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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
I don't know why this isn't rated higher... It's a great piece of food writing. Sure, it talks about a ton of stuff other than noodles, but that was just the inspiration for this journey of food and self discovery on the Silk Road.
I do not understand the terrible reviews given for this book. This is a delightful book written by someone who cares deeply about food and culture, and as a journalist and chef she has the credentials to do it well. The test of a good travel book is if it makes you want to travel to the areas and this book certainly meets the mark. The author also follows the golden rule of travel: people are always eager to show you what they love about their hometowns.
Her journey is as much about the silk road as it is about her marriage. As a married person I heard this and thought, "sounds like marriage." I'm not sure why people should bristle at her description of her marriage - why is it so sacred to discuss struggling with your identity in marriage? Why can't someone talk about how their ambitions might not line up with their spouse's? Further, she proves that she learns the key to a successful marriage at the end of the book: there's some give and some take.
Her journey is as much about the silk road as it is about her marriage. As a married person I heard this and thought, "sounds like marriage." I'm not sure why people should bristle at her description of her marriage - why is it so sacred to discuss struggling with your identity in marriage? Why can't someone talk about how their ambitions might not line up with their spouse's? Further, she proves that she learns the key to a successful marriage at the end of the book: there's some give and some take.
Very interesting to anyone who is interested in food. It was sort of both about the food (the search for how the noodle got from China to Italy) and about the author's realizations about herself - that part was less interesting. Great recipes, too.
Worth picking up for the recipes, I could've done without the sort of strained agonizing over gender roles after marriage
I'm inclined to like this book, because:
1) It has recipes; and
2) I made one of the recipes (Pork Belly Sauce) for a couple of Chinese friends, and the wife of the couple got all dreamy-eyed and said it reminded her of her childhood.
What the book isn't is one of those insufferable tales of going to Provence or Tuscany or New Zealand and reinventing a blissful life over a plate of heavenly food and glass of perfect wine, surrounded by your new perfect, colorful friends. Although, actually, it kinda got that way at the end, when she finally fetched up in Naples and Bologna, Italy.
The author wrestled with many dilemmas, out loud and right there on the page, and this turned a lot of readers off. In fairness, though, how does one write a lighthearted and fun travel saga about a country in which women are not allowed out of doors without a male chaperone, or where they cannot choose their spouse, or cannot go to school? A good part of the middle of this book takes place in the highly repressive nations of Turkmenistan and Iran, and while she seeks out positive experiences there, it's hard to fault her for finding them oppressive.
Did we need quite so many reminders that marriage forces uncomfortable compromises? Probably not, but while some reviewers reference her 'constant whining,' I doubt if these introspective passages made up more than 5% to 10% of the text.
Not as fun as her first book, but I attribute that to the fact that growing up is less fun than being young, unattached and able to enjoy a high degree of freedom. Four stars is perhaps generous, but given the claptrap that this genre generally produces, this is still a cut above average.
1) It has recipes; and
2) I made one of the recipes (Pork Belly Sauce) for a couple of Chinese friends, and the wife of the couple got all dreamy-eyed and said it reminded her of her childhood.
What the book isn't is one of those insufferable tales of going to Provence or Tuscany or New Zealand and reinventing a blissful life over a plate of heavenly food and glass of perfect wine, surrounded by your new perfect, colorful friends. Although, actually, it kinda got that way at the end, when she finally fetched up in Naples and Bologna, Italy.
The author wrestled with many dilemmas, out loud and right there on the page, and this turned a lot of readers off. In fairness, though, how does one write a lighthearted and fun travel saga about a country in which women are not allowed out of doors without a male chaperone, or where they cannot choose their spouse, or cannot go to school? A good part of the middle of this book takes place in the highly repressive nations of Turkmenistan and Iran, and while she seeks out positive experiences there, it's hard to fault her for finding them oppressive.
Did we need quite so many reminders that marriage forces uncomfortable compromises? Probably not, but while some reviewers reference her 'constant whining,' I doubt if these introspective passages made up more than 5% to 10% of the text.
Not as fun as her first book, but I attribute that to the fact that growing up is less fun than being young, unattached and able to enjoy a high degree of freedom. Four stars is perhaps generous, but given the claptrap that this genre generally produces, this is still a cut above average.
I LOVED this book. Who cares if the author did some soul-searching on her journey and when writing? Who cares if she didn't solely stick to the history of the noodle? Had she not expanded her subject, this book would have been so boring. Reading everyone's stories, imagining the scenery, and developing cravings for (almost) every dish described is what made this book so enthralling for me. Personally, I feel like the other reviews for this book are much too harsh.
Book Riot "Read Harder" 2021 challenge #11: A food memoir by an author of colour."
I don't read many memoirs unless they are chronicling a specific era or topic that I am interested in. In those cases, they are more like a documentary with a personal approach, like taking a tour with a particularly open and chatty guide. By definition, I assumed a food memoir would have an extra focus on, well, food, which is something I do have some interest in. Still, I wanted something more. The topic of food can easily get mundane as it is so enmeshed with daily lives and routines.
I picked On the Noodle Road because, beyond food, the subject matter made me suspect it would touch on the anthropology and history of some of the most historically rich regions of the world. Travelogues were also new to me. As a child and in my early adolescence, I devoured adventure novels, and, to me, adventure was often synonymous with travel. Some of the best plots involved expeditions to faraway lands. As far as I was concerned, the expedition itself was the best part; destination mattered very little. In The Noodle Road, there is no one destination, each stop tells its own story.
Style
Though she is a professional chef, Lin-Liu's food writing isn't too technical - no need to be a seasoned chef to appreciate the delicacies she describes - but her expertise does help make her writing multisensorial. Her knowledge of food preparation allows her descriptions to go beyond taste and appearance and include textures, densities, which she explains through ingredients and cooking methods. Far from reading like a series of grocery lists, Lin-Liu's food portraits always come in the context of an adventure. She ties the food with its cultural context and with the stories of those who make it. Lin-Liu's style is definitely more human-scale, peppered with new friends and anecdotes. If one's seeking a 'hard science', objective account, this isn't the book. It is, after all, also a memoir.
All in all, the book was light on history. Again, it isn't so much a criticism as a reassessment of my own expectations. The author's initial stated goal is very ambitious: retrace the history of noodles, their invention, and how they spread from China to Italy. Such a goal may have benefitted from a more academic approach. I didn't mind, personally, but the topic of noodles seems to become less and less present as the book progresses, until the author reaches Italy. She even questions herself on whether or not her project's focus has changed from food-history to soul-searching. I have to say that soul-searching is not as much of an interest of mine. Thankfully, though the initial question is never conclusively answered, she stays mostly on the topic of food.
In my opinion, the segment on China was the most interesting and well-researched owing, perhaps, to the fact that it is where the author lives and where she supposedly has the most extensive network. It is also the longest segment. Where some regions may be traversed relatively rapidly, China gets a more detailed account of its diverse cultures and landscapes.
It seems Central-Asia is not quite the food destination, not as much, at least, as China, Iran, Turkey, and Italy. Of course, with the focus of the book being food, this results in a somewhat short segment. Still, I daydreamed about that week-long hike the author and her husband went on in Kyrgyzstan. I also daydreamed about a Kazak snack consisting of chocolate-covered cheese curds. I will absolutely try to replicate that myself!
Iran was heavy on politics. Lin-Liu's perspective remains resolutely American, though she is open-minded and makes a point to connect with people in every region she visits. I can hardly fault her for balking at the iron-fisted regimes she encountered, and I appreciate the tinge of danger her passport gave to her Iranian visit (a friend of mine, an Irish national, visited Iran in what seemed to be a much more relaxed holiday than what Lin-Liu experienced). So, this isn't exactly a criticism so much as a note that the tone of this chapter wasn't quite the same. I was surprised not to see much mention of architecture, or more Silk Road history, Iran being such a central part of it.
Turkey and Italy, the last two stops, find the author refreshed after a travelling hiatus and more comfortable in mostly Western-minded cultures. There, she also addresses the differences in culture and cooking throughout one country's regions. The Italian segment, I thought was particularly rich in culinary knowledge.
Equally distributed among all segments, still, are really fascinating tidbits of information that will make the reader very worldly and fun at their next dinner party.
