Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
5_23 BB edit 1
===
Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green and I'm here with my co-hosts, Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper.
Michael: Hello.
Jacqueline: Hello.
Carrie: Today we're talking about books set in or about a place you'd like to visit,
one of the prompts on the Books and Bites Bingo Reading Challenge. So what are some of the places you all want to visit?
Jacqueline: Well, I wanna visit Paris and I wanna visit Italy and Germany. And I'd really like to go to Egypt too. So this was my, actually, yeah, this was actually my favorite prompt so far.
Mm-hmm. Because then I started thinking about all the places I want to go and all the books there are to read. Mm-hmm.
Michael: Yeah, I was like, where don't I want to go? This is like a hard, you know, I'd love to go Australia. I, the only place I've been outside of the [00:01:00] US is Argentina and Buenos Aires
Carrie: well that's a pretty really, wow.
Michael: Yeah. And that was awesome. So I would love to go back there or anywhere in South America. Europe for sure. I would love to go to Scotland and England.
Jacqueline: Ireland too. Anywhere. Yeah. I'd love to go to Ireland. Mm-hmm.
Michael: Japan, I would love to go visit there. Mm-hmm. How about you, Carrie?
Carrie: Yeah, I mean, I would love to go any of those places too.
I, I have been to Scotland and this summer my husband and I are actually going to England, so I used this prompt to do some reading about England so that, that was pretty exciting. They you know, I've read before that sometimes the best part of travel is the anticipating the travel.
Michael: Yes.
Carrie: And like doing the reading and the research and all of that stuff.
So and it really has kind of increased my enjoyment, I [00:02:00] think. As I'll talk about when we get to our book, we are gonna be. Walking the Thames Path, which is a a national trail in England. We're gonna be walking part of it. So the book that I read takes place along the Thames and the part that we're gonna be walking.
So, so that was pretty cool. And. I haven't, I haven't done this yet, but we're going, we are also going to be visiting Jane Austen's house.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Jacqueline: Oh.
Carrie: So I really wanna do some rereading of some Jane Austen before we go. Yeah, so it's, it's fun to kind of immerse yourself in the world a little bit before you go and, you know, you can travel there via the books if you, if you can't actually get there.
So, so that's fun too.
Michael: I love that.
Like if you're reading a book and you go to that city or place and you're like, oh yeah, I remember that from that. Mm-hmm. That character was doing that
in this place. Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah. Yeah. Some of the [00:03:00] descriptions in, in some of the books are just fascinating. Mm-hmm. Just like, oh, I want to go there so bad.
Michael: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh
yeah.
Carrie: Well, hopefully we will inspire our listeners to read about some new places as well.
Jacqueline: The book I'm reviewing for this month's prompt, a book set in or about somewhere you'd like to visit is The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordan Taylor. The Books and Bites prompt reminded me of how much I love reading the works of Victoria Holt. As a teen, I read many of Victoria Holt's novels. Holt was a prolific writer who wrote suspenseful historical romances.
And if you're unfamiliar with Holt's work, her writing is often compared to Daphne du Maurier, who authored the Gothic novel, Rebecca, which [00:04:00] Alfred Hitchcock adapted into a movie. Victoria Holt's main characters were often young women who traveled abroad seeking work or adventure. Her work settings are exciting places like Egypt,
luxembourg, England and France. Her novel, the King of the Castle's French setting, caused me to want to travel there. The setting is why I chose to read the Paper Girl of Paris Jordan. Taylor's writing reminded me of Holtz in the following ways. Both Holt and Taylor wrote historical romances set abroad. Both officers descriptions of places they write about help you imagine you are there also like holds.
Taylor's writing has a strong female character with lots of determination to uncover the secrets of the past. The Paper of Girl of Paris has two strong female characters. It is two stories set 70 years apart. The protagonists are Alice, whose story setting is in modern [00:05:00] day France, and Adeline, whose story takes place in 1940s occupied France.
The chapters alternate between Alice's voice and Adeline's voice. Alice serves as a narrator. Through her investigations, we learn about Adeline's life. The author begins with Alice's story. Alice and her family are traveling to Paris for the summer, however, it's not a vacation. Alice's grandmother, Chloe, who passed away two months earlier, has left her a mysterious apartment in Paris that no one knew about.
When Alice and her parents see the apartment, they realize that no one's been in there for 70 years. Everything was just as her grandmother's family left it at the end of World War ii. Alice realizes she does not know much about her grandmother's past. It was like her grandmother didn't have a life before marrying her grandfather.
