The Book Club Cookbook

Whether you’re part of a book club or not, the near 500-page The Book Club Cookbook is well worth adding to your shelf (or in my case, shelves) of cookbooks.
Readers are given a synopsis for each book, whether it’s Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, followed by recipes based on scenes or characters from the book or recipes that would go well with the theme of the book.
For example, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex makes many mentions of Desdemona’s rice pudding. So on page 264 of The Book Club Cookbook, you get a recipe for Greek Rice Pudding, which really would be the perfect thing to make at your book club meeting while discussing that book.

The only thing this book was missing was more photos. I like my cookbooks full of rich, colourful photos, what can I say? But I commend the varied selection of books featured in The Book Club Cookbook. There really is something for everyone, and it’s actually a good way to discover titles that you may have never thought of reading before.

I haven’t tried any of the recipes yet but the naptime chef made The Help‘s Caramel Cake and it looks pretty delicious if you ask me.
Some of the other recipes in this book include:

- Oyster Brie Soup from Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants
- Brian Fitzgerald’s Firehouse Marinara Sauce from Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper
- Annie Barrows’ Potato Peel Pie and Non- Occupied Potato Peel Pie from Annie Barrows‘ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Related posts:
The Jane Austen Cookbook
Why joining a book club can help your writing

10 things I learned about Lionel Shriver

Last week I went to see Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Post-Birthday World, at the Toronto Public Library’s Appel Salon. Aside from walking away an even bigger fan than I was before and wanting to pick up her newest book The New Republic, here are 10 things I learned about Lionel Shriver that night:

• She wasn’t born with the name Lionel. Her real name is Margaret Ann. And when asked why she changed it she replied, “Do I look like a Margaret Ann to you?” Enough said.
• She loves naming characters and does it even before she starts writing the book.
• She doesn’t think the novel is dead, but even if it was she’d keep writing anyway.
• Before the success of We Need to Talk About Kevin, her books were largely ignored.
• She loves her book Game Control and moved to Nairobi to research and write it.
• She was happy to win the Orange Prize (prestigious literary prize for women writers) even though she would have “far preferred to win a prize that was for both men and women, but at that point I would take what I could get.”
• She lived in Belfast from 1987-1999 and the terrorism she saw there inspired her to write The New Republic.
• She was not involved in the movie adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin but she thought it was a “damn good film”.
• She’s a huge Edith Wharton fan, which reminds me that I still need to read The House of Mirth…
• Her advice to aspiring writers? Don’t take any advice.

Lionel Shriver was provocative and engaging, much like her books are. You can see for yourself by watching the entire Appel Salon interview here.

 

Related posts:
We Need to Talk About Kevin
What I learned from Nigella Lawson

Write your own adventure

Looking for something to do this month?

Script Frenzy is a writing event that challenges you to write a 100-page script during the month of April.
If you’ve ever participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), you know the drill. This isn’t about winning a prize or even about getting any recognition. It’s simply an effective way to get that script you’ve had inside of you out onto the page.

It’s free and even if you don’t finish all 100 pages in 30 days, it’s still worth the attempt.
I completed Script Frenzy a few years ago and went into it with only a vague idea for my script (it was going to be a short story but I thought I’d try something new). I’d never attempted to write a script before but had so much fun during the month that I will definitely do it again.

If you’re interested but have no idea where to begin, the Script Frenzy site has some Writer’s Resources to get you going, including an extremely helpful section on writing software (I used Final Draft and loved it).

So, are you in?

Here are the official rules:

1) To be crowned an official Script Frenzy winner, you must write a script (or multiple scripts) of at least 100 total pages and verify this tally on ScriptFrenzy.org.

2) You may write individually or with a partner. Writing teams will have a 100-page total goal for their co-written script or scripts.

3) Scriptwriting may begin no earlier than 12:00:01 AM on April 1 and must cease no later than 11:59:59 PM on April 30, local time.

