August Roundup

 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.

Virginia Hall - she persisted!

My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris, by Alexander Lobrano - another non-fiction, but this time a memoir. Really enjoyed this for the love of food, the love of Paris and France, and the insights into life as a journalist. Just a few years older than me, I recognized the world of Lobrano's childhood, the prejudices, the need to fit square pegs in round holes, the need to smooth over trauma and pretend everything was always all right. Poignant, interesting, and mouth-watering!

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.