Category: books
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Book Review: Fauci, Expect the Unexpected, Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward
After seeing Dr. Fauci on televised news conferences for months on end and hearing his name bantered about by both supporters and detractors, when I saw this book on the new release shelf at my library I picked it up to hear from Dr. Fauci himself. First of all, this book is not exactly written…
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Book Review: The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook by Coco Morante
At what point when reading a cookbook do you make the decision to just go ahead and purchase a copy for yourself? Wait, you don’t read cookbooks? I do. I check out bags of them from the library and read them cover to cover like my favorite mysteries or biographies. Sometimes I jot down a…
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Book Review: Murder in a Teacup by Vicki Delany
Guilty as charged: I judged this book entirely by its cover. I had not heard of Vicki Delany before I saw this book on the “librarian’s picks” shelf at my local library, but a cover with a table set for afternoon tea in the foreground, a cat sleeping on a windowsill, and sailboats in the…
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Book Review: Love & Saffron by Kim Fay
If books were people, and if Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin married 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, and if those two book-people had a baby, it would be Love & Saffron by Kim Fay, and that baby’s godmother would be Ruth Reichl. I devoured this book in one day. Granted I was in…
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Book Review: The Hygge Holiday by Rosie Blake
For two years I lived in a small town near Brussels, Belgium, and seeking to make friends, I joined an international cooking club. There were twelve members, and we were each assigned a month where we hosted the entire group for lunch, with foods from our own culture. Each month was new and exciting, learning…
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Book Review: Jazz Age Cocktails by Cecelia Tichi
Don’t be confused by the title of this book. Yes, it is about cocktails popular during the Jazz Age, but this is not just a book of cocktail recipes. It is a history book, a book of US social history during the time of Prohibition, with recipes for the cocktails of the day sprinkled throughout.…
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Book Review: Soomi’s Sweater by Susie Oh
This is a short and sweet picture book, but for me the illustrations are far superior to the story line. Susie Oh’s drawings have captured the soft, maternal feelings that I know so well from having raised two daughters of my own. I could feel the excitement from Soomi when she received a new sweater,…
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Book Review: The Dig by John Preston (Other Press, 2007)
At some point during the pandemic, my husband and I watched the Netflix original film The Dig (Netflix, 2021) starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. We were both quite taken with it. I immediately googled it and found that it was based upon a work of historical fiction of the same name by John Preston.…
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Interview: Eman Quotah, author of Bride of the Sea
See my most recent published piece for Washington Independent Review of Books: http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/an-interview-with-eman-quotah
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 