She knows nothing about her great-grandparents, let alone what happened to them. What's even more surprising is that her grandmother had a sister [00:06:00] whom no one knew about. Diane, Alice's mother is distraught that not only did she not know about the apartment. Or about her mother's sister Alyn. Upon realizing that her mother, Chloe, kept so many secret things about her past, she refuses to enter the apartment.
Diane has not seen herself since her mother's passing. Her mother's death has left her listless and despondent. Alice worries that her mother is not getting the help she needs. She feels that not facing the problem and pretending nothing is wrong, is not helping her mother. Diane withdraws increasingly more and more from her husband and daughter.
She doesn't even seem to be enjoying spending time in Paris with her family, let alone being interested in what happened to her mother's family. But Alice is determined to learn more about her long lost family. Alice finds Adeline's diary and hopes it will provide her with some answers when she meets cute Parisian boy at a bakery he offers to help her translate the [00:07:00] diary.
They also find pictures of Adeline with Nazis and pictures with resistance fighters. The journalist supplies some answers, but it doesn't really answer the question of who Adeline was. Alice wants to find some of the people Alan wrote about, hoping they can help find out what happened to her lost family.
Where did her great grandparents go after the war? Alice doesn't even know if Adeline is still living, let alone whether her aunt was a resistance fighter or a Nazi sympathizer. The author does an excellent job of telling the story of occupied France and how different individuals dealt with the war to survive.
I like how the diary provides a smooth transition from past to present with each girl's telling their story in alternating chapters. This fascinating narrative provides a compelling glimpse of past and present day. Paris. However, Adeline's story is the most compelling. Alice's story is a lot less fleshed out, but to be fair, I believe the author [00:08:00] intended the real story to be Adeline's. After all the novels.
Title is The Paper Girl of Paris, which was the first job Adeline had when working for the resistance movement. I believe Alice's characters used more as a writing technique than a main character. However, the author does try to hold our attention for both stories by giving both girls similar components.
Each has a romance with cute Parisian boy. Each has a parent struggling with mental illness. There does seem to be an underlying plot about depression and anxiety, which could provide a framework for discussing mental illness. However, the mental illness plotline does not seem as flushed out in Adeline's story.
But what I liked best about the book was the author's message in both books that it is important to have open, honest relationships and deal with issues instead of pretending the problems don't exist. I think if you're looking for a historical novel, this might be an excellent choice, but you should be aware that it does touch on the [00:09:00] atrocities of war and the impact it had on its people.
For my bites, I thought a good pairing would be croissants with chocolate and coffee. I can envision Alice eating her croissant in the small bakery run by the cute Parisian boys, Paul's sister. I found this recipe for French croissants at the Simply Luxurious Life. Inspired by an episode from Baking with Julia Child.
The blogger translated this recipe by French Baker Esther McManus. She added some adaptions and notations from the PBS show on the recipe here at the Simply Luxurious life.com. French croissants, traditional pain au chocolate. If you're interested, you can find the original recipe in Julia Child's cookbook Baking with Julia.
That sounds delicious. It does.
I mean, Be croissants and coffee.
Yeah. Yum.
Michael: It sounds perfect.
Carrie: And chocolate, I mean. Yeah. You can't go wrong.
Jacqueline: It's funny in [00:10:00] the story, she orders this coffee and they keep giving her these little tiny cups of coffee, and she's like, why are they giving me this strong coffee? And she can't figure out how to order it.
Then she finally figures out that she has to order it, american coffee and then she actually gets a real cup, a big cup of coffee.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: So she's getting Louis shots of espresso.
Jacqueline: Yeah. And she's like, what? So at least the chocolate helped, she said.
Carrie: And that was a ya novel?
Jacqueline: Yes, it was a YA novel. I guess I didn't say that, but
Carrie: no, it sound, it sounds good. Paris is one of those kind of romantic sounding cities that I think lots of people want to go to.
Jacqueline: Yeah. And she did do some describing a lot of scenes. I just didn't really have time to put all that in there, so.
Carrie: Well, that's why you read the book.
Jacqueline: That's right. They [00:11:00] wanna read about all the beautiful places in Paris.
Michael: A place I've been wanting to visit for years now is Mexico City. Us as Americans probably don't realize it, but it's a huge busting metropolitan city teeming with culture, history in a world-class food scene. The city's always being mentioned as a possible site for expansion teams for the NFL and N B A.
And my recommendation for this month only makes me want to visit it all that more. My recommendation is Velvet was the Night by Sylvia Marino Garcia. This tense noir is set during the turbulent 1970s in Mexico City where student protests are clashing in the streets with violent factions and political unrest
reign supreme with political dissenters constantly disappearing. We follow a bored and lonely secretary named Maite, who lives in her own little world obsessing over music and romance [00:12:00] comics, usually fantasizing about being in her own very own romance comic herself. When her neighbor Leonora, a local student, asks her to watch her cat for a few days and never returns, Maite decides to track down her whereabouts.
