books I've read

Anne Hawn's books

Who Moved My Cheese?
If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
Scientific Secrets for Self-Control
Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Vanishing
Exercises in Knitting
The Good Dream
The Very Best of Edgar Allan Poe
The Chosen
BT-Kids' Knits
Talking God
The Professor
The Christmas Files
The Finisher
Home Decor for 18-Inch Dolls: Create 10 Room Settings with Furniture and 15 Outfits with Accessories
Dracula and Other Stories
A New Song
Christy
All Quiet on the Western Front
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents


Anne Hawn Smith's favorite books »

I'm reading 150 Books

2019 Reading Challenge
2019 Reading Challenge 19614 members
<b>Are you ready to set your 2019 reading goal?</b> This is a supportive, fun group of people looking for people just like you. Track your annual reading goal here with us, and we have challenges, group reads, and other fun ways to help keep you on pace. There will never be a specific number of books to read here or pressure to read more than you can commit to. Your goal is five? Great! You think you want to read 200? Very cool! We won't kick you out for not participating regularly, but we'll love it if you do. Join us!

Books we've read

The Help
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Night Circus
The Golden Compass
11/22/63
The Little Lady Agency
Catch-22
The Good Father
A Discovery of Witches
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
A Christmas Carol
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The Color Purple
Matched
Cloud Atlas
The Princess Bride
The Catcher in the Rye


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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Gourmet Rhapsody

Gourmet RhapsodyGourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Pierre Athens is a renowned food critic who is givin 48 hours to live. He remembers something that he tasted years ago when he was a youth, long before he became a food critic. The taste was the single thing he has been looking to find again for years and now that his life is ending he is desperate to find it.

After reading The Eloquence of the Hedgehog, I was anxious to read this. The story was written after Eloquence, but it takes place before it in the same apartment building. So far it is pretty good.

You can't read this book very fast. The sentences are complicated and there is an abundant use of metaphors that need to be understood and related to in order to get any meaning. The writing is very precise with each sentence often written to evoke a specific image without which, there is no meaning to the text. I have to stop myself and reread some passages because I realize that I have not kept up with the metaphors and have no idea where the text is going. At first, this seems tiresome because I want to finish the book and then I remind myself that this author is trying to create, for her readers, all of the sensory details of the taste of a food.

I've learned something from this book. Here's an example. When I was a child and visiting Mississippi one year there was a bumper crop of watermelons. There were so many that we went in the fields and broke melons open and only ate the heart. I have since eaten scores of watermelons and none ever tasted that good no matter where I got them. From this book I realized that it wasn't just the melons, it was the combination of sensations that made them the best I would ever taste. I was young and playing in the fields and creeks and I brought to the watermelon a desire for the taste, the wetness and the coolness that I will never have again. The watermelon was at its peak and had just been plucked from the vine. There was a wild abandonment in breaking it open on the sandy ground and digging out the heart that I will never experience again. It wasn't just the taste of the watermelon that I would need to create, it would be the whole experience. That is what Pierre Athens is looking for.

This was extremely interesting. At first, I didn't think the conclusion worked, but after thinking about it, it was perfect. The language was beautiful. There were so many sentences I wanted to read again and again just for the sheer pleasure of the words. This is not a book for everyone, but I enjoyed it and I think it left me changed.


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