Happy 100th Birthday, Julia Child!

Julia Child was 49 years old when she co-published her first book, the revolutionary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The 734-page cookbook simplified haute cuisine, making it accessible for the American home kitchen. The book became a bestseller and transformed Julia Child into a culinary and cultural icon.

Over the next four decades, as the French Chef, Child became a much-beloved television personality and she authored and co-authored stockpiles of books. She lived to the ripe old age of 92, defying the perils of indulging in butter, sugar and cream.

Blogger Julie Powell sought inspiration for her life by channeling Julia Child in her own home kitchen in Julie & Julia. The book documents Powell's year-long quest to cook all 524 recipes found in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

August 15, 2012 marks the centennial of Julia Child's birth, and a host of titles continue to explore Julia's life and reinvigorate her indelible legacy:

Nancy Verde Barr, an executive chef who worked as Julia's Child personal assistant for 18 years, penned Backstage with Julia: My Years with Julia Child, a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of America's most revered chef.

Before she died, Child gave her blessing to author Bob Spitz to write Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, a comprehensive bio that delves into the years when the independent, rebellious late bloomer finally discovered her true calling in life.

The union of Paul and Julia Child is the cornerstone of Child's posthumously published memoir, My Life in France, and of A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS by Jennet Conant, which details the couple's turbulent years as members of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and how they became caught up in the McCarthy spy hunt of the 1950s.

Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in the Company of Cats by Patricia Barey and Therese Burson gives us an unusual montage of the chef via her feline companions. This compact, entertaining read is filled with personal photos and letters that document the role cats played in Julia's life as she moved from Paris to Provence, Cambridge to California.

And for kids ages four and up, Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat by Susanna Reich, illustrated by Amy Bates, dramatizes Julia Child's culinary beginnings through the eyes of her very first feline, Minette.  

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (8/14/12), link HERE

Poem for a Summer Day

As a writer, I try to read a poem-a-day...So admiring of the form - the rich choice of words/imagery, the cadence, the compression of ideas.  It's not easy to write a great poem, but this one reads perfect!

Want to read a poem a day?  Check out THE WRITER'S ALMANAC with Garrison Keillor

In the Moment by Maxine Kumin

Some days the pond

wears a glaze of yellow pollen.

Some days it is clean-swept.
The trout leap up, feasting on insects.

A modest size, it sits
like a soup tureen in a surround of white

pine where Rosie, 14 lbs., some sort
of rescued terrier, part bat

(the ears), part anteater (the nose),
shyly paddles in the shallows

for salamanders, frogs
and little painted turtles. She logged                              

ten years down south in a kennel, secured
in a crate at night. Her heart murmur

will carry her off, no one can say when.
Meanwhile she is rapt in

the moment, our hearts leap up observing.
Dogs live in the moment, pursuing

that brilliant dragonfly called pleasure.
Only we, sunstruck in this azure

day, must drag along the backpacks
of our past, must peer into the bottom muck

of what's to come, scanning the plot
for words that say another year, or not.

"In the Moment" by Maxine Kumin, from Where I Live. © Norton, 2012. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) 

Jerome Charyn and BACK TO BATAAN

Author Michael Chabon (The Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) has called him, "one of the most important writers in American Literature."  Newsday has hailed him as "a contemporary American Balzac."  And the LA Times has described him as "absolutely unique among American writers."

Who is he? He's Jerome Charyn, an incredibly prolific, award-winning author who writes across genres and has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels...so far.

His latest undertaking is a novel of historical fiction, BACK TO BATAAN, an eBook (re-issued by Tribute Books) for middle grade readers (Grades 7-9): It's 1943 in New York City. Eleven year-old Jack Dalton is depressed and restless following the death of his father at Bataan (in the Philippines) during World War II.  Jack's mother is trying to keep body and soul together by working in a parachute factory and Jack, tossed aside by his girlfriend and left to his own devices, wants to enlist in the army.  When Jack finally runs away, he falls in with a gang of criminals.  This compact YA novel is filled with action, adventure and suspense.  To learn more, link HERE

Jerome Charyn was kind enough to chat about the book and share some of his ideas about the craft of writing.