Simultaneously, we meet Elvis, a gun for hire who works for El Mago, a well connected leader for the paramilitary group, the Hawks, and is assigned to track down Leonora in the photographs she may or may not have. Even though he's a criminal, Elvis isn't a fan of all the violence that surrounds him and would rather listen to his rock and roll albums, as Maite descends into Leonora's world of KGB Spies
government agent, secret police, dissident students, and hitman who are all after Leno, her path collides with Elvis', and together they must navigate a dangerous world and find Leonara before the others do. This slow burn noir, while full of intrigue, really shines with his two main characters.
Maite and Elvis, who are flawed, quirky, and complex may itay. Essentially a 30 year old Spencer who has a terrible [00:13:00] body image of herself, hating how she looks, but she gets little side gigs, house sitting for people in her apartment complex, and she can't help herself from stealing little trinkets from their apartments.
Then there's Elvis, who's not a thug like the other criminals he works with. He's a con kid who's just been dealt a bad hand in life. He likely has dyslexia and has made it a point to learn a new word every day as he waits in safe houses and sits out on stakeouts. Even if you're not well versed in the politics and violence in 1970s Mexico City, Marino Garcia does a great job of getting us caught up on historical details without bogging us down, exposition and info dumps.
And another thing I really love is the incorporation of music into the novel, which a lot of it was considered subversive in Mexico during this time with covers of popular music in the United States, like the Mamas and The Papas Presley and Nancy Sinatra, to name a few. There's a playlist that's available on Spotify, and a list at the back of the book.
Definite five star read for me. I highly recommend this for any fans of historical [00:14:00] fiction, suspense, or noir. I paired this with a recipe from the My Mexico City Kitchen by Gabriela Camara called huevos a la Mexicana. It calls for eight to 12 eggs, homemade salsa, there's a recipe for it early on the book, soft chevre, butter, cilantro, and avocados.
I haven't made it yet, still trying to track down some chevre, but how can it not be delicious?
Carrie: Yeah, that sounds good.
Michael: Mm-hmm. I mean, I love what huevos rancheros, you get the scrambled eggs, mix it with salsa. Mm. But if you put some chevre in there.
Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. That sounds good.
Michael: It's gotta be good.
Jacqueline: Yeah. I love your review that the book incorporated music and food.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Just sounds fascinating. Mm-hmm.
Michael: Once I saw the playlist in the back, I went to Spotify and got it. And so while I was reading it and you know, like on a car ride home, I'll listen to the music and it really immerses you into that world. Mm-hmm. Because you listen to the same songs they listen to, which is, I mean, I really like that when books do that incorporate music [00:15:00] into it.
Yeah. It kind of adds another dimension.
Jacqueline: Carrie, do you incorporate music into
your writing?
Carrie: Do you mean like when, when I'm writing or like,
Jacqueline: I know you've written a few books and so was just curious.
Carrie: Well, occasionally I write about music or like a song lyric will inspire a poem. But yeah, I think it's a little bit different writing poetry than, than maybe writing non-fiction or fiction.
But it's still an important part of like, you know, because my husband is a musician,
Jacqueline: I know.
Carrie: You know, that's an important part of like, being around other artists and getting inspired
Jacqueline: a lot of times. Don't they make songs that were originally poetry? Sometimes that
happens, doesn't it?
Carrie: Yeah, sometimes.
Yeah. I think even like operas and things sometimes come from poems, you know, like Emily [00:16:00] Dickinson, you can, you can supposedly sing an Emily Dickinson poem, any Emily Dickinson poem to the tune of Amazing Grace because of the meter and the, and the rhyme that she used, which is a fun you know, fun party trick.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that's really neat.
Carrie: But a lot of contemporary poetry, you know mm-hmm. Is not really, is not rhymed anymore. Or, or even uses a meter. So, so it's a little bit, a little bit different.
My book is Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield, which takes place in the late 19th century along the western part of the Thames River in England, which, as I mentioned earlier, just happens to be the portion of the Thames Path that my husband and I will be [00:17:00] walking this June, from its head in Kemble to Oxford.
The novel begins when a drenched and severely injured man appears at the Swan. An old in, in Radcot. He is carrying a small child who is so lifeless, the people at the end, at first believe she's a puppet. The man falls unconscious as soon as he enters the door and the inkeepers send for Rita, a nurse. The villagers believe the girl to be dead, as does Rita when she arrives.
