Month: May 2008

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Cookbook: Memphis Blues Barbecue House by George Siu and Park Heffelfinger

May 31, 2008 admin 1

When you think of Vancouver, just about the last thing that comes to mind is classic Southern barbecue. And vice versa. Two things that, quite rightly, have no business being mentioned together. Maybe that’s exactly why the barbecue cookbook by the proprietors of what is probably Canada’s most successful barbecue restaurant is really quite good: the great barbecue they make at their award-winning restaurant was hard won. They have no family memories of this type […]

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Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

May 31, 2008 admin 0

We tend to think of the writing gift as something that can wear out. Even if we’re not conscious of thinking about it, it seems that one of the things we value most highly in an author is youth, and then we lower our expectations as authors age, force deadlines, disappoint us. I wasn’t even really aware of any of these feelings until I was reading Lavinia (Harcourt), and was transported by the vibrance of […]

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BEA Report: Sore Feet and Screaming Shoulders

May 31, 2008 admin 0

It may have been guilt from the volley I launched at him earlier but, if so, I’ll take it. January Magazine contributing editor Tony Buchsbaum sends us his first report — as well as a few more pictures — from Book Expo America, currently underway at Staple Center in Los Angeles until June 1st. Buchsbaum is filing his stories from his iPhone, which means he’s getting killer good at texting. Here’s what he had to […]

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Book Expo… or Crack?

May 30, 2008 admin 0

Tony Buchsbaum, January’s man in is the aisles at BookExpo America, is so overwhelmed with joy at books, books, everywhere he hasn’t been sending many words. Yet. But he’s filed some great photos from his iPhone. First up, at left, the entrance hall to Staples Center in Los Angeles, where BookExpo America will run until June 1st.At right is the photo Tony filed as “Heaven, or crack?” And the last one, at left below: “Definitely […]

Review: Around the World in 80 Dinners by Cheryl and Bill Jamison

May 29, 2008 admin 2

Today in January Magazine’s biography section, Diane Leach reviews Around the World in 80 Dinners by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. Says Leach: Cheryl and Bill Jamison are best known for their numerous cookbooks, many focused on grilling and outdoor cookery. As an urban dweller lacking a barbeque, I’d never read much of their work, and looked forward to their travelogue, a jaunt from Bali to Brazil celebrating their 20th anniversary. I was sorely disappointed. What […]

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New in Paperback: The Pleasures of Slow Food by Corby Kummer

May 28, 2008 admin 0

When The Pleasures of Slow Food (Chronicle Books) was first published back in 2002, elements that now, in 2008, have become a torrent were just a teensy little trickle. That is to say that Atlantic Monthly senior editor Corby Kummer’s celebration of the slow food movement will make more sense to more people now than it ever could have even six years ago. If you’ve missed the Slow Food movement so far, you won’t for […]

100 Years of Ian Fleming

May 28, 2008 admin 0

The blogosphere is abuzz with it today and, of course, J. Kingston Pierce has got our back on the topic at The Rap Sheet. In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, James Bond creator Ian Fleming would have been 100 today. (Of course, there was no chance that was going to happen: all that booze. All those smokes. He was a lot younger than 100 when he died of a heart attack […]

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New This Month: How to be Useful by Megan Hustad

May 28, 2008 admin 0

The trouble with saying that a book is “unerringly hip” is that the people you most want to attract with that phrase are likely to be put off by it. In a way, that’s the subtext of this “… handbook for a new — and slightly cynical — generation” in former editor Megan Hustad’s not very cynical debut, How to Be Useful: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Hating Work (Houghton Mifflin). All of the things […]

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Children’s Books: The World of Grrym: Allira’s Gift by Paul Collins and Danny Willis

May 28, 2008 admin 1

When their grandfather, Fergus, disappears, Allira Hart and her brother Steven are taken to his Victorian country home by their father. Gerald Hart hasn’t seen much of his father for years and is angry with the old man for having wasted the family fortune on his crazy ideas. Like the castle. Niangula isn’t just a folly — it’s a full-scale fortress which can be defended from the ravening hordes and it’s right in the middle […]

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New This Month: We Are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek

May 28, 2008 admin 0

It seems possible that We Are Now Beginning Our Descent would have been a much better book if its übbertalented author, James Meek, had just hung on for a decade or so before telling this story. As things are, sometimes it all just seems a little to close, a little too raw. Like Meek himself, Adam Kellas, the protagonist of We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is a British reporter in Afghanistan. According to the […]