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Peeking Between the Pages

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100+ Reading Challenge 2009

Book Review: The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

January 6, 2009 by Darlene

The School of Essential Ingredients is Erica Bauermeister’s first novel and what a novel it is! I have to say right off that I loved it! It is beautifully written with language that just seems to flow so smoothly throughout. From the very first page I was hooked and it took me a while longer to read this book as I stopped to re-read many passages just because they sounded so beautiful to me.

I love food and I love cooking so I think this goes a long way to making this book more beautiful to me. I love to pick up things I’m cooking with or eating and just smell them and experience them. It’s wonderful and that’s what this book is about-the things that food can teach us about life. For me, it’s about slowing down and really taking the time to experience the different tastes and feelings certain foods will give me.

On to the novel. It is about Lillian who owns a restaurant that sounds like a fantasy in itself. She teaches a cooking lesson each Monday night and the novel follows the lives of the eight people who take the class. There is Claire, a young mom who is struggling with the demands of two young children, a husband and all that goes with that. Then there is Carl and Helen, they are married but have experienced many up and downs in their marriage that has brought them to the loving couple they are now. We’ve got Antonia who is learning about American life having come from Italy and Tom, a widower, still struggling a great deal with the loss of his beloved wife. The last ones are Chloe, a very young girl, just trying to make something out of her life without breaking everything around her, and Ian, a budding chef who falls hopelessly in love with one of the ladies. Finally there is Isabelle, an older lady who is beginning to lose her memories but is so endearing. This book is about their stories and how food comes to bring them together and realize things about their lives they hadn’t known before.

Erica has brought these characters to life on these pages. I felt as though I was personally involved in each and every one of their lives. I can’t even say I had a favorite character in this novel because truthfully I felt drawn to all of them in different ways. I really loved the character of Lillian herself. She struggled as a girl with a mother who had her nose constantly buried in a book and therefore found her solace in cooking which became a lifelong passion. There are way too many passages in this book that I loved but I’ll share a few that I found especially wonderful…

  • ‘Aromas that started calling to her’…’Some smells were sharp, an olfactory clatter of heels across a hardwood floor. Others felt like the warmth in the air at the far end of summer’.
  • Making a white sauce…’and Lillian looked at the sauce, an untouched snowfield, its smell the feeling of quiet at the end of an illness, when the world is starting to feel gentle and welcoming once again’.
  • ‘The more she cooked, the more she began to view spices as carriers of the emotions and memories of the places they were originally from and all those they had traveled through over the years’.

There’s so many more like that, all throughout the book. The last quote for me rings so true. How many times do you walk in a room or somewhere else and smell that certain spice and then relive the memories it brings back. As I said for me this book was beautiful. I loved the descriptions of food and could almost smell the aromas drifting from the pages.

I thorougly enjoyed this novel and would love to thank Erica for sending it to me. I was lucky enough to receive the last copy she had and for that I’m grateful. I don’t do this often, but Erica’s is one book I’m going to order in hardcover to keep on my shelves and go back to for a comfort read because that’s what this book felt like to me-comfort. You can visit Erica’s website here and you can buy her book in Canada here and in the US here.

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Filed Under: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009, 2009 ARC Reading Challenge, 2009 Book Reviews

Book Review: The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

January 5, 2009 by Darlene

I’ve been a huge Nicholas Sparks fan for years now and have read everything he’s written so of course I had to read this one too. The Lucky One was a good read, maybe not as good as some of his earlier ones but I still really enjoyed it.

This novel centres mainly on Logan, Elizabeth, and Keith-Elizabeth’s ex-husband; it is told to us from their points of view.
Logan was a soldier who had served in Iraq. While there he finds this photo with a beautiful woman in it and after finding nobody to claim it, he keeps it with him all the time. It ends up becoming his good luck charm. He and his friend Victor believe it’s what brings him through the war alive.

After he leaves the war, he takes his friend Victor’s advice and sets out to search for and find Elizabeth who is the lady in the photo although he doesn’t know this at the time. He has some clues from the picture itself on which direction to head and he sets out to walk hundreds and hundreds of miles to get there with his dog in tow. He doesn’t know what to think. Does he owe this woman something for keeping him alive during the war? The power of a thought and belief can be a lifesaver when trying to survive the daily nightmare of the war. Victor believes that it is Logan and Elizabeth’s destiny to be brought together.

Logan finds Elizabeth. She lives with her Nana and her son Ben. Elizabeth is a teacher but Nana runs a dog kennel/training business and Logan manaages to secure himself a job there. From this point the story takes off and we’re drawn into Logan and Elizabeth’s relationship and its developments, along with a lot more on her not so nice ex, Keith. He is a cop and comes from a very influential family in the area and doesn’t hesitate to use his control over anybody and everybody if it suits his advantage.

I really enjoyed the story although the flashbacks to the war I found boring and I really don’t think they added anything to the story. My favorite character was Elizabeth although I really liked Nana’s spunkiness too. As usual Sparks managed to draw me completely into the characters and the story. I liked that this one had the romantic aspect with a touch of suspense too. It started out slowly for me but when it took off I had a hard time putting it down. I had to know how it was going to end. I think fans of Nicholas Sparks will enjoy this new novel of his and as a true fan, I look forward to whatever he offers up next.

Many thanks to Miriam at Hachette for sending me yet another good book to enjoy!
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Filed Under: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009, 2009 ARC Reading Challenge, 2009 Book Reviews

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