When In Florence by Richard Cortez Day

This is one of those books that I just love, in which several stories tie together a myriad of characters who interweave throughout each other's tales, with one minor character in one story becoming the major player in another...and the best part? It's set in another one of my favorite cities in the world - … Continue reading When In Florence by Richard Cortez Day

The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester

One of the most verbose and least credible narrators I've come across in recent literature, the hero of The Debt to Pleasure, one Tarquin Winot, is a total and complete food snob. He opens the book with the line "This is not a conventional cookbook,” and no, it most certainly is not. Just as Tarquin … Continue reading The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester

Cooking With Fernet-Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

This book is hilariously funny, riffing satirically on those chick-lit memoirs from the early 2000s in which a heroine ends up living abroad, usually Italy or France, renovates a house, learns to cook, falls in love, and finds herself, though not necessarily in that order. The book Under The Tuscan Sun is referenced often, but … Continue reading Cooking With Fernet-Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

I didn't actually read this book when I was a kid, but since it's ostensibly a kid's book that weirded me out having read it as an adult, I think it fits snugly into my own Halloween canon this year. Coraline is just plain creepy. It hits a nerve for any kid, me included, who … Continue reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

I'm a bore on the topic of books vs. films, as I've been told many times, and I'd have to agree. Don't get me started on whether the film version is better than the book, because I will wax poetic for a good hour or two about the merits of the book and how the … Continue reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Sexy Sunday! Exit to Eden by Anne Rampling (Anne Rice)

WARNING: THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS VERY EXPLICIT SEXUAL REFERENCES AND LANGUAGE! LUCKY YOU! So Nicole at The Bookworm Drinketh and I are doin' the sexy again.......no, not like that, you perverts! We're revitalizing our blog collaboration Sexy Sunday, where we read a book notorious for its sex scenes, she blogs it in conjunction with a … Continue reading Sexy Sunday! Exit to Eden by Anne Rampling (Anne Rice)

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

This book was previously blogged about by a fellow food blogger, Cara Nicoletti, whose page Yummy Books was one of the inspirations for starting my own food and book blog. The Vacationers is about a family's secrets and dysfunctions that come out over two weeks when they are vacationing in their house in Mallorca. I … Continue reading The Vacationers by Emma Straub

The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay

Photography by me. Are you a Venetian at heart? I am, and any book set in Venice has a special place on my bookshelf. Venice is the most beautiful place on earth, because it shimmers. That's the only way I can describe it. The waters surrounding the islands, the lagoons with their sea-green waves, the … Continue reading The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay