Thursday, December 01, 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
November Book
The Language of Baklava : A Memoir by Diana Abu-Jaber
Meeting date: November 28, 2005 7:00 PM
Book Description:
From the acclaimed author of Crescent, called “radiant, wise, and passionate” by the Chicago Tribune, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert. These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana’s childhood–American and Jordanian–and the richness and difficulty of straddling both. They also bring her wonderfully eccentric family to life, most memorably her imperious American grandmother and her impractical, hotheaded, displaced immigrant father, who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children.
As she does in her fiction, Diana draws us in with her exquisite insight and compassion, and with her amazing talent for describing food and the myriad pleasures and adventures associated with cooking and eating. Each chapter contains mouthwatering recipes for many of the dishes described, from her Middle Eastern grandmother’s Mad Genius Knaffea to her American grandmother’s Easy Roast Beef, to her aunt Aya’s Poetic Baklava. The Language of Baklava gives us the chance not only to grow up alongside Diana, but also to share meals with her every step of the way–unforgettable feasts that teach her, and us, as much about iden-tity, love, and family as they do about food.
From: Amazon.com
About the Author
Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent, which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor, and Arabian Jazz, which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami.
From: Amazon.com
Websites:
History of Baklava
http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Baklava.htm
Meeting date: November 28, 2005 7:00 PM
Book Description:
From the acclaimed author of Crescent, called “radiant, wise, and passionate” by the Chicago Tribune, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert. These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana’s childhood–American and Jordanian–and the richness and difficulty of straddling both. They also bring her wonderfully eccentric family to life, most memorably her imperious American grandmother and her impractical, hotheaded, displaced immigrant father, who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children.
As she does in her fiction, Diana draws us in with her exquisite insight and compassion, and with her amazing talent for describing food and the myriad pleasures and adventures associated with cooking and eating. Each chapter contains mouthwatering recipes for many of the dishes described, from her Middle Eastern grandmother’s Mad Genius Knaffea to her American grandmother’s Easy Roast Beef, to her aunt Aya’s Poetic Baklava. The Language of Baklava gives us the chance not only to grow up alongside Diana, but also to share meals with her every step of the way–unforgettable feasts that teach her, and us, as much about iden-tity, love, and family as they do about food.
From: Amazon.com
About the Author
Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent, which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor, and Arabian Jazz, which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami.
From: Amazon.com
Websites:
History of Baklava
http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Baklava.htm
Monday, October 03, 2005
October Book
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. A backpacking expedition in 1973 brought him to England where he met his wife and decided to settle. He wrote for the English newspapers The Times and The Independent for many years, writing travel articles to supplement his income. He lived with his family in North Yorkshire before moving back to the States in 1995, to Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and four children. In 2003 he and his family moved back to England, where they currently reside.
From: Official Bill Bryson Website: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. A backpacking expedition in 1973 brought him to England where he met his wife and decided to settle. He wrote for the English newspapers The Times and The Independent for many years, writing travel articles to supplement his income. He lived with his family in North Yorkshire before moving back to the States in 1995, to Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and four children. In 2003 he and his family moved back to England, where they currently reside.
From: Official Bill Bryson Website: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/
Reviews:
Random House http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/bookshelf5.html
Yale Review http://www.yale.edu/yrb/summer01/review11.htm
Amazon reviews: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0767903862/ref=dp_proddesc_0/104-1191621-3053544?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155Book Browse.com http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=553
aaabookserch: http://www.aaabooksearch.com/Reviews/0767903862
Bill Bryson Books at DC Public Library
- A short history of nearly everything (2003) 500 B9166
- Bryson's dictionary of troublesome words (2002) 423.1 B916
- Bill Bryson's African diary (2002) 916.762 B916
- In a sunburned country (2000) 919.4046 B916
- I'm a stranger here myself: notes on returning to America after twenty years away (1999)973.92 B916
- A walk in the woods: rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (1998) 917.4044 B916
- Notes from a small island (1996) 914.1048 B916
- Made in America: an informal history of the English language in the United States (1994)420.973 B916
- Neither here nor there: travels in Europe (1992) 914.0455 B916N
- The mother tongue: English and how it got that way (1990) 420.9 B916
- The lost continent: travels in small-town America (1989) 917.3049 B916
Travel:
- Tourism Australia http://www.australia.com/home_us.aust?L=en&C=US
- Australia Travel Search http://www.australiatravelsearch.com.au/
- Walk about Australian Travel Guide http://www.walkabout.com.au/
- Lonely Planet –Australia http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/pacific/australia
History:
- Australian History on the Internet http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/histsite.html
- Brief Timeline http://www.clickforaustralia.com/History.htm
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