Travel, Food, and Identity: Why I'm glad I first travelogue I read was written by a woman of colour
After resolutely falling in love with the travelogue genre, I looked for lists of recommendations. Needless to say, most were by white men. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable for two reasons. First, it made me question the perspective with which the writer may be chronicling their adventures. While part of the fun is the writer themselves being an outsider, I'd like it to come with open-mindedness and some degree of knowledge. This isn't to say that I won't read any travelogues penned by white Europeans or Americans - I promise there are some on my TBR - but they are either recent works (as I have more faith in the sensibilities and knowledge of modern authors) or works about Europe. It isn't to deny older anthropological works' historical importance; I just don't want to read them.
Jen Lin-Liu is a Chinese-American that has lived large portions of her life both in China and in the USA. Her understanding of her identity as a minority, stemming from her formative years in the USA, humbles her perspective. However, she deals with an interesting duality; in China, Lin-Liu is part of the Han ethnic majority. As we hear a lot in the news lately, unfortunately, the Han-centric CPC is hostile to ethnic minorities. Lin-Liu does touch on the repression of Tibetan and Uighur communities in China and recognizes the discomfort that her Han appearance may cause. She is careful and sensible, preferring to learn some Uighur and limit her use of colonially-connotated Mandarin.
Secondly, it is sadly obvious that travel, for women and ethnic minorities, posed a problem that it did not for white men. The scarcity of well-reviewed travelogues by people who do not fit the latter demographic is glaring.
I say "well-reviewed" because it was hard not to notice how much harsher criticism seemed to be towards female authors, specifically female authors of colour (I am thinking especially of Lin-Liu and of Monisha Rajesh as they are both on my TBR). Their tone would be quickly picked apart, their intentions and fitness for travel questioned. "Whiny" is the word that came up a lot. Not to say that no white man was criticised, of course, but for every person who found Popular White Male Travel Writer's tone too acerbic (and I note a difference in the vocabulary here, PWMTW could be called a jerk, but never whiny), another found it amusing.
It seems what displeased many here was the way Lin-Liu talked about the intersection of her marriage and her career. I have never been in her position, but I don't find it very hard to imagine that a woman's career and, more importantly, professional identity could be rocked by marriage. Still nowadays (and yes, in "the West"), marriage marks a slowing point in a woman's career. Unmarried women typically earn more than married women, regardless of whether the marriage was common law, legal, or religious. I am not against marriage at all, but I think her position deserves more sympathy than it got, especially since she contrasts it with the traditional role of women in many of the countries she visits, and even in her home country of China. She understands and acknowledges her luck at having an American husband and upbringing that affords her a lot more independence. Her commentary on the place of women, including her own, could not be more pertinent when dealing with a topic such as food, home cooking being the traditional domain of wives and mothers and the more lucrative professional cooking being the domain of men.
I don't read many memoirs unless they are chronicling a specific era or topic that I am interested in. In those cases, they are more like a documentary with a personal approach, like taking a tour with a particularly open and chatty guide. By definition, I assumed a food memoir would have an extra focus on, well, food, which is something I do have some interest in. Still, I wanted something more. The topic of food can easily get mundane as it is so enmeshed with daily lives and routines.
I picked On the Noodle Road because, beyond food, the subject matter made me suspect it would touch on the anthropology and history of some of the most historically rich regions of the world. Travelogues were also new to me. As a child and in my early adolescence, I devoured adventure novels, and, to me, adventure was often synonymous with travel. Some of the best plots involved expeditions to faraway lands. As far as I was concerned, the expedition itself was the best part; destination mattered very little. In The Noodle Road, there is no one destination, each stop tells its own story.
Style
Though she is a professional chef, Lin-Liu's food writing isn't too technical - no need to be a seasoned chef to appreciate the delicacies she describes - but her expertise does help make her writing multisensorial. Her knowledge of food preparation allows her descriptions to go beyond taste and appearance and include textures, densities, which she explains through ingredients and cooking methods. Far from reading like a series of grocery lists, Lin-Liu's food portraits always come in the context of an adventure. She ties the food with its cultural context and with the stories of those who make it. Lin-Liu's style is definitely more human-scale, peppered with new friends and anecdotes. If one's seeking a 'hard science', objective account, this isn't the book. It is, after all, also a memoir.
All in all, the book was light on history. Again, it isn't so much a criticism as a reassessment of my own expectations. The author's initial stated goal is very ambitious: retrace the history of noodles, their invention, and how they spread from China to Italy. Such a goal may have benefitted from a more academic approach. I didn't mind, personally, but the topic of noodles seems to become less and less present as the book progresses, until the author reaches Italy. She even questions herself on whether or not her project's focus has changed from food-history to soul-searching. I have to say that soul-searching is not as much of an interest of mine. Thankfully, though the initial question is never conclusively answered, she stays mostly on the topic of food.
In my opinion, the segment on China was the most interesting and well-researched owing, perhaps, to the fact that it is where the author lives and where she supposedly has the most extensive network. It is also the longest segment. Where some regions may be traversed relatively rapidly, China gets a more detailed account of its diverse cultures and landscapes.
It seems Central-Asia is not quite the food destination, not as much, at least, as China, Iran, Turkey, and Italy. Of course, with the focus of the book being food, this results in a somewhat short segment. Still, I daydreamed about that week-long hike the author and her husband went on in Kyrgyzstan. I also daydreamed about a Kazak snack consisting of chocolate-covered cheese curds. I will absolutely try to replicate that myself!
Iran was heavy on politics. Lin-Liu's perspective remains resolutely American, though she is open-minded and makes a point to connect with people in every region she visits. I can hardly fault her for balking at the iron-fisted regimes she encountered, and I appreciate the tinge of danger her passport gave to her Iranian visit (a friend of mine, an Irish national, visited Iran in what seemed to be a much more relaxed holiday than what Lin-Liu experienced). So, this isn't exactly a criticism so much as a note that the tone of this chapter wasn't quite the same. I was surprised not to see much mention of architecture, or more Silk Road history, Iran being such a central part of it.
Turkey and Italy, the last two stops, find the author refreshed after a travelling hiatus and more comfortable in mostly Western-minded cultures. There, she also addresses the differences in culture and cooking throughout one country's regions. The Italian segment, I thought was particularly rich in culinary knowledge.
Equally distributed among all segments, still, are really fascinating tidbits of information that will make the reader very worldly and fun at their next dinner party.
Travel, Food, and Identity: Why I'm glad I first travelogue I read was written by a woman of colour
After resolutely falling in love with the travelogue genre, I looked for lists of recommendations. Needless to say, most were by white men. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable for two reasons. First, it made me question the perspective with which the writer may be chronicling their adventures. While part of the fun is the writer themselves being an outsider, I'd like it to come with open-mindedness and some degree of knowledge. This isn't to say that I won't read any travelogues penned by white Europeans or Americans - I promise there are some on my TBR - but they are either recent works (as I have more faith in the sensibilities and knowledge of modern authors) or works about Europe. It isn't to deny older anthropological works' historical importance; I just don't want to read them.
Jen Lin-Liu is a Chinese-American that has lived large portions of her life both in China and in the USA. Her understanding of her identity as a minority, stemming from her formative years in the USA, humbles her perspective. However, she deals with an interesting duality; in China, Lin-Liu is part of the Han ethnic majority. As we hear a lot in the news lately, unfortunately, the Han-centric CPC is hostile to ethnic minorities. Lin-Liu does touch on the repression of Tibetan and Uighur communities in China and recognizes the discomfort that her Han appearance may cause. She is careful and sensible, preferring to learn some Uighur and limit her use of colonially-connotated Mandarin.
Secondly, it is sadly obvious that travel, for women and ethnic minorities, posed a problem that it did not for white men. The scarcity of well-reviewed travelogues by people who do not fit the latter demographic is glaring.
I say "well-reviewed" because it was hard not to notice how much harsher criticism seemed to be towards female authors, specifically female authors of colour (I am thinking especially of Lin-Liu and of Monisha Rajesh as they are both on my TBR). Their tone would be quickly picked apart, their intentions and fitness for travel questioned. "Whiny" is the word that came up a lot. Not to say that no white man was criticised, of course, but for every person who found Popular White Male Travel Writer's tone too acerbic (and I note a difference in the vocabulary here, PWMTW could be called a jerk, but never whiny), another found it amusing.
