This book will remain forever on my shelf as something to read when I need to feel better about life, or for when I am feeling somewhat directionless. Julia Child’s memoir spoke to me on an extremely deep level. I already knew I loved her, now I idolize her. Watching her jump fearlessly from life in a foreign country in which she barely spoke the language, to cooking, to “cookery bookery” and finally into hosting a cooking show without allowing fear to hold her back […]
Light escapism, and a lot of fun
Beth Ellen was kind enough to lend me this one and it was a lovely break from all the historicals I’ve been reading. Not nearly as good as the books I’ve read in her Amour et Chocolat series, but fun escapism. Violette Lenoir is the head chef at a 2 star Michelin restaurant. She is only in her late 20s and has been working towards this goal for over 10 years. She is very tough and no nonsense (you can tell this because she wears […]
Makes me want to go to the South of France
Malorie Monsard returns to the south of France, where she grew up, having left on a hike after finishing high school and made enough money in Paris to put herself through business school. Having felt like an outcast while growing up, due to the legacy of her great-grandfather who betrayed resistance members to the Gestapo, and a narcissistic father who would manipulate her, her mother, her sisters and her grandmother, and charm, lie and steal his way until he finally met an unglamourous end in […]
Art is an incitement to look at our world through another’s eyes
While Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life is nearly twenty years old, the first I heard of it was on a 2015 episode of the Tim Ferriss Podcast. If you’re unfamiliar with Ferriss, he is outwardly a life-hacking blogger and podcaster. However, his deeper drive seems to be helping others live an examined life. I like that, so even though I’m not a life-hacky guy I listen to his show. On that 2015 episode, I found Botton to be especially charming, and I was […]