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I didn’t realize how much I missed reading chick lit until I read this. Now it’s probably called women’s fiction since chick lit appears to have disappeared from book vernacular, but however it is being characterized, it’s a fun read, and an interesting one.

I love those books that ponder the road not taken; one of my favorites is What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarity (2011.) That book looked at woman who forgets the previous ten years of her life. This book looks at the future instead of the past, and it’s just as intriguing.

Hannah Martin is twenty-nine years old and still searching for…something. Her parents and sister moved to London while she was in high school, leaving Hannah to live with her best friend Gabby back in Los Angeles. She graduates from college and starts drifting from city to city, job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend – her last being Michael, a married man with two children, but never forgetting her first love, Ethan. They broke up during college but both still harbor the feeling of unfinished business.

Hannah decides to move home to L.A., and Gabby offers up her guestroom. Gabby is married to Mark, who Hannah likes well enough, and they all get along. Shortly after arriving, they go out to a club where Hannah runs into Ethan. Later that night, Gabby tells her she needs to get home and Hannah needs to decide whether to go home early with Gabby, or hang out with Ethan for a while longer.

The book then moves forward in two storylines; one in which she goes with Gabby, the other with Ethan. Told in alternating chapters, Hannah is living two different lives, a sort of choose-your-own-adventure with amazingly different results.

This was an engrossing story and a real page turner. I was torn between which life I thought she should be living, up until the very last page of the book. Reading this is like going on a roller coaster through Hannah and Gabby’s lives, and these characters were so well developed and likeable that I didn’t want the ride to end.

11/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Washington Square Press (July 7, 2015). ISBN 978-1476776880. 352p.

Kindle

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THE CHEF NEXT DOOR by Amanda Freitag

November 8, 2015

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A Pro Chef’s Recipes for Fun, Fearless Home Cooking

On the one hand it’s kind of hard to imagine that a professional chef, much less one who obviously thrives in the high stress New York restaurant scene, could be intimidated by home cooking. And yet, I’d imagine that being faced with swapping a professional kitchen’s space, amenities, and resources for an apartment kitchen could do that to anyone.

This is the premise Amanda Freitag’s new cookbook begins with. Freitag admits that though she was comfortable in a restaurant environment, she rarely cooked at home. And so she went back to basics, the first chapter of The Chef Next Door.

Freitag’s basics, though, aren’t necessarily how to boil an egg kind of basics. Instead, they’re basic base recipes that will help in strengthening kitchen skills as well as providing starting points or inspiration for more advanced or creative dishes. Her “Basic Risotto,” for example, the very first recipe in the book, is a full risotto recipe intended to help home cooks build their confidence in the kitchen. And it’s a great recipe to begin with because, as any food reality tv viewer knows, it’s something that seems so difficult. In reality, as Freitag points out, it’s quite simple as long as you follow the steps and use the right ingredients.

The book is broken into nine chapters: the aforementioned Back to Basics; Sauces, Marinades, and Other Flavor Secrets; First Impressions; More Than a Salad; What’s for Dinner; Low and Slow; Sides; The Scary Stuff; and For Your Sweet Tooth.

Recipes are clear and concise and include a break out prep step as well as one of my absolute favorite pieces of the book, tips, short cuts, substitutions, and suggestions for serving. Recipes like the “Caramelized Onions,” include a further recipe for use. In this case those onions are the first step in a “French Onion Soup.” Freitag’s “Pop’s Beer-Braised Bold Beef Stew,” a dish I’ll be making frequently this winter I’m sure, talks about things like asking your butcher to cube the beef for you, using store-bought stock, and a suggestion for serving over the “Smashed Yukon Gold Potatoes” from the Sides chapter. And that potato recipe? Well, Freitag says you can just as easily use Red Bliss, Idaho, or even sweet potatoes and that you can sub in Greek yogurt in place of the sour cream.

The Chef Next Door is a great book for anyone who has experience cooking at home but maybe hasn’t tried their hand at dishes they’ve deemed to be somewhat intimidating – risotto, short ribs, roasting and stuffing whole fish, trimming a fresh artichoke… Freitag addresses all of those and more, making it all possible for you – the average home cook – to do at home just as easily as a restaurant chef would.

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11/15 Becky LeJeune

THE CHEF NEXT DOOR by Amanda Freitag. William Morrow Cookbooks (September 29, 2015). ISBN 978-0062345837. 320p.

Kindle

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CHRISTMAS BELLS by Jennifer Chiaverini

November 7, 2015

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I figured if I keep reading Christmas novels, eventually I’ll find one I can rave about…and here it is!

This book is a twofer – two stories told in alternating chapters that are set over a hundred years apart. The obvious inspiration of the historical story neatly focuses the modern day one, and I loved them both.

“Christmas Bells” is a Henry Wordsworth Longfellow poem (see below) that was turned into a Christmas carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Chiaverini tells the story of how the poem came to be written, which is a mostly a biography of Longfellow, and she does a terrific job. Starting at the beginning of the Civil War, right before the first shots are fired, we learn how Longfellow lived, the tragedies that befell him and his family, and about his home and its historical significance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The alternating stories are about St. Margaret’s, a Catholic church in the nearby town of Watertown. Sophia is a music teacher whose job is threatened by budget issues. She also is the children’s choir director at the church. Her accompanist is in love with her, but it is an unrequited love due to various factors. Stories also are spun about two of the children in the choir, Charlotte and her younger brother, whose father is serving in Afghanistan.

One of the most memorable characters in the modern day story is Sister Winifred, a nun who has the rather unnerving habit of talking to herself. But she also has the uncanny ability to ferret out truths about her parishioners and the priest that seem other-worldly, or perhaps divine?

This is heartwarming, of course, but also fascinating and beautifully written. This will be the Christmas book I”ll be recommending this season.

11/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

CHRISTMAS BELLS by Jennifer Chiaverini. Dutton (October 27, 2015). ISBN 978-0525955245. 336p.

Kindle

Audiobook

I HEARD the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat