Dog days of summer--garden harvest--shorter days--cooking, again, finally.
Over the past two weekends, I have made salsa, pickled beets, braised carrots and processed carrots for the freezer, zucchini bread, roasted tomato soup, and croutons for the soup--using tomatoes, peppers, onions, shallots, garlic, carrots, beets, and zucchini from the garden. All this while telling a neighbor that "I just don't cook anymore!" Go figure!
Oh, yes, and I've been reading. Here's my potpourri.
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, by Sonia Purnell - this is one of the best books of 2021. Could not put it down. Virginia Hall was incredible--brave, passionate, capable. She persisted. Despite a prosthetic leg. Despite the old boys network. Despite the Gestapo, betrayals, and red tape, she really, truly helped liberate France and end WWII. This is non-fiction at its finest. I started out listening to an audio version but switched to print because there are a lot of names and locations and organizations to keep track of, but a truly marvelous read. A perfect companion book to Code Name Helene.
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| Virginia Hall - she persisted! |
The Last Detective, by Peter Lovesey - attention Austen fans! This one's for you. Set in Bath in the 1990s, this is the first in the author's Peter Diamond mystery series. Peter Diamond is okay--not my favorite mystery solver, but the reason I read the book was for the Jane Austen connection. The mystery hinges on some letters that Austen wrote while living in Bath that surface and then disappear. Solving the mystery means finding those letters! Great fun. Not great literature, but fun nonetheless.
Hi Jane, your August reads seem very different. I especially like the sound of the fits two. Hope you had a good summer and that fall reading is good as well.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely cannot say you're not cooking these days... very impressive list of accomplishments! I'm missing my kitchen this summer. The house we're renting has the basics, but I hate to buy tools/ingredients we won't use up before we leave. Not a lot of cooking here.
ReplyDeleteSo glad you enjoyed My Place at the Table. I still think about it and may even listen again at some point. I'm adding both A Woman of No Importance and Code Name Helene to my list.
You've been busy! I was just talking to my sister about zucchini bread. She was making banana bread and I can't eat it because bananas make me itch. lol I told her I thought I would make some zucchini bread. Yum. I bet your salsa is good too. :)
ReplyDeleteAll the books sound good, but that Lovesey one especially, for the reason you mentioned.
Hope you'll be joining us reading the Don Lemon book.
I'm glad for your review of the Sonia Purnell book -- I think I might have her Clementine book ... this spy one sounds really good too. Virginia Hall had a fake leg? Oh my. (Like in the 1977 movie Julia.) She sounds like quite a heroine!
ReplyDeleteMmm. Zucchini bread! My biggest problem is that baking heats up the house so in the summer and I don’t have air-conditioning. But I may have to break down and make some.
ReplyDeleteI just re-read Persuasion, which was very satisfying, and The Last Detective sounds like a lot of fun.