Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

Be sure to sift through the shelves to stir up the perfect book! Will your choice measure up to your expectations? Don't get stuck with a lemon! Ok, ok, that last one was a stretch.

A few ideas to get you started:
Ingredients like water, flour, sugar, cake, etc
Measurements like cup, teaspoon, half, etc
Actions like bake, fold, add, stir, rest, crush, pour, heat, cool, ice

ATY Listopia: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

What are you reading and what recommendations do you have?

I read The School of Essential Ingredients this year and plan to read the follow-up, The Lost Art of Mixing for this prompt.

I'm going for Leaves of Grass, which I've been meaning to read for years. Leaves as in salad, grass as in lemongrass.

I have a few to recommend.
Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo by Stephanie Storey
Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich (this is the second of the series)
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Milk and Honey by Faye Kellerman

I have three possibilities from my TBR that I might choose:
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

My plan is Fake It Till You Bake It by Jamie Wesley.

for this I'll be using one of these:
The Gingerbread House
Meat
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

I don't cook using recipes much, so I'm not sure what would "often" be found in one (I'm surprised at all the bones in the listopia!). I've gone for the fairly safe option of egg in The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg by Eva St. John.

Recommendations are also tricky, I think Raising Steam works (both self-raising flour and steam), Visions of Sugar Plums (sugar definitely but I'm not sure how often people cook with plums?!), and my repeated recommendation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Marie wrote: "I don't cook using recipes much, so I'm not sure what would "often" be found in one..."

Almost any word is in a recipe! After, again, before, all, place, stop, until, start, etc. The options are pretty much endless.

dalex wrote: Almost any word is in a recipe! After, again, before, all, place, stop, until, start, etc. The..."

I was trying to think of recipe-specific words, that would be important to whatever was being made. Though if there was something I was desperate to read that I couldn't fit anywhere else I might have taken the easier route :)

My top choices are We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies; The Bread the Devil Knead and The World We Make.

Not being critical just curious why would before work?

"Stir the soup before adding the garlic" as an example

This seems like a hard prompt to me. I plan on using an ingredient. I was scrolling through my recent additions to my TBR and finally found a book that works - Faces in the Water by Janet Frame.

I might read
The Bread the Devil Knead
A Stir of Echoes
Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home
The Spear Cuts Through Water
Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
Butter Honey Pig Bread recommended by a friend
Milk and Honey
Mad Honey
The tea rose
The Egg Andy Wier

I recommend
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - recommended
The Onion Field
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Sugar Queen
There might be something interesting on this list:

Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul
How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
sugar butter flour love : a novella
Poached
Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking

The Witching Flour
Cut and Run
Dexter's Final Cut
Cut

SEARCH has Stirred up, Love is a mix tape, The lost art of mixing, Mix tape, Mix it up, Love in the mix. Mixing it up, Mix-up, Flour babