July Books

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.