4) You may write screenplays, stage plays, web series, TV shows, short films, comic book and graphic novel scripts, adaptations of novels, or any other type of script your heart desires.

5) You must, at some point, have ridiculous amounts of fun.

Related post:
NaNoWriMo 

Book review: The Reinvention of Love

When I first started reading The Reinvention of Love, I was most looking forward to finding out how Helen Humphreys would tackle writing about the one and only Victor Hugo. I thought the famous French writer would play a more important part in this story, but it turns out he was more of a secondary character, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. His huge and intimidating ego is constantly present, like a shadow. And as you continue reading the story about the love affair between Hugo’s wife Adele and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, you begin to feel the weight of Victor Hugo’s narcissism and understand what being around him would have really been like.

The love story is passionate and actually quite different from any that I’ve read recently. The descriptions of Paris were poetically written, which is no surprise considering Helen Humphreys has written several poetry collections including Anthem, which won the 2000 Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry.

I love a good historical fiction and The Reinvention of Love did not disappoint. I’ve added Humphreys’ other books to my reading list, including Afterimage and The Lost Garden. And I’m also thinking about taking a historical fiction writing class with Helen Humphreys this year as part of the University of Toronto’s Summer Writing School. Sounds like a great way to spend a week, if you ask me.

 

Related posts:
Book review: Drowning Ruth
Water for Elephants: a review

Baster vs The Switch

Jeffrey Eugenides is one of my favourite authors. I’ve read all his books (he doesn’t have many, but still), and I consider Middlesex to be one of my all-time favourites. I went to see him speak when he came to Toronto last year. In my eyes, he’s pretty much a rock star.
So, knowing all this, you’ll forgive me for watching the poorly reviewed film The Switch. I swear I only watched it because it was based on a short story Eugenides wrote for the New Yorker entitled “Baster”. Even though I love Jason Bateman, I would never have watched this movie if Eugenides wasn’t listed as a writer on it.

But despite all the negative reviews and the super corny trailer, I didn’t think the movie was that bad. I’ve definitely seen worse, although perhaps I shouldn’t admit that. I was curious what Eugenides thought of the movie so I did a little searching and found this interview he did back in 2010. His response pretty much says it all:

“Baster,” a story you published in the magazine in 1996, has been adapted for the screen and will be released in August as “The Switch,” with Jennifer Anniston and Jason Bateman. Sofia Coppola, of course, directed an adaption of your first novel, “The Virgin Suicides,” in 1999. Have you seen “The Switch”? What’s it like, in general, to think about your work taking on another, cinematic, life?

The fact that the movie has a different title than the story might give you some idea of how close a correspondence exists between the two. The plot of my story takes up the first twenty or thirty minutes of the film. From there, the screenwriter developed an entirely different outcome. “Baster” is merely the premise of the film. But even that’s not quite true. My story is about an unattractive man who’s in love with a beautiful woman. It deals, comedically, with the Darwinist question: is it better to be good-looking or clever? Now,Jason Bateman isn’t unattractive. The casting went in the other direction, as they say out in Hollywood, and the movie followed it. You might say that “Baster” is to “The Switch” what cello is to cellophane.
You want to know if this bothers me, I think. I’m not sure. I don’t mind that they extended the storyline. I understand the need for that. “Baster” just doesn’t contain enough plot for a feature-length movie. What I mind more (though I don’t really mind, I don’t really care all that much, to be honest—it’s just a movie) is that the story was about one thing and the film is about another.
Making movies is a fragile enterprise. You might have a wonderful script but not be able to cast an appropriate actor to play the lead. Then you get another actor and you have to re-write the script for him or her. As a novelist, I pity film directors their lack of autonomy. And I’m sure film directors pity just about everything about novelists.

Yikes. I wonder if we’ll see another Eugenides adaptation anytime soon.

Related posts:
Book vs Film: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Ed Wood, I hardly knew you