My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme

I picked up My Life in France at last year’s Five Colleges Booksale, but it was something I’d been meaning to read for some time. Although it was written with and finished by her grandnephew, Alex Prud’homme, this is Julia Child‘s memoir of her years in France, from 1948 when she and her husband Paul first went to live in Paris, to 1992, when she gave up her small home in Provence after Paul could no longer travel. It’s a delightful book. How could any book about delicious food in a beautiful place, shared with interesting people, not be a delight?

But there’s much more to this book. Child was an amazing person who put her all into her life’s work — teaching people how to cook well. Until I read her memoir I had no idea how long it took her to research and test her recipes and how scientifically she worked to ensure consistent results for anyone cooking from them, and how carefully she explained why the recipes work. Her incredible work ethic, her astute observations of culture and society, her fond remembrance of people she knew well, from market sellers to her dear husband, make this book a really good read as well as a delightful one.

Paul and Julia Child were both very talented and were really a creative team, and the amount of work they did separately and together is quite impressive. Although this book only touches briefly on their time in the OSS during WWII, it does explore the bureaucratic mess of the postwar diplomatic service and the way McCarthy and his paranoia stretched across the ocean to impact longtime government servants abroad. Her observations are really interesting, and I admire Child’s lifelong efforts to learn and become better spoken about politics and culture as well as her own passions (food, restaurants, wine, cooking, and food production). As a lifelong learner myself, and as someone who didn’t begin to really form my own views until late in my 20s, I could identify with her sense that she hadn’t grown up in college, and she had not thought through her positions on important matters until she was well into adulthood.

I also think Americans who grew up knowing her PBS show don’t realize how much her initial “cookery bookery” as she refers to it was a partnership with not only her cookbook collaborators in France, but with the many French people who contributed to her culinary education — chefs, restauranteurs, shopkeepers, market sellers, teachers, friends, all of whom expanded her repertoire, her tastes, her knowledge and skill. Child’s ethos was her own, however: “nothing is too much trouble if it comes out the way it should,” and “the pleasures of the table, and of life, are infinite.” Towards the end of My Life in France she sums up her advice to people: “Learn how to cook — try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all, have fun!”

And that sense of practicality, fearlessness, and fun permeates this book.

 

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Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor

The subtitle of Bacon & Aphramor’s book is What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand About Weight. An acquaintance who is a nutritionist recommended an article about body respect on Aphramor’s site Disruptive Women (yes, she had me at Disruptive Women) because she knows I have a teen daughter. I was so taken with the ideas in the article that I got the book on inter-library loan.

You’ve probably noticed that so-called sacred truths of dietary advice are frequently debunked. A widely discussed recent example was the Time magazine article last winter that examined why fat had been demonized when it turns out it’s not so bad. And dieting? Dieting, it turns out can make you fatter. Exercise? It won’t necessarily help you lose weight. I could go on, but you get the idea. This book is mind-blowing. And at heart, quite practical. We all have a “setpoint” — basically, a natural weight we settle at when we aren’t worrying about our weight. What Aphramor and Bacon suggest instead of dieting and following an exercise regimen is — get this — listening to your body.

They admit it isn’t easy, and it will take time to get used to, but they offer step-by-step plans to enjoy “Health at Every Size,” by respecting oneself and cultivating that respect through eating well, moving (their term for exercising) in ways that are satisfying and fun, and paying attention to emotional well being. All of which requires mindful awareness and a willingness to be open minded and try new things.

Why is that so hard? We’re conditioned to believe we should look a particular way, and to associate fatness with laziness, lack of willpower, or bad habits.We live in a sizeist society. Just yesterday, the BBC reported “fat shaming” on the Tube and around London. Aphramor and Bacon touch on the social justice aspect of this argument by noting there’s a great deal of evidence that people who are poor or who lack a “sense of agency” in their lives tend to have more health problems and to be stigmatized for them.

Body Respect notes that living in a world where being fat is “bad” not only stigmatizes people, it also causes our cultural obsession with body shape and size. Almost everyone has or is exposed to disordered thoughts about eating. Obesity is associated with disease and death, even though in many cases, other health and genetic factors are more debilitating than someone’s weight. If that’s not challenging enough to the status quo, Bacon and Aphramor go on to ask readers to let go of notions of “overweight” altogether.