After tending to the man, Rita confirms that the girl isn't breathing and has no pulse. But while Rita is examining her, the girl, who appears to be about four years old, wakes up. She is either unable or unwilling to speak, perhaps because of the trauma she's endured. The villagers assume the unconscious man is her father, but when he [00:18:00] regains consciousness, he says he found her only after having an accident in his boat.
Thus begins the mystery at the heart of this book, who is this girl and why did she appear to come back from the dead? To whom does she belong? Soon, three different families lay claim to her, the Vaughns, a couple whose daughter Amelia disappeared two years ago; the Armstrongs who believe she may be Alice, a missing granddaughter
they only recently learned about; and Lily White, a 42 year old woman who believes improbably that the girl is her sister, Anne. There is something about the girl that makes everyone, whether or not they claim her feel responsible for her and love her, including Nurse Rita and the man who found her,
Henry Daunt, a widower and photographer. The book tells Henry and Rita's stories as well as the stories of the potential family [00:19:00] members and their missing girls as the community tries to uncover who she actually is. Although it took some time to introduce the full cast of characters, some of whom are more sympathetic than others, I found all the stories compelling.
The book meanders and twists like the river, but the mystery of the girl's identity kept me wanting to read more. She is a little unreal as if she's a being who lives between two worlds. That permeability between life and death is reflected in the stories the locals tell about her and about Quiety, a ferryman who they believe picks up people in danger along the river. Sometimes Quietly takes them to safety as he apparently did with Henry Daunt.
But if it's the person's time, he carries them beyond, to the other side of the river. Once Upon a River contains a special blend of magic, myth, history, and [00:20:00] science. Like many of my favorite novels, it's lyrical, descriptive, and has a strong sense of place. It was especially fun to look up the place names in my Thames Path guidebook and know that I'd be seeing those places in real life very soon.
I initially began listening to the audio book, but I found it a little hard to follow at first. However, I enjoyed the narrator's performance so much that once I knew who the characters were, I continued to both read the physical book and to listen to it on my commute, and while doing chores, which made the novel feel even more immersive.
One of the sweetest moments in the book happens when Anthony Vaughn serves the girl what the British call toast soldiers, toast that's been sliced into thin rectangles for breakfast. "She ate with concentration in a self-contained reverie until an over [00:21:00] generous blob of marmalade fell from the edge of the toast onto the tablecloth, and she glanced up to see whether he had seen it.
Her eyes that Helena called green and he called blue and that were gravely fathomless, met his and he smiled at her. A small, kindly un demanding smile. There came a slight fleeting twitch of her mouth in return, and though it had happened a dozen times before, he still felt his heart lurch at it."
A nice slice of sourdough heaped with butter and marmalade would make a great snack to pair with once upon a river. Or try making another popular British childhood breakfast dippy eggs, soft boiled eggs with toast soldiers that you dip into the eggs. We'll link to the recipe on our blog.
Jacqueline: Great.
I'd like to have some toast Soldiers.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Right about
now, actually. [00:22:00]
Carrie: Yeah. There's something about toast that always smells good, doesn't it?
Jacqueline: Oh, yeah, it does.
Michael: Does the, does the ending, does it have a twisty ending or do you
It does have a pretty twisty ending. Yeah.
Carrie: So I don't wanna, yeah, I don't wanna give any spoilers away. You do get some, some resolution with some of the missing girls.
But some of it is left up to mystery.
Michael: I kind of like that.
Jacqueline: Yeah. I like the fact that there's so many different stories in there, that sounds fascinating, even though maybe it'd be hard to, I have to write the characters down to.
Carrie: Yeah. It was just, like I said on audio, it was a little bit difficult at first.
Especially, you know, when you're driving, trying to keep, trying to keep people straight. But once I sort of was introduced to all the characters the audiobook, the narrator, which I should have looked up, the [00:23:00] narrator's name. But she was really good and did a really good job of all, you know, there's a lot of different voices.
So she did a really good job with all of those.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I think that can make a huge difference. Mm-hmm. I was thinking about reading a book about Tudor England, but the na, I was actually listening to it cuz we don't have it on physical form. Mm-hmm. But I couldn't, the narrator was just, I just couldn't, I was like, okay, I can't listen to him anymore.
Michael: Oh yeah. If you don't have a good narrator. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. It makes a lot of difference.
Yeah.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: But anyway, this, this book does, you know, like I mentioned, it does have some magic in it and some myth, so it might qualify for the, you know, book about magic prompt as well. But yeah, definitely made me more excited about my upcoming trip.
Thanks for listening to the Books [00:24:00] and Bites podcast. To learn more about Books and Bites, Bingo, visit at jesspublib.org/books-bites. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album in Close Quarters with the Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.