alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

In this story, four 40-something women go on a white water rafting adventure in backwoods Maine, ostensibly to spend time together and renew their old friendship, but they get more of an adventure than they bargained for.

The pacing is perfect and the action never lets up. The descriptions of the environment kept me in that world the whole time. I was walking around my city pretending I was deep in thick forests. I came seeking escapism, and that's what was delivered!

This reminded me a lot of the film The River Wild with Meryl Streep. The action, pacing, and environment are the same.

Food Pairing: Tuna salad sandwich, an apple, and a granola bar.

The poet, Natasha Trethewey, is the black daughter of a white father. The poems in Thrall are personal reflections on her family dynamics and poetic ruminations on the history of mixed parentage in the Americas. Many poems are about paintings where people of different races are interacting in intimate spaces, particularly the Casta paintings. So read with Google close by. I always enjoy poems about visual art. Art reflecting art reflecting life.

“The wages of empire is myopia”

I didn't really like this cookbook because a lot of the recipes are based on trying to recreate meat dishes. I prefer when vegan and vegetarian cookbooks have recipes from culinary cultures that don't use a lot of meat, or when they just try to make something new. It does have a full color photo for every recipe, though.

Not my favorite chef or recipe author, but he's growing on me. I keep picking this book up.

These recipes are very simple and easy to follow and each recipe is accompanied by a full color photo. No out of the ordinary ingredients or advanced cooking techniques here. But most of the main dishes rely on tofu or gluten flour to make meat-like stuff. Legumes are waaaay underexplored (the man is French and didn't include a cassoulet??). That said, I did find a handful of recipes to use for a week's worth of meal planning.

BTW almost all of these recipes can be found on his site https://www.thebuddhistchef.com/

Does not suffer from the infamous mid-trilogy slump!

The prose is so beautiful, that's why I love Ferrante's novels. But I didn't like the story in this one as much as some of the other books I've read by her, even though it has many of the same themes: adolescence in mid-century Naples, manipulative women, first-person narrator, female friendship, sexuality. I think I didn't like it because I felt like the MC was doing things that I myself would regret and then feel anxious about for the rest of my life. It made me feel uncomfortable.

Food pairing: espresso and biscotti (as appears in a key scene towards the end). But MC and her father frequently eat fried street food together that I don't remember the name of— sfogliatella or sgagliozze perhaps.

Short stories of Black women's inner lives as they navigate the daily hypocrisies sparked by the conflict between desire and the church's prescription.

I enjoyed these stories. They are very slice-of-life, but interesting. It's easy to stay with the thread of the stories. Philyaw's voice is distinct and thoughtful, and the audio narration is warm, perfect. I'm happy this was my first book of 2021 and I hope it's a sign of other good reads to come.

Food pairing: There's one story where the character is really missing her southern roots, and her partner prepares a big seafood boil with the necessary Old Bay and sweet tea. But I think gumbo and cornbread would be a nice alternative.

There's this one Queer Eye episode where the Fab 5 tell the person that it looks like they have no identity beyond being gay. Like everything the person wore and decorated with had rainbow flags on it. That's how I felt about these short stories: You're brown! And gay! Got it!!!

The stories are about subjects that are very important like immigration, minorities, and poverty, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood.

Food Pairing: tacos al pastor, pico de gallo, and ice cold Coke.

I got off on the wrong foot with this book and restarted it twice before I finally got into it. I think I know why:
1. It was marketed as "Crazy Rich Asians + murder