Leon Uris-Exodus

This is an oldie but a goodie.  I have to give the back story on this book before I go into my review of the book.  I was given this book the summer I turned thirteen, right before my Bat Mitzvah.  My family had made the decision to make Aliyah (move to Israel and obtain citizenship) and this was to be our last summer in the States.  I arrived at camp that summer and my parents gave me the book to read while I was there.  Having been an avid reader from childhood, it was not shocking that my parents would hand me a 600 page book to read at camp.  But because of my anger at being 13 and being forced to move to the other side of the world, I threw the book into the bottom of my trunk and there it stayed until I got home from camp.

It must have gotten packed with my books going to Israel because there it was when I unpacked three months later in Jerusalem.  I threw it on the shelf and ignored it as I settled into life in a new country.  At some point that year or the next year, I picked up the book and rifled through it.  I immediately was drawn into the exciting story.  I think what made it more real for me was that I was travelling to the same sites that were being discussed in the book.  Massada?  I've been there!  Huleh Valley? Check!  The King David Hotel?  We sat in their lobby yesterday!  YMCA?  I went swimming there!  And thus began my love affair with the book Exodus.  Now I must put it out there, I will NEVER watch that movie again.  In fact I forced my parents to turn it off when we watched it when I was fourteen.  Quite simply, Hollywood cannot do justice to such an amazing piece of historical literature and I used to dream of recreating the film using all the real places in Israel and actors that had been unheard of before but were TRUE Israelis and Brits and Americans (none of that crappy accent stuff!)

So since I read that book over fifteen years ago now, I have read and reread it and every single time I have gleaned something new.  The story is a magnificent story beginning with a boatload of Holocaust surviving children trying against all odds to get into Israel.  These children have seen the worst that humanity can do and all they want is to live in Israel, the Promised Land, where they can control their own destinies.  But, as historically happened, the British, who ruled the region at the time, did not want to piss off the Arabs living in the community.  This isn't the first boatload of Jews trying to illegally enter Palestine and it most certainly wasn't the last.  But it is a powerful image to have 300 children who grew up in concentration camps stage hunger strikes and take a stand that they ARE in control of their destiny.

Exodus starts on the island of Cyprus but spans Europe, America, England, and of course, Palestine-soon to be known as Israel.  It is a true tale of love, heroism, life, death and longing.

It had been several years since I'd read Exodus and I was feeling somewhat nostalgic so I picked up my nice, new hardback version of the book.  But something wasn't right, the book was bulky and the pages shiny and slippery.  So I found my original copy:


At this point, dog-eared and duct-taped, covered with stains and a slight musty smell.  I've been rereading it for about a week now and I really should know better than to read in public places, especially this book but I have cried more times in the subway this week than probably in the entire two and a half years I've lived here.

If you've been to Israel, if you may ever go to Israel, if you are a history buff, read this book!!!!

Judith Ryan Hendricks-The Baker's Apprentice

This book was a completely random pickup. I was at Powell's with some friends and we each had given ourselves $30 and 45 minutes to find books. While waiting for them to come back I was checking out the sales books and one caught my eye. The Baker's Apprentice was not at all what I was expecting it to be.

I also did not realize until the very end that this was a sequel to another book so now I feel that I need to go and get the first book! The book centers around Wyn Morrison, a baker of bread and the relationships with people around her, such as Mac, her lover that disappears. Another character, Tyler, is a young woman who looks up to Wyn as a mother figure.

The book has yet again inspired me to want to start baking and cooking more. But on a positive note, the book has given me hope that there is more yet to come!

Elin Hilderbrand--The Blue Bistro

This book started out with a menu. A menu that sounded absolutely delightful. The book ended with me in tears. Not an uncommon occurrence when I'm reading. It's also a book that I started and finished in the same afternoon.

The book centers around Adrienne Dealey, a 28 year old woman who has just left a bad relationship in Aspen (a really bad relationship where she turned in her boyfriend for theft) and ended up on a boat to Nantucket. There she ends up with a job at a restaurant, as the assistant manager-with no restaurant experience. She has spent the last several years working in resort hotels, in Florida, in Thailand, in New England and Aspen but has no experience in restaurants. But, Thatcher Smith, the Proprietor, for some unknown reason, gives her a job as his assistant manager.

Reading this book made me want to work in this kind of environment-and I have even less experience in restaurants than Adrienne-unless you count nine months working in the service deli of a grocery store, not my proudest moments and a job that, although I got high marks on customer service, never really broke into the service deli world!

As in every novel, there are catches. The first one is Fiona Kemp, the Executive Chef of the restaurant and best friend of Thatcher from childhood in South Bend, Indiana. Is there something more with Thatcher and Fiona? It's unclear at the beginning but it is clear that there is something desperately wrong with Fiona. She lets nearly no one into her kitchen and there are many other signs that all is not right in Nantucket. Another catch is Adrienne herself, she is so unsure of herself, so afraid of the mistakes that she's made in the past that she's almost afraid to let herself go again.

Thatcher and Adrienne end up in a relationship, albeit not the normal one since clearly Thatcher has placed Fiona at the top of his priority list. I both hated and pitied Fiona throughout the book and was really ready to throttle her at the end. I loved Adrienne and all her flaws and Thatcher drove me nuts but reminded me of those I've loved in the past and may still care about today. In fact, throughout reading this book, I was constantly reminded of someone that I'd not thought of in so long as a result of the Thatcher character. It's not that Thatcher is like this person, in many ways they are complete opposites, but there was something that made this person come to my mind over and over again while reading The Blue Bistro.

This is definitely a book that will stay with me and when I think of this book, I will think of that person that should be, and very much is-most of the time-in my past.

Melissa Ford--Life From Scratch

So it's been nearly a year since I last blogged. This was not my intention. For those who may or may not know me, I made a huge life change in August. I left my job of four years in Oregon and moved to New York City. Why New York City? Why not New York City! I have always dreamed of living here my entire life and knew that, as the great sage, Hillel says, "If not now, when?" So here I am, five months later, living in the tiniest studio I have ever lived in my life and loving it! So it is fitting that my first book back is a review of a book set in NYC!

I loved this book! I received Life from Scratch as an Early Review book and could not put it down. It's a relatively slim book (although in actuality is 208 pages) about a woman who is recently divorced in New York. She talks about her teeny tiny kitchen in her teeny tiny studio and how she was always from a family that ordered in. After her divorce, she decided to start cooking and took all her cooking supplies that she got as wedding presents and started cooking as well as dating again.

I think this book was especially poignant to me for a few reasons: the first is now having lived in NYC for nearly 5 months, I recognized so many of the places that she was referencing and could actually say that I was familiar with them, or at least their subway stops! Secondly, the title character was a nice Jewish girl named Rachel, which, wait, so am I! Finally, the struggle of cooking in a tiny studio apartment. While I actually think my studio is smaller than her as she had room for a bed AND a couch and I only have room for a futon as both, it is a struggle to cook in such a limited amount of space and to not be able to invite people to enjoy it. My hope is that my next apartment in NYC will be slightly larger, even just bigger enough to put some screens up to separate my eating from sleeping areas!

All in all, I highly recommend this book!

Therese Borchard-Beyond Blue

As someone who has experienced depression, albeit not to nearly the extreme that Borchard has, and for very different circumstances, this was still an amazing read. Borchard has done a wonderful job of pinpointing exactly the progression of her depression and the waves and fits in which it came. I would recommend this book for anyone who has a loved one experiencing bouts of depression or for someone who has experienced depression themselves. The book reiterates that depression is not the type of ailment where you pop some pills and then it's over. This is a life-long condition that one lives with, going through the highs and lows on an ongoing basis.

Alice Sebold--The Almost Moon

I've read both of Alice Sebold's other books and truly enjoyed them. A day later and I'm still not sure what I thought about this one. A daughter, Helen, in her late forties, her mentally ill mother and her deceased father. It was very interesting to read about how Helen grew up in what was a very difficult life, the mother was extremely mentally ill and was agoraphobic, not leaving the house for years at a time. I think the most interesting part to me was the affect that this mother had on the life of her fully grown daughter, Helen, and that even after she was married with children, she felt the need to protect her mother and chose to return home. Clearly the most shocking part of the book happened within the first chapter, when Helen killed her mother. It wasn't premeditated but something that almost just kind of happened. The worst part almost wasn't the actual killing of her mother but the hours that ensued after. I felt that I had just really gotten into the book towards the end and thus was very disappointed when it ended in what I felt was a very unsatisfying way. I wish there had been more of a conclusion but then again, my imagination can always make up some pretty imaginative ways to end the story!

Sadia Shepard--The Girl From Foreign

I picked this book up at the library and immediately was drawn into the world that Sadia spun. The story tells the real tale of her grandmother, who was born of the Bene Israel Jewish community in India, a community that I've heard some about in recent years. Unfortunately I didn't know a lot of information about the group or even what had become of them in more recent times. It was very interested to read about the conflict that Sadia felt, having all these different religious beliefs in one household. While it seemed at first, that Nana didn't really bring a lot of the Jewish faith into the household, as Sadia explored more and more throughout India, she realized that many of the things that her grandmother had done while she was a child were really Jewish traditions and not the traditions of her Muslim grandfather. I can only imagine the pain that Rachel Jacobs/Rahat Siddiqi felt trying to navigate the world through such different lenses. I wish that more of her secrets and world could have been shared before she'd died and I would have loved to hear how she felt about her religions and how she felt of the increasingly more religiousness of Pakistan since she left.