Something Missing

Something Missing: A Novel by Matthew Dicks


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An excellent little book about a burglar who, in order to avoid detection, only takes things that he's sure people won't miss. As he learns about the lives of the people he steals from (his "clients"), he begins to care about them, and eventually becomes more involved in them than is good for business. Very cool book.


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Serve The People

Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China by Jen Lin-Liu


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jen Lin-Liu learns Chinese cooking from the inside out. As a food writer in Beijing, she decides to take cooking classes, and this snowballs into a desire to learn about all the cuisines of China. And there sure was a lot to learn...


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Confections of a Closet Master Baker

Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book wasn't what I expected.



I was expecting a self-absorbed, boutique-ey book about someone who fancied themselves a baker.



Instead I was plunged into Gesine Bullock-Prado's memoir of her exodus from the shallow Hollywood world she had found herself in, to a self-created temple of baking delight in Montpelier, Vermont.



This is DEEP baking. Her grasp of why baking matters, what in means to the baker and the consumer, is breathtaking. There is sadness, joy, excitement, boredom,and life here. There are crazy coffee shop regulars and beloved dogs. There is family, roommates, hospital stays and holiday meals. There are trips to bakeries in Vienna and the morning ritual at home. And there are recipes.



It's a measure of how I feel about this book that I seriously want to make all the recipes in it. (Usually recipes in books aren't very tempting to me.) While there are a few people I'd like to pass this on to, they're not going to see it - I've got some baking to do...


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Just realized I had got the title of this wrong. Confections, not confessions. My father the wordplay artist will be disappointed.

An Edible History of Humanity

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a great concept for a book: how the search for and production of food has influenced the world's history. Tom Standage does a thorough job of tracing the ways in which humans have been shaped by what we eat. I'll admit, I wasn't gripped by his writing style, but the material was interesting enough for me to wade through it.


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The Lost City of Z

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A fascinating and exciting book about the life and disappearance of Percy Fawcett, an early 20th century British explorer who specialized in the Amazon area. Author David Grann weaves stories of Fawcett's life and travels with his own experiences in tracing the mystery of Fawcett's disappearance in the jungle in 1925.


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The Case of the Missing Servant

The Case of the Missing Servant: Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator by Tarquin Hall

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
It takes a special mystery to catch my attention, but I fell in love with Tarquin Hall's Vish Puri. An excellently written whodunit, with colloquial Indian dialog - it had accents dancing around in my head all week. Very fun.


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Disambiguation

This just made my day. Wikipedia actually has a disambiguation page for the word "disambiguation." Awesome.