Category: Books

Weekend Cooking

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Two Greedy Italians

I love Italian food, so Two Greedy Italians by Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo looks like a book that I would love to have!

This book  accompanies a new series on BBC2 which starts on Wednesday 27 April 2011 at 8 pm.

Carluccio and Contaldo are old friends. They return to Italy to reconnect with their culinary heritage, explore past and current traditions and reveal the very soul of Italian gastronomy. Containing over 100 mouthwatering recipes, this  book goes beyond the clichés to reveal real Italian food, as cooked by real Italians. It includes an intriguing combination of classic dishes and ingredients as well as others showcasing the changes in style and influences that have become a part of the Italy of today.  (Description adapted from the Product Description on Amazon.)

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Quadrille Publishing Ltd (18 April 2011)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 9781844009428
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844009428

We do have one of Antonio Carluccio’s books – Passion for Pasta, which is a beautiful book, full of recipes for making your own pasta and sauces. He writes:

… I would like you to forget about bottled sauces, ready-made pasta dishes, and pre-packed Parmesan cheese. Instead indulge yourself by trying the amazing soft texture of your own hand-made pasta, the bite of fresh Italian cheeses, the flavour of cured meats such as Parma ham, and anchovies and fresh basil. (page 7)

There are also lots photos of mouth-watering food, such as this which shows Pasta Per Tutte Stagioni – Pasta For All Seasons, made with fresh shitake mushrooms, fresh oyster mushrooms, chanterelles and small dried fusilli. It includes double cream, smoked ham, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, parsley and truffle oil, which Carluccio says is very expensive and very sophisticated – a dish for special occasions!

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: BBC Books; 2nd Revised edition edition (24 July 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 9780563487616
  • ISBN-13: 978-0563487616
  • ASIN: 0563487615
  • Product Dimensions: 25.8 x 18.2 x 1.4 cm
  • Source: I bought it

This is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads

“Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.”

Visual – Booking Through Thursday on Friday

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

btt button

So ‘¦ the books that you own (however many there may be) ‘¦ do you display them proudly right there in plain sight for all the world to see? (At least the world that comes into your living room.)

Or do you keep them tucked away in your office or bedroom or library or closet or someplace less ‘œpublic?’

This is a very easy question to answer:

My books are on display as you come into the house – in the hall and living room as well as in the study and all the bedrooms. I have a few cookery books in the kitchen too. Actually I have too many books to hide them away anywhere and I have no wish to do so. As Cicero wrote:

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

and Anthony Powell:

Books do furnish a room.

 

 

Teaser Tuesday

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.

I’ve just finished reading Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, which is one of her earliest books. It has a very complicated plot about a diamond robbery, an accidental death at a London tube station and a murder in a remote country mansion. I’ll write about in more detail about in a later post, but for now here is a teaser:

For in each suspicious instance Pagett had been shown as the directing genius. It was true that his personality seemed to lack the assurance and decision that one would suspect from a master criminal – but after all, according to Colonel Race, it was brain-work only that this mysterious leader supplied , and creative genius is often allied to a weak and timorous physical constitution. (page 148)

And the last few sentences in the book show Agatha Christie’s interest in anthropology:

‘Congratulations and love to the latest arrival on Lunatics’ Island. Is his head dolichocephalic or brachycephalic?’

I wasn’t going to stand that from Suzanne. I sent her a reply of one word, economical and to the point:

‘Platycephalic!’ (page 238)

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter M

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie is my choice to illustrate the letter M in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

This is Agatha Christie’s 6th book, published in 1926, one of her best known books and possibly one of the most controversial because of its solution to the mystery. I hadn’t read it before, but I knew a bit about it from reading Agatha Christie’s Autobiography, in which she wrote:

Of course, a lot of people say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is cheating; but if they read it carefully they will see that they are wrong. Such little lapses of time as there have to be are nicely concealed in an ambiguous sentence … (page 352)

I won’t write any more about the controversy – no spoilers!

Set in the village of King’s Abbot, the story begins with the death of Mrs Ferrars, a wealthy widow and the local doctor, Dr Sheppard suspects it is suicide. The following evening Roger Ackroyd, a wealthy widower who it was rumoured would marry Mrs Ferrars, is found murdered in his study.