Kathleen Gerard:  Thanks for joining us, Jerome.  You write across a realm of different genres, what excites you about connecting with different audiences? 

Jerome Charyn:  I’m not so sure that these are different audiences, I think we all love stories, whether we’re children or great-grandfathers and when you move from genre to genre you are still telling a story like Scheherazade and the king is always waiting for the next tale.

KG:  BACK TO BATAAN is a reissue of a print book, now being offered for the first time as an eBook.  Being a published author for nearly 50 years, what's your impression of digital books? 

JC: I think that this is a kind of logical step as we move from the internet into eBooks. Publishing is changing even as we speak. I think there now will be a more complicated dance between the eBook and the printed book, and as we’ve seen recently, successes in eBooks allow the author to move into print.

KG:  How much of your own life is embroiled in BACK TO BATAAN? Did you personally experience New York during World War II?
JC:  I think so much of the source of my writing comes from my childhood, I grew up during the War - so many of the terrors and the magic of certain films have remained with me.  And all of this appears in the character of Jack.

KG:  In reading the story behind this book, I understand that your brother was a detective. Did your experiences with him influence the plot of BACK TO BATAAN?

JC:  Not really, I think all writing is crime writing. And Back to Bataan is a crime novel with a very original twist.

KG:  In the book, why did you decide to include a fascination with famous people - Gary Cooper, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc. - as an underurrent?

JC:  These people were heroes to me as a child, particularly Eleanor Roosevelt, who was one of the most extraordinary women who ever lived, and of course as a child I fell in love with Gary Cooper’s face and with his very slow drawl, that seemed so exotic to me.

KG:  Jack, the main character of the novel, finds acclaim through his writing, yet he feels guilty for exploiting the lives of other people on the page. How does a writer bridge this gap?

JC:  You’re always cannibalizing other people and writers when you start to write, so it’s natural that Jack should be a young cannibal.

KG:  The New York Times plays a significant role in this novel. How important is New York Times in your own life and is there any special reason why you decided to make it a form of connection in the life of Jack, the main character?
JC:  As a child, I didn’t even know that the Times existed – I grew up in a neighborhood without newspapers and books, so that when I first fell upon the New York Times, I was very very greedy, and wanted to include it in Jack’s middle-class life.

KG:  Your writing is so precise, yet evocative - how do you work at crafting your unique style of prose?
JC:  Everything begins and ends with the word, with the music of the sentence and as Tolstoy once said, “I’m always composing.”

KG: What are your thoughts on the recent explosion and popularity of the YA genre?

JC: I think it might very well be that it started with Harry Potter, that young adult writers are trying to tell good stories and adults have moved into that kind of dream.

KG:  What advice would you give to young people who aspire to a literary career?

JC: It’s not worth the money – only write if you’re absolutely in love with it.

Well, there you have it, thoughts from Jerome Charyn, an acclaimed, dedicated writer who has made significant contributions to the literary community.  Reading Between the Lines thanks him for visiting and wishes him much continued success!  

Back to Bataan by Jerome Charyn
Tribute Books, $2.99, eBook, ASIN #B008DYK6C2, 101 pp
Publication Date: June 21, 2012
To order this book via AMAZON link HERE

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human. -- from The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Harold Fry, a sixty-five year old British retiree receives a letter from Queenie Hennessy, a long lost friend and former coworker who once did Harold a big favor. The letter reveals that Queenie is in a hospice center, dying.  

Shaken by the news, Harold pens a response. But when he sets off to mail his reply at the corner post box, he is suddenly inspired to deliver the letter in person - 500 miles away. Leaving behind his stale, stagnant life, including a wife, Maureen, who is bothered by practically everything Harold says and does, he impulsively leaves his small English village--on foot, without a map or his mobile phone; he's wearing shoddy sneakers--and begins the journey to reach his dying friend. He comes to believe that as long as he keeps walking, Queenie will wait for him and continue to live.

