en-US Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:23:03 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 233745
How Sassy Changed My Life will present for the first time the inside story of the magazine's rise and fall while celebrating its unique vision and lasting impact. Through interviews with the staff, columnists, and favorite personalities we are brought behind the scenes from its launch to its final issue and witness its unique fusion of feminism and femininity, its frank commentary on taboo topics like teen sex and suicide, its battles with advertisers and the religious right, and the ascension of its writers from anonymous staffers to celebrities in their own right.]]> 144 Kara Jesella 0571211852 Kate 5 3.70 2007
author: Kara Jesella
name: Kate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2008/01/07
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves:
review:
If only I'd been old enough when Sassy existed to experience it's true glory... This book is an incredibly fast read. It connects your 14 year old confused-girl self with your 24 year old feminist (but still confused) self. Well written...somewhat reminiscent of an academic paper and reported style.
]]> 126258 The United States of Arugula is the rollicking, revealing chronicle of how gourmet eating in America went from obscure to pervasive, thanks to the contributions of some outsized, opinionated iconoclasts who couldn’t abide the status quo.

Vanity Fair writer David Kamp chronicles this amazing transformation, from the overcooked vegetables and scary gelatin salads of yore to our current heyday of free-range chickens, extra-virgin olive oil, Iron Chef, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and that breed of human known as the “foodie.� In deft fashion, Kamp conjures up vivid images of the “Big Three,� the lodestars who led us out of this culinary James Beard, the hulking, bald, flamboyant Oregonian who made the case for American cookery; Julia Child, the towering, warbling giantess who demystified French cuisine for Americans; and Craig Claiborne, the melancholy, sexually confused Mississippian who all but invented food journalism at the New York Times. The story continues onward with candid, provocative commentary from the food figures who prospered in the Big Three’s wake: Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, Wolfgang Puck and his L.A. acolytes, the visionary chefs we know by one name (Emeril, Daniel, Mario, Jean-Georges), the “Williams� in Williams-Sonoma, the “Niman� in Niman Ranch, both Dean and DeLuca, and many others.

A rich, frequently uproarious stew of culinary innovation, flavor revelations, balsamic pretensions, taste-making luminaries, food politics, and kitchen confidences, The United States of Arugula is the remarkable history of the cultural success story of our era.]]> 416 David Kamp 0767915798 Kate 0 currently-reading 3.62 2006
author: David Kamp
name: Kate
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/01/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 Kate 4 3.94 2005
author: Joan Didion
name: Kate
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2007/11/01
date added: 2008/01/07
shelves:
review:
I thought this would help get some tears out, but I was surprised how not depressing it was. More than anything, a portrait of grief and how to deal with it. A good read if (God forbid) you're going through that kind of ordeal. Beautiful writing, as always.
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A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Kate 5 3.99 2006
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2007/11/01
date added: 2008/01/07
shelves:
review:
Shiver. This will haunt you for many days, if not months and years to come. Post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son roaming the earth.
]]> 30868 232 Barbara Kingsolver 0812474945 Kate 4 The Poisonwood Bible.

Fresh story telling, with alternating narrative chapters, one in 1st and one in 3rd person, which I find interesting. It takes place in Tuscon but the main characters are from rural Kentucky. This is a welcome diversion from wonky DC life.]]> 4.00 1988
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Kate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2007/05/30
shelves:
review:
I adore Barbara Kingsolver. I know a bunch of us had to read this in high school English but it wasn't a requirement on the honors track so I missed out. It's not as good as The Poisonwood Bible.

Fresh story telling, with alternating narrative chapters, one in 1st and one in 3rd person, which I find interesting. It takes place in Tuscon but the main characters are from rural Kentucky. This is a welcome diversion from wonky DC life.
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