Chapter One Hundred Fifty-One: My Life in France

In this autobiography by well-known chef Julia Child, she recounts how she came to learn and love cooking from her first stay in France in the late 1940s and 1950s and how she turned what started as a personal interest in cooking into a successful career as a cookbook writer and television chef.  Child also includes numerous details of her daily life (along with her husband and helper Paul) in France, Germany, Norway, and the U.S. through the early 1990s.  There are also hearty helpings of her political leanings and the tensions these caused with her father, as well as her views on American and French culture, though the focus of the book always remains on cooking and food.  By her account in My Life in France (co-written with a grand-nephew), her life was generally a happy one, despite the stresses and strains that come along with celebrity, and she certainly led an interesting life as well.  Even as someone who is relatively uninterested in food and cooking, I found this a fascinating and cheerful account of an interesting life well lived, and I would certainly recommend it to readers interested in the cultures of France and the U.S. in the late twentieth century or in biographies of chefs, or of women, or in books about generally happy people.  

Coincidentally, I have recently encountered two other books that involve Julia Child, but neither made it onto this blog originally, as one is a picture book and the other I listened to as an audiobook.  But I heartily enjoyed both of them, and as they're on the same subject, I'd like to mention them here.  The first is Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and her Cat by Susanna Reich, a really charming picture book mainly about Julia Child's cat, Minette (whom Child discusses in My Life in France).  If you want an adorable picture book about a happy cat, Minette's Feast is a great choice.  The second is Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr, which gives some context to Child's career and offers a wider perspective on some of the events mentioned in My Life in France.  A nonfiction book, it provides a history of the evolution of food culture in the U.S. of the late twentieth century.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty: Career of Evil

Career of Evil follows The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm in the mystery series J.K. Rowling writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  I enjoyed this (grizzly) read at least as much as the first two, though it probably is not for the faint of heart (it starts with a severed leg and the brutal crimes continue).  The mystery certainly kept me guessing, and it is interesting to see how the personal lives of detective Cormoran Strike (our hero) and his assistant Robin Ellacott (also our hero) continue to evolve throughout the series.  The end left me eager for the next installment, and I can only hope it will follow the pattern of a book each year and be published in 2016.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Nine: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

This memoir by Jenny Lawson is actually her second book, and I definitely plan on reading her earlier memoir (Let's Pretend This Never Happened) at some point in the near future.  When I saw the taxidermied raccoon dancing in golden glitter on the front cover of Furiously Happy, I simply couldn't resist.  (Also one of my trusty co-workers had started reading the book and was regaling us with hilarious anecdotes from it.)  Lawson provides a humorous account of her daily life and her serious, sometimes debilitating struggles with various mental illnesses, including depression and anxiety.  This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in a first-hand account of one person's experience of living with mental illness or for people who enjoy contemporary memoirs.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight: Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

After seeing a Google Doodle featuring Hedy Lamarr, I was inspired to learn about this pioneering woman who helped invent spread-spectrum radio transmission, a technology key to the later development of the internet and mobile phones.  I looked up biographies of her, and found this one by Richard Rhodes, a well-respected non-fiction author, which also happened to be available at my local library!  Because this was such a busy semester for me, it took me some time to read it, but I did find it really interesting.  Hedy Lamarr led a fascinating life: not only was she a hobbyist inventor, but she was also a famous early Hollywood actress and a person of Jewish descent who fled a pro-Nazi arms-manufacturing husband in her native Austria.  This book also includes information on the life and times of George Antheil (her co-inventor of spread-spectrum radio transmission), an avant-garde American composer who made a living by writing news articles and scoring Hollywood films.  This book chronicles how these two became unlikely inventing partners and how their invention, after years of neglect and obscurity, came to be the unsung technology that makes so much of our modern life possible.  If you want a bit of interesting inventing information or heady Hollywood history, Hedy's Folly is the book for you!

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Seven: Lonely: A Memoir

Lonely: A Memoir is basically what it sounds like: a memoir of chronic loneliness, with a healthy helping of the author's research into international studies on loneliness.  Author Emily White, a Canadian ex-lawyer, intersperses accounts of her own periods of loneliness throughout her life with the interviews she conducted with self-identified lonely people from around the world whom she met online when she started a (now-defunct) blog about loneliness and her research into more clinical studies of loneliness--its causes and its effects, mental, physical, and social.  Along the way, she addresses stereotypes about loneliness and lonely people as well as her own efforts--successful and otherwise--to combat loneliness.  As someone who has experienced loneliness at times, I found this to be an engaging and fascinating book, and I think it would be valuable for everyone to read, even if they have only experienced situational (rather than chronic) loneliness.  As White notes, chronic loneliness is a social issue that affects everyone, whether they experience chronic loneliness or know people who do, yet few people discuss loneliness and there is so much shame associated with loneliness.  Her book is an excellent introduction to the subject of loneliness and I highly recommend it.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Six: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

So I read a New York Times review of this (nonfiction) book by Marie Kondo, translated from the Japanese, about a year ago, and I finally had the chance to get it from the library!  It is a small, compact book that is about precisely what its title suggests.  Marie Kondo offers a fun and informative mix of anecdotes from her years of working with people to tidy their homes and her resultant rules for tidying.  Spoiler alert: basically, she suggests that you get rid of anything that doesn't spark joy.  Kondo tends to anthropomorphize objects, from socks (which she urges you to roll instead of folding, which she says socks dislike) to the home or apartment itself (which she urges you to greet when you return to it each day), and yet this is not a sentimental work in any way.  The writing (or perhaps I should say the translator's rendering of Kondo's writing) is lucid, to-the-point, and humorous.  Whether you need to seriously declutter or are simply curious about different organizational methods, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a useful and entertaining source.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Five: Come Rain or Come Shine

Come Rain or Come Shine is Jan Karon's latest installation in the Mitford/Father Tim series, and it is just as delightful as its predecessors.  I have such an affection for these books!  They may be a bit slim on the plot, but the characters are so lovable that whenever I return to these books I feel as though I'm seeing old friends again.  Come Rain or Come Shine is different from the other books in this series in that large parts of it are told from Lace's point of view, and I found this to be a refreshing and intriguing change of pace.  This novel is also a bit more plot-oriented, focusing as it does on the run-up to and celebration of Dooley and Lace's wedding.  The whole book felt like a party to me, in fact, and it makes me want to re-read the whole series again!  (Though that probably won't happen while I'm in grad school...)  If you like this series, you won't want to miss this newest volume.