Take a photo of a barcode or cover
lynneelue 's review for:
Delicious!
by Ruth Reichl
This is such a beautifully written book, loaded with sensory details. It truly relishes anything related to food described with such joy that even the words themselves in the book are savoury. It makes sense; the author was a successful food critic, so this book gives opportunity to celebrate food culture in New York City but also food history. The letters from a young Akron girl exhibit life during World War II and how people struggled through it on the homestead. Naturally, for the purposes of this book, substituting food in recipes was an important subject in the letters, so it was cool to learn something when I was only expecting fiction.
I admit to feeling disappointed at the end, however. After reading "Akron--Ohio" as a subject in the Library of Congress details on the copyright page, I was excited that Akron would play a role in the book, but in my mind, it serves only as a setting rather than as a significant detail. After spending so much time on discovering the letters from the Akron girl Lulu, I knew there would be a trip to see her. But it was so far back in the book that even an unncessary romance took precedent in the story. They spent about one paragraph on Akron and then zipped to Cleveland, but spent very little time even on any significance to Cleveland--it was just a place Lulu lived. From little snippets in the letters, I could tell how important Akron was to the war effort, so I was disappointed the book didn't delve deeper into the connections in the letters that the book opened up, considering what a big role the letters played to the story's plot. Considering this disappointment, I was saddened that the author had created such a beautiful food magazine world for the book and then disbanded the company halfway through to focus on the letters.
Even so, the story is undeniably magical. It has so many cool subjects in it: food, New York City, magazine publishing, restaurant business, historic buildings, World War II, Akron, James Beard, primary documents (fictionalized for the story), old-fashioned libraries, Underground Railroad, relationships, coming-of-age, drugs, death. The author Ruth Reichl has certainly impressed me--and as I've already highly recommended it to numerous family members, I hope it can be a book to be cherished for them, too.
I admit to feeling disappointed at the end, however. After reading "Akron--Ohio" as a subject in the Library of Congress details on the copyright page, I was excited that Akron would play a role in the book, but in my mind, it serves only as a setting rather than as a significant detail. After spending so much time on discovering the letters from the Akron girl Lulu, I knew there would be a trip to see her. But it was so far back in the book that even an unncessary romance took precedent in the story. They spent about one paragraph on Akron and then zipped to Cleveland, but spent very little time even on any significance to Cleveland--it was just a place Lulu lived. From little snippets in the letters, I could tell how important Akron was to the war effort, so I was disappointed the book didn't delve deeper into the connections in the letters that the book opened up, considering what a big role the letters played to the story's plot. Considering this disappointment, I was saddened that the author had created such a beautiful food magazine world for the book and then disbanded the company halfway through to focus on the letters.
Even so, the story is undeniably magical. It has so many cool subjects in it: food, New York City, magazine publishing, restaurant business, historic buildings, World War II, Akron, James Beard, primary documents (fictionalized for the story), old-fashioned libraries, Underground Railroad, relationships, coming-of-age, drugs, death. The author Ruth Reichl has certainly impressed me--and as I've already highly recommended it to numerous family members, I hope it can be a book to be cherished for them, too.