Harold isn't the only pilgrim in this story. Queenie is taking her own solitary pilgrimage through a fatal illness. In Harold's absence, Maureen begins to sort through the past in order to discover the real reason why she and Harold have grown apart. And the people Harold meets along the way, those with stories of their own hardships and struggles, encourage Harold to reflect and delve deeper into the meaning of his existence and as a result, reconcile the deeply repressed regrets of his own life. 

Pretty soon, Harold is no longer walking the length of England alone. When the press gets wind of his quest, other people join the pilgrimage and Harold begins to feel crowded out by all the fuss. Can Harold maintain his focus on what he originally set out to do? Does he have the physical stamina? And can his walking, an act of faith, save Queenie Hennessy?

Rachel Joyce has written a moving, compulsively readable novel infused with a well-balanced combination of humor and pathos. By exposing the emotional wounds of a host of ordinary people who are all trying to navigate through the challenges of life, Joyce taps into universal themes about the moral and spiritual ways in which we atone and seek to save ourselves...insights that stretch far beyond the ultimate 87 days and 627 miles of Harold's journey.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Random House, $25, Hardcover, 978081299395, 336 pp

Publication Date: July 24, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

A Gift for My Sister

Take two, fatherless half-sisters. Make one sister, Sky, an obedient, play-it-safe type. Portray the other, Tara, as a reckless, no-holds-barred younger sister rebel. Reinforce their differences by designating different typeface fonts that reflect the distinct voice of each sister as they narrate this story via alternating, first person points of view and what emerges is A Gift for My Sister by Ann Pearlman (The Christmas Cookie Club), a moving, deeply resonant novel.

The story begins with Sky, a happily married lawyer with a young daughter who resides in a California beachfront condo. Beyond her seemingly idyllic life, 30-something Sky is riddled with bitterness and worry incurred from a past marred by challenges and loss--the death of her father when she was a teenager, miscarriages and the passing of her best friend. Tara, on the other hand, is a free spirit whose father abandoned her. In high school, she entered into an interracial romance with an ex-juvenile prison inmate and became pregnant. With beau and baby in tow, Troy took off to pursue her dreams of becoming a musician and is now on the verge rap music superstardom.

When tragedy strikes, Sky and Tara are forced to reunite. By rendering shared experiences via their opposing personalities and viewpoints, Pearlman skillfully evokes empathy on both sides. Resentment, rivalry, fear of love and loss and the idea of forgiveness infuse what ultimately becomes a road-trip novel--from California to Michigan--where the sisters try to understand each other, the complications of their own lives and the larger ramifications of family.

A Gift for My Sister by Ann Pearlman

Atria/Emily Bestler Books, $24.99, Hardcover, 9781439159491, 288 pp

Publication Date: May 1, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (5/29/12), click HERE.

Heading Out to Wonderful

Secrets are buried in a small town in 1948. In Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick (A Reliable Wife), Charlie Beale, an attractive, athletic 39 year-old loner and veteran of WWII wanders into a quiet community in the Shenandoah Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Charlie is in search of a new life when he arrives in Brownsburg, Virginia carrying only two suitcases - one is packed with all of his worldly possessions, including a set of butcher knives; the other is stuffed with money. Offered a job by the local butcher, Charlie is befriended by the shop owner's family, including his precocious five year-old son, Sam. Charlie and the boy instantly bond, but when Charlie's path intersects with Sylvan Glass, a hillbilly turned stunning teenaged bride of the richest man in town, life for the three main characters will be forever changed by the ache and storm of love.

Goolrick is masterful in ratcheting up the tension in this unforgettable story of lost and displaced souls in search of identity, acceptance and belonging. Charlie longs to put down roots. Sylvan, in a loveless marriage, tries to carve out a persona for herself via images of captivating Hollywood starlets from the Silver Screen. While Sam, drawn away from his safe and secure familial environment, bears witness, many years later, to the all-consuming relationship of the star-crossed lovers. Evocative sensory detail and spiritual overtones infuse the emotional landscape of this powerful, climactic narrative that seeks to define and explore the meaning of love and goodness.

Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

Algonquin Books, $24.95, Hardcover, 978156129238, 296 pp

Publication Date: June 12, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/15/12), click HERE.

Nora Ephron 1941-2012

"Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss." ― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Also recommended: I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections by Nora Ephron

Gardening Literature for Green and Non-Green Thumbs

Whether you're the type who likes to get your hands dirty in the garden or you simply wish to dig out some free time to turn the pages of gardening-inspired literature, bookstores are blooming with a host of titles.

In Why Every Man Needs a Tractor, Charles Elliott, former publisher at Knopf, details his gardening labors in Wales. Elliott's essays combine personal experience with interesting tidbits and facts about some of the world's most notable, history-making gardens and gardeners.

The World of Wild Orchids by Christian Ziegler contains dazzling color photographs and a fascinating text accompaniment exploring the mysterious aura of these exotic beauties.

Lane Smith's illustrated children's book Grandpa Green, while aimed at ages 4-8, translates across generations. A young boy shares a poignant, heart-tugging narrative that bears witness to his forgetful grandfather's love for topiary gardening.


Family secrets take center stage in the novel The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair. In this tale, told via an extended flashback, an off-limits, walled garden in India might hold the key to one woman's search to reclaim her past and reinvent her future.

A foster mother inspires a troubled girl by planting seeds, both literal and figurative, in The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This heartbreaking, yet hopeful debut novel resonates with the way flowers can become symbols that inspire us to believe in the power of tomorrow. 

In the mood for a great whodunnit? Dig into the quirky, original gardening mystery series by Rosemary Harris (Pushing Up Daisies, The Big Dirt Nap, Dead-Head, Slugfest). Her lovable protagonist, Paula Holliday, gives up a high-powered job in New York City and sets off to Connecticut to finally cultivate her life-long passion for professional gardening. In each installment, Holliday not only winds up pulling weeds but also rooting out killers.

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly longer form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (5/8/12), link HERE

The First Warm Evening of the Year

Forty-something Geoffrey Tremont thought he was settled in his life in New York City - he has many friends, a successful career doing voice-over spots and a relationship with a woman who offers him companionship. But when Tremont is notified that he has been named the executor of a will for an old college friend, Laura Wells, whom he hasn't seen in twenty years, and he sets off to reconcile her estate in Shady Grove, a small town in upstate New York in the Berkshire Mountains, his life is suddenly upended. He falls, love at first sight, for Marian Ballantine, a dear friend of the departed, a woman living in a perpetual state of mourning since her husband's death and stuck in a repressed relationship of her own.

The inherent risks--and joys--of love and loving are the cornerstones of The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie M. Saul (Light of Day).  This is a psychologically astute and emotionally evocative novel about death (literal and figurative), the nature of grief, passion, self-knowledge and the complexities of love. Laura's passing assembles a cast of deeply drawn supporting characters forced to examine their own intimate associations - or lack thereof. Sometimes people settle and use substitutes for cultivating more substantial relationships in their lives. But as one character remarks when considering the risks of love despite the consequences of heartbreak, "What's the point of having a heart, if you're not going to use it?" Those in this absorbing, beautifully written novel ultimately discover that sometimes love is not a choice, but rather a matter of having no choice. 

The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie M. Saul

William Morrow, $24.99, Hardcover, 9780061449727, 304 pp

Publication Date: April 24, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/27/12), click HERE.

The Life Lessons of Baseball

"Get your peanuts, Cracker Jacks, hot dogs, beer... and books?"

There is so much more to the game of baseball than stats or what's witnessed via your TV or even among a crowd of thousands cheering in the stands. Baseball embodies universal stories and life lessons that can be found on the field and off--especially in the pages of baseball-inspired books.

The theme of "life isn't always fair" is the idea captured in Nobody's Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History by Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce with Daniel Paisner. The story is a detailed, factual retelling of a first-base umpire's call that shattered a historical, almost perfect game played between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians on June 2, 2010.