I’ve read things along these lines before — I’ve written here about many mindfulness books, and I’ve read several articles in Atlantic Monthly about faulty scientific studies and the diet industry. I know that most of the diets Americans follow are not effective, that exercise should be enjoyable to be maintained. But Bacon and Aphramor say what I know to be true in a way I’ve never heard it said before — something Paul Harding says is a hallmark of good writing. He was referring to fiction, but good nonfiction can do the same thing.

Today I let my colleague who orders nonfiction know that this is an important read. It’s going to be on order at our library soon.

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A couple of treats from small presses

Longtime bookconscious readers know I have a favorite literary publicist: Molly Mikolowski. She’s introduced me to so many wonderful books and authors over the years, sending me periodic packages of new gems that get me through low points in my reading life. You’ve probably had them yourself, especially if you work in a the book world — you’ve been obliged to read a stack of books that are not necessarily bad but don’t sing. Technically, the writers are sound, but they fail to light any soul-fires. Or to provoke any strong feeling at all. This results in reading ennui at best, or even fatigue.

Over the past couple of weeks, I self-medicated my reading fatigue with two of Molly’s finds: Karen Rizzo’s Famous Baby, a novel about the grown daughter of an alpha blogger mommy, and Jam Today Too by Tod Davies.

I already knew I loved Tod’s writing from her wonderful Snotty Saves the Day. I’ve read a couple of cooking memoirs that were vaguely annoying and superior sounding, but I trust Molly and Tod, so I picked up Jam Today Too this morning and didn’t put it down until I got to the end, by which time my stomach was urging me forth into the kitchen.

Jam Today Too is an absolutely wonderful little book, full of delicious recipes and suggestions (Tod repeatedly assures readers, “you’ll have your own ideas”) but also good company. You know what I mean, it’s the kind of book that makes you wish you could be friends with the author, or maybe BE the author. I dare you to read this book and not be cheered immediately and tell yourself, “Well everything seems to have gone to shit in the world, but if people like Tod are in it, it can’t be all bad.”

I even read parts of the book aloud to my family, always a sign it’s one I’ll treasure. I shared Tod’s thoughts on feminism with my sixteen year old daughter who laments that people her age don’t like that word, and she loved this bit: “It can’t be just about doing what the boys do. It has to be about upholding the importance of what the girls do . . . . Girly stuff needs to be reclaimed as a ruling power in our culture . . . .”

Also, Tod suggests that dining alone on a dolled up bowl of popcorn (her topping: “melted butter, garlic salt, and Parmesan” in one’s bathrobe while reading a novel and drinking red wine is a lovely way to spend an evening. A book that makes you think “I thought I was the only one!” is always a delight. Read this book. Enjoy the vicarious pleasure of Tod’s meals with her “Beloved Vegetarian Husband” and dogs, and her graciously respectful good sense — it’s not a book that tells you what to do or how to eat, it’s a book that celebrates the pleasure of eating well your way.

As for Famous Baby, you’ve heard me lament that there are few new ideas in fiction. Karen Rizzo’s debut puts a refreshingly new twist on one of the oldest stories in the book: the mother-daughter love hate relationship. Abbie’s mother Ruth Sternberg refers to herself as the First Mother of Blogging. Abbie’s every move from babyhood to high school graduation is immortalized for millions of strangers in cyberspace. But Ruth can’t see how the constant examination is akin to exploitation, and Abbie moves out, under the guise of traveling before she goes to college.

When Ruth writes on her blog about preparing to bring her mother home from assisted living to die, Abbie kidnaps her grandma to prevent Ruth from exploiting her, too. This funny, touching book is about the discoveries Abbie, Ruth and Esther make as Ruth and her longtime agent track the women down in Tuscon and come crashing back into Abbie’s life, along with a passel of secrets revealed as the dust settles. It’s a novel with just the right combination of thoughtfulness and humor. Famous Baby would be a great choice for a book club.

I’ll leave you with this thought, from a conversation between Eric, a budding documentary filmmaker, and Abbie, “Maybe we’re never really who we think we are. You go around projecting a certain image that seems to make sense, and then something happens that scrambles that image . . . if you’re lucky, maybe you can make use of that moment.”

Books that interrupt your habitual thought patterns and give you those eyes-open moments make everything seem brighter, clearer, and better. And these are two of those books.

 

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