The World’s Best Cook: Tales from My Momma’s Table by Rick Skaggs, my brother’s favorite
Southern author, is “a delectable, rollicking food memoir, cookbook, and loving
tribute to a region (North Alabama), a vanishing history, a family, and,
especially, to his mother…” Margaret
Bragg was an extraordinary octogenarian cook from Alabama who wore out 18
stoves and had no use for things like mixers, blenders or measuring cups. The first 100 pages were brilliant and
engaging, but even I wasn’t hungry for another 400 pages of stories about
Alabama families even more dysfunctional than my own.
Natural Causes: The Certainty of Dying and Killing Ourselves
to Live Longer by
Barbara Ehrenreich examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our
bodies, and our health. “A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new
understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe.”
Perhaps, but while the first chapter lived up to and exceeded my expectations,
the remainder didn’t seem to hold together for me...If only I, like the author,
had a Ph.D. in cellular biology.
*A Long, Bright
Future by Laura Carstensen, co-founder of the Stanford Center on Longevity,
is built around the insight that “The twentieth century bequeathed us a
fabulous gift: thirty more years of life on average.” She debunks the popular
myths and misconceptions about aging that stop us from adequately preparing for
the future: that growing older is associated with loneliness and unhappiness,
and only the genetically blessed live well and long. She then addresses other
important components of a long life—including finances, health, social
relationships, Medicare, and Social Security.
Exit Strategy
by Steve Hamilton is a terrible book I read because I thought it was
recommended by the NYT…my bad. Lots of
truly senseless violence with almost no plot or character development. It turns
out that the recommendation was for a book of the same title written by
Meredith Barnes. I’ll let you know.