"You win some, you lose some" resounds in The Game from Where I Stand. Doug Glanville's memoir, now in paperback, is an eye-opening, gritty, insider's perspective of a life spent working toward building a career in the Major Leagues and rubbing elbows with a host of big-name ballplayers.

"Practice makes perfect, but be careful what you wish for" is the embodiment ofThe Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach's debut novel about baseball. A small, scrawny high school kid, with a major league talent for playing short stop, is recruited by a private college on the shores of Lake Michigan. But when a throw by the young infielder goes dreadfully awry, his life and the lives of those around him are suddenly changed in unexpected ways.

"Money talks--but not always" is the overriding theme in Moneyball, a mega-hit on page and screen. Michael Lewis details the story of how the Oakland Athletics reinvented their baseball team on a budget. And in Hot Stove Economics: Understanding Baseball's Second Season, economist J.C. Bradbury examines what constitutes a first-rate ball club and how the worth of baseball players--and success--is calculated. 

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (4/13/12), link HERE

Writers on the Edge

In the Foreward to the book Writers on The Edge: 22 Writers Speak About Addiction and Dependency, edited by Diana M. Raab and James Brown, writer Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight) tells the reader that, "America, at this point in time, may not manufacture much. But we do manufacture addicts." He goes on to state that approximately one out of four Americans qualifies as an addict of some kind, be it a compulsion to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, overeating or even love. Amazing, isn't it?  And what's even more amazing are the 22 first person narratives, by accomplished writers, that illuminate personal experiences with addiction and dependency. The editors also weave in stories of depression and suicide stating that they "feed into the same tributary."

Most of the selections in the anthology are essays, but also included are moving, often heartbreaking, poems by Molly Peacock and John Amen to name just a few.

Each entry depicts the painful, often harrowing, consequences of addictive behaviors. Raab (Writers and Their Notebooks) states in her introduction that the anthology aims to "be helpful to all artistic personalities who wish to gain a stronger sense of how their colleagues navigate their way through addiction, mental illness, suicide and other obsessive, self-destructive behaviors."  She hopes the stories will offer "insight and hope to artists themselves and loved ones who also have to bear the consequences." The anthology ultimately asks the reader to consider if addiction might be an occupational hazard of the creative life.

Ruth Fowler (No Man's Land) who, in her essay, finds herself forced to chose between being a drinker or a writer, offers insight into the creative personality by eloquently stating, "Sometimes feeling everything so acutely is unbearably painful."

With unflinching honesty and courage these narratives and poems ultimately shine light into some very dark and ominous corners.

Some essays take an outsider's perspective. Scott Russell Sanders (A Private History of Awe) views his alcoholic father over the course of a lifetime. A suicide, in the poignant essay by Kera Bolonik (Salon), shows how addictions can inspire others to change their own lives. Maud Casey (The Shape of Things to Come) peruses a journal her mother kept during Casey's depressive collapse and begins to understand how hard it is to watch someone you love succumb to addictive behavior. And Victoria Patterson (The Vacant Paradise) bears witness to an alcoholic grandfather only to realize, most chillingly, that the two share many of the same traits.

Other essays, jump head-first into the mire of addictive behavior. Margaret-Bullitt Jonas (Draftjournal) offers an affecting analysis of an unhealthy love relationship. Steven and Frederick Barthelme (Double Down) detail how two brothers, respected authors and college professors, descended into a gripping world of slot machines and blackjack tables.  And Stephen Jay Schwartz (Boulevard) struggles to conquer a sex addiction only to be tempted by new pitfalls. 

What all the writers have in common is the daring ability to face overwhelming truths - and live to tell about them. I'm sure the anthology was not accidentally subtitled with the word "speak" as in 22 Writers Speak About Addiction and Dependency. In the end, Raab and Brown have assembled a host of accomplished writers and thinkers allowing them to finally give "voice," on the page, to their unique stories of healing and survival. 

Writers on The Edge: 22 Writers Speak About Addiction and Dependency

Edited by Diana M. Raab and James Brown

Modern History Press (an imprint of Loving Healing Press), $19.95, Trade Paper, 9781615991082, 185 pp; Publication Date: January 1, 2012
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE