Book of the Day Roundup: December 19-23, 2022
Upside Down
Katarina Macurova
Albatros Media
Hardcover $16.95 (32pp)
978-800006595-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A small bear tends to a mysterious plant in their garden, frustrated that it won’t bloom even under their excellent care. Below, a rabbit family delights in the enormous carrot that is growing within their burrow. Cartoonish illustrations make use of subtle, humorous details—the bear’s carrot-patterned umbrella; a rabbit’s curled mustache—and humanoid expressions in this playful story about the power of perspective.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (October 27, 2022)
Serendipity
A History of Accidental Culinary Discoveries
Oscar Farinetti
Barbara McGilvray, translator
Apollo Publishers
Hardcover $24.99 (304pp)
978-1-954641-18-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
“We make a lot of mistakes, and often we take the wrong path,” writes Oscar Farinetti in Serendipity, a whirlwind book of forty-eight essays that tour some of the best culinary mistakes to grace humanity’s palate, from Barolo wine to yogurt.
Each essay is long and considered enough to properly tell the story of the connected discovery, but short enough to be read while drinking a cup of coffee (a serendipitous drink covered here). And the excitement of discovery runs throughout. Whether he’s writing about an abbey in the Chartreuse Mountains where herbs are gathered to make the famous liqueur, or about the city of Worcestershire trying to replicate a sauce made in India that’s not available in the West, Farinetti imbues a sense of wonderment and adventure into each entry.
No doubt, not everything touched upon is by definition a serendipitous discovery. For example, the grissino—that thin, crispy bread stick seen in Italian restaurants and grocery stores—was really an ingenious solution to a problem. And one entry covers Arthur Guinness’s eponymous Irish beer, which Farinetti admits may not be a proper matter of serendipity, either. But that is not the point of the book, which encourages the audience throughout to keep their eyes open, because there are magnificent mistakes and accidental discoveries all around, waiting to be stumbled upon and enrich people’s lives.
The last essay, “Humankind,” contains a reminder that human beings are the most important case of serendipity—creatures of accidents and mistakes who have the ability to make something great out of ourselves and the world around us. Serendipity is a book for those who love history and food, and who are adventurous in spirit. Its essays travel to the far reaches of the world to partake in its culinary accidents.
ERIC PATTERSON (October 27, 2022)
Holy Woman
A Divine Adventure
Louise Omer
Scribe Publications
Softcover $20.00 (320pp)
978-1-957363-05-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Louise Omer’s Holy Woman is an earnest memoir based around informal pilgrimages to meet women faith leaders in search of a spirituality free of men’s domination.
Drawn by a charismatic pastor and rock concert-like revivals, Omer joined an evangelical church as a teenager. In time she became indispensable to it, working as its finance administrator and preaching bimonthly. However, she remained troubled by Christianity’s patriarchal framework. And in marriage, too, she was asked to exhibit deference to a man’s will. She set off from Australia to experience vibrant women’s spirituality, from Mexico on the feast day of La Virgen de Guadalupe to a mixed-gender mosque in Berlin.
The book is effective in alternating its before and after sections, contrasting the emotional atmosphere of church gatherings with the disorienting freedom of travel. And the book casts a wide net: in Sweden, Omer meets a lesbian priest and discusses the use of gender-neutral pronouns for God. In Bulgaria, she researches the cult of the goddess of wisdom and attends an International Women’s Day march. In the Czech Republic, she explores Jewish rituals surrounding menstruation. The concept of changing religious systems from within rather than shunning them appeals to her.
Women’s bodies are central here. “My search for truth was corporeal,” Omer insists. In Dublin, she rejoices when the abortion ban is repealed. Her own body presents a quandary, though: purity standards forced her to deny her sexuality pre-marriage; her husband’s gaslighting and intimate rejection also provoked frustration. When, in Morocco, she finds herself engaging in submissive behaviors, she wonders what this says about her self-worth.
Pairing an insider’s perspective on religion with a seeker’s curiosity, Holy Woman is both a personal story and a feminist theology taster.
REBECCA FOSTER (October 27, 2022)
What a Trip
Susen Edwards
She Writes Press
Softcover $17.95 (424pp)
978-1-64742-285-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Two best friends navigate their young adulthoods in Susen Edwards’s historical novel What a Trip.
Even as the Vietnam War rages on, Fiona and Melissa feel that they have bigger problems: Melissa needs an abortion and a reality check about her unfaithful boyfriend, while Fiona is having second thoughts about her own boyfriend. As one decade ends and another begins, the girls’ relationships, goals, and interests change, and so does their friendship. Only time will tell if their bond is strong enough to withstand the pressures of family, romance, politics, and adulthood.
The 1960s—the decade of sex, drugs, and rock and roll—is drawing to a close as the girls come of age. Fiona and Melissa get more than their share of all three, even if they do miss out on going to Woodstock. Fickle, selfish, insecure, and melodramatic, Fiona still manages to set her own desires aside to do what’s right (most of the time). She becomes involved in the antiwar movement, while Melissa, who is still more interested in attracting boys than protecting them from the draft, investigates the occult—a hobby that may destroy her friendship with Fiona, even their lives.
Each girl’s story unfolds through sparse yet heartbreaking prose. After a lifetime of being told she is no good and acting accordingly, Fiona begins to establish a place for herself with help from a new boyfriend and supportive professors. Still, she struggles with indecision and insecurity, even as she makes the first real, grown-up choices of her life. Caught in the awkward space between adolescence and true adulthood, it is only after an unimaginable tragedy that Fiona finds the courage to decide for herself where life will take her.
Spare and uncompromising, What a Trip is a historical novel about a young woman’s tumultuous, painful coming-of-age.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (October 27, 2022)
Waking Beauty
Or Eleven Stories Upon a Time
Rebecca Solnit
Arthur Rackham, illustrator
Haymarket Books
Hardcover $19.95 (40pp)
978-1-64259-833-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Rebecca Solnit’s Waking Beauty is a fantasy fairy tale retelling that blends feminist themes with whimsical musings.
What if Sleeping Beauty had a sister? The cursed daughter of the traditional fairy tale, Ida, falls into the prophesied slumber, leaving her younger sister Maya to continue on without her. Set in a realm where only queens rule, and where their rule is less about power and law than about using magical songs to wake the cherry blossoms every spring, the story then follows Maya. She becomes an artist in the wake of her sister’s absence and discovers that her art creates magic. Freed from the tyranny of the expectations of royalty, she lives a full lifetime of her own before her sister is disenchanted.
Another tale weaves its way in as well: that of a youngest son who clings to a firebird in flight and thus makes his way to a new kingdom. The boy, Atlas, is Ida’s rescuer in the most incidental sense; all the women in the tale maintain agency over their own fates. Playful and inventive in its handling of gender roles, this fairy tale mashup is surprising and delightful, inverting expectations.
Refigured illustrations by the acclaimed Arthur Rackham accompany the text, adding a whimsical layer to the verbal narrative. Solnit’s afterword names the influences on her writing, from wanting to dedicate the story to a youthful family member to playing with the literary and folkloric precursors to these storytelling traditions. Many of Solnit’s nods to existing stories, from The Arabian Nights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, will resonate with adults as well as younger readers.
A retold fairy tale wrapped in a fantasy cloak, Waking Beauty satisfies and charms with its reinvented gender roles and inventive magic.
JEANA JORGENSEN (October 27, 2022)
Barbara Hodge