Poirot has retired to King’s Abbot, to grow vegetable marrows, not very successfully. He’s missing Captain Hastings who is living in the Argentine, so when he is asked to investigate the murder he enlists Dr Sheppard, who lives next door with his sister Caroline, to help him and it is Dr Sheppard who narrates the story. Caroline is a most interesting character who takes a great interest in other people and likes to know everything that goes on in the village. She is, possibly, a forerunner of Miss Marple as Agatha Christie wrote in her Autobiography:

I think it is possible that Miss Marple arose from the pleasure I had taken in portraying Dr Sheppard’s sister in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. She had been my favourite character in the book – an acidulated spinster, full of curiosity, knowing everything, hearing everything: the complete detective service in the home. (page 448)

This has to be one of my favourite Agatha Christie books. It’s full of believable characters, suspects aplenty including Major Blunt, an old friend staying with Ackroyd, Flora, Ackroyd’s niece and her mother, his sister-in-law and poor relation, Geoffrey Raymond, his secretary, Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid who may not be all she appears and Ralph Paton, Ackroyd’s adopted son who has large gambling debts.

The setting is that of the quintessential English village where Poirot appears as an mysterious foreigner. Dr Sheppard’s first impression of him is that he must be a retired hairdresser because of his immense moustaches. He also doubts his ability to solve the mystery and described his as

… ridiculously full of his own importance. It crossed my mind to wonder whether he was really any good as a detective. Had his reputation been built up on a series of lucky chances? (page 80)

Of course, it hadn’t and Poirot meticulously works through the timing of events, and disposes of all the suspects to find the culprit. It was only towards the end of the book that I began to realise who it had to be.

  • Hardcover: 237 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins; Facsimile edition (2011)
  • Language English
  • Source: My own copy, part of an issue of The Agatha Christie Book Collection partwork published by Agatha Christie Limited

Sunday Salon – Historical Fiction

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Historical fiction has long been a favourite genre and although these days I seem to be reading more crime fiction, it still has an irresistible draw for me. So, I was really pleased when my son gave me The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman as a Mother’s Day present today. It’s about the life and times of Richard III. I find Richard a fascinating person, accused of killing his nephews and I’ve read about him from Shakespeare’s play, Richard III to Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time and Alison Weir’s non-fictional The Princes in the Tower. Now I can become immersed in the period of the Wars of the Roses to Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

More historical fiction came to my attention this morning when I read that the Walter Scott Prize Shortlist has been announced. This is the 2nd Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Last year’s prize was won by Hilary Mantel for her novel, Wolf Hall. the winner will be announced on June 18th at the Borders Book Festival at Melrose.

The shortlist for the 2011 award is:

  • The Long Song by Andrea Levy
  • C by Tom McCarthy
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
  • Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor
  • Heartstone by C J Sansom
  • To Kill A Tsar by Andrew Williams

The only one of these I’ve read is – Heartstone by C J Sansom. This is Sansom’s fifth book in his 16th century England, Matthew Shardlake series. Heartstone is set in 1545 as England goes to war with France. I thought it was good but not as good as his earlier books, but it is very good on the details of life in Tudor times. Sansom’s research is excellent, his characters are well drawn and the atmosphere and sense of place are convincing.

Andrea Levy’s The Long Song is the next book for discussion at my Book Club at the end of this month, so I’ll be reading it soon. I haven’t read any of Andrea Levy’s four earlier books so I don’t know what to expect. It’s set in Jamaica as slavery came to an end. At the back of my copy there is Bonus Material – Andrea Levy writes about how she came to write The Long Song. I think I’ll start by reading that.

I know very little about the other books, but as I wasn’t too keen on Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and I gave up twice with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, both of which I know other people rated highly, I may pass on those.  That leaves Joseph O’Connor’s Ghost Light which does sound appealing and I’ve downloaded a sample on Kindle to find out more. This article in The Scotsman has more details.

Weekly Geeks

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Now it’s Spring, this week’s Weekly Geeks task asks us to look back on the first quarter of 2011 in books, as well as our anticipation for the beginning of the second quarter of the year.

My reading pace is pretty regular, as I read about 8 books a month and in the first three months of the year I’ve read 25 books. Thirteen of these are crime fiction and six are non-fiction, mainly biographies or autobiographies.

The top five books are (in the order I read them):

They are all crime fiction and pretty old crime fiction too, apart from Donna Leon’s Drawing Conclusions which is a new publication this year.

My choice of reading doesn’t change with the seasons, so I expect I’ll carry on reading a mixture of fiction and a sprinkling of non-fiction. The main change in my reading has been through using a Kindle. I’ve downloaded quite a few classics, so I’ll be reading more of those in the coming months.

As for organising books I’ve been weeding out some books that I think I won’t want to read again and either taking them to the charity shops or exchanging them for others at Barter Books in Alnwick. I have actually taken more there than I’ve brought home so that’s made some space on my bookshelves – but as the books are double-shelved it doesn’t actually look as though there is more space. :)