It seems what displeased many here was the way Lin-Liu talked about the intersection of her marriage and her career. I have never been in her position, but I don't find it very hard to imagine that a woman's career and, more importantly, professional identity could be rocked by marriage. Still nowadays (and yes, in "the West"), marriage marks a slowing point in a woman's career. Unmarried women typically earn more than married women, regardless of whether the marriage was common law, legal, or religious. I am not against marriage at all, but I think her position deserves more sympathy than it got, especially since she contrasts it with the traditional role of women in many of the countries she visits, and even in her home country of China. She understands and acknowledges her luck at having an American husband and upbringing that affords her a lot more independence. Her commentary on the place of women, including her own, could not be more pertinent when dealing with a topic such as food, home cooking being the traditional domain of wives and mothers and the more lucrative professional cooking being the domain of men.
3.5 stars, bumping it up to 4 largely out of spite, because wow, there are so many negative reviews of a very particular kind. A lot of folks don't like how often the author talks about her marriage. Or the fact that she spends a lot of time describing her struggles with her identity (as a woman, as a wife, as a Chinese-American living in China). Most of the top reviews here use the word "whining." And I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the third book I've read in a row by an Asian-American female journalist about her life abroad (after [b:Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris|17675004|Mastering the Art of French Eating Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris|Ann Mah|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1365871514s/17675004.jpg|24678739] and [b:Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite|20685373|Without You, There Is No Us My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite|Suki Kim|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405292426s/20685373.jpg|40000267]) that inspired the same criticism.
I get it, it's a matter of taste how much we want the author to insert themselves in a nonfiction narrative, and I usually fall on the side of the more the better - I want to hear how the story got made, about the travel logistics and translation pitfalls, how the author met their subjects and got words of wisdom out of them for the book. I don't want the author to pretend they're a totally neutral party, coming in without their own individual and cultural lens on the subject. Maybe other folks just don't like that and prefer the story without the meta-story, and that's fine.
But I'm not sure how you expect an author to separate those aspects of an Asian culinary travelogue from her identity as a woman or as Chinese-American or, in this case, as a wife. She points it out herself near the beginning: she hears constant questions about the whereabouts of her husband throughout the journey, something missing from the writings of her favorite male travel authors. She travels through parts of the world with extremely rigid gender roles and is welcomed into the women's realm by virtue of her gender, and into the men's by virtue of her nationality and profession. She gets questions about her nationality and ethnicity - are you one of us or one of them? - along the journey, ones her white husband doesn't have to contend with.
And her subject is food. In particular, everyday cooking by families and restaurateurs, versus advanced gourmet stuff. Some of the parts I found particularly fascinating were her conversations in different countries about whose job cooking is at home versus in the workplace. And how traditions get passed down, which have been left behind, what hospitality looks like along the Silk Road. If you take gender roles and family roles out of that conversation, well, you're left with a list of tasty things, and how they were cooked and eaten.
Point being, this author doesn't have a neutral (read, white male) point of view, and in my opinion the book is better for it. Sure, the jokes fall flat sometimes, the transitions between talking about her subjects and herself aren't always smooth, but I hate seeing these totally legitimate worries about how one's individual identity, career path, independence, and love of cooking will change in the transition from woman to wife dismissed as "whining." Is her life more full of possibilities and her resume more interesting than most of ours? Yeah, but...what international food writer's isn't? (In contrast, see [b:In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey|20821173|In Search of the Perfect Loaf A Home Baker's Odyssey|Samuel Fromartz|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396671230s/20821173.jpg|40167053] - a similar read in a lot of ways, but not a single word in the reviews about how privileged this writer must be to be paid to follow a passion, and why must he talk so much about his amazing family and home kitchen...)
Yes, this is more of a rant than a review at this point. I enjoyed the book. I especially liked seeing the gradual cultural and culinary changes as the narrative moved slowly west - ingredients and methods disappear and reappear, attitudes towards food and cooking and hospitality change sometimes slowly, sometimes jarringly. Interpretations of American food - especially fast food - pop up here and there with their own weird significance to the local culture. The history of the noodle itself is a little too lost to history to satisfy a reader who's here for answers to the book's driving questions, but I recommend it if you enjoy reading about the experience of traveling and eating. Unless you can't eat gluten - in that case, stay far away.
I get it, it's a matter of taste how much we want the author to insert themselves in a nonfiction narrative, and I usually fall on the side of the more the better - I want to hear how the story got made, about the travel logistics and translation pitfalls, how the author met their subjects and got words of wisdom out of them for the book. I don't want the author to pretend they're a totally neutral party, coming in without their own individual and cultural lens on the subject. Maybe other folks just don't like that and prefer the story without the meta-story, and that's fine.
But I'm not sure how you expect an author to separate those aspects of an Asian culinary travelogue from her identity as a woman or as Chinese-American or, in this case, as a wife. She points it out herself near the beginning: she hears constant questions about the whereabouts of her husband throughout the journey, something missing from the writings of her favorite male travel authors. She travels through parts of the world with extremely rigid gender roles and is welcomed into the women's realm by virtue of her gender, and into the men's by virtue of her nationality and profession. She gets questions about her nationality and ethnicity - are you one of us or one of them? - along the journey, ones her white husband doesn't have to contend with.
And her subject is food. In particular, everyday cooking by families and restaurateurs, versus advanced gourmet stuff. Some of the parts I found particularly fascinating were her conversations in different countries about whose job cooking is at home versus in the workplace. And how traditions get passed down, which have been left behind, what hospitality looks like along the Silk Road. If you take gender roles and family roles out of that conversation, well, you're left with a list of tasty things, and how they were cooked and eaten.
Point being, this author doesn't have a neutral (read, white male) point of view, and in my opinion the book is better for it. Sure, the jokes fall flat sometimes, the transitions between talking about her subjects and herself aren't always smooth, but I hate seeing these totally legitimate worries about how one's individual identity, career path, independence, and love of cooking will change in the transition from woman to wife dismissed as "whining." Is her life more full of possibilities and her resume more interesting than most of ours? Yeah, but...what international food writer's isn't? (In contrast, see [b:In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey|20821173|In Search of the Perfect Loaf A Home Baker's Odyssey|Samuel Fromartz|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396671230s/20821173.jpg|40167053] - a similar read in a lot of ways, but not a single word in the reviews about how privileged this writer must be to be paid to follow a passion, and why must he talk so much about his amazing family and home kitchen...)
Yes, this is more of a rant than a review at this point. I enjoyed the book. I especially liked seeing the gradual cultural and culinary changes as the narrative moved slowly west - ingredients and methods disappear and reappear, attitudes towards food and cooking and hospitality change sometimes slowly, sometimes jarringly. Interpretations of American food - especially fast food - pop up here and there with their own weird significance to the local culture. The history of the noodle itself is a little too lost to history to satisfy a reader who's here for answers to the book's driving questions, but I recommend it if you enjoy reading about the experience of traveling and eating. Unless you can't eat gluten - in that case, stay far away.
Ever notice how writers who can't convey their big, important questions through events, descriptions, and dialogue just write their questions as literal questions? Like, instead of showing how couples who own and work at food businesses together manage their personal/business relationship dynamic, and clearly connecting her relationship with her own husband to what she observes between these other people, Lin-Liu just writes something like, "Do I want to work with my husband? Would we be successful business partners? Would I enjoy it?"
The noodle thread was pretty thin, too, and often subjected to the same kind of treatment, with Lin-Liu explicitly writing out her questions so the reader won't forget that there's an underlying thematic question supposedly driving the narrative. It could have just as easily been a rice road, or a dumpling road, or even a pork road, despite the fact that she didn't eat pork in half of the countries. Spoiler alert: she didn't eat noodles in half of the countries either.
I like food memoirs as a genre, but I wasn't so happy with this one.
The noodle thread was pretty thin, too, and often subjected to the same kind of treatment, with Lin-Liu explicitly writing out her questions so the reader won't forget that there's an underlying thematic question supposedly driving the narrative. It could have just as easily been a rice road, or a dumpling road, or even a pork road, despite the fact that she didn't eat pork in half of the countries. Spoiler alert: she didn't eat noodles in half of the countries either.
I like food memoirs as a genre, but I wasn't so happy with this one.
A nonfiction trip on the Noodle Road - from Beijing to Rome - with author Jen Lin-Liu and occasionally her (much-talked-about) husband, Craig. Married just a short time, Lin-Liu talks about her journey to wifehood alongside her journey through China, Central Asia, and into Turkey and Italy. While there is a lot of navel-gazing going on, I found the actual food writing to be tantalizing and very interesting. Prepare yourself to want to make pasta from scratch. Although I don't relate a whole lot to Len-Liu's struggle to understand herself as both a wife and an independent woman, I think it resonates with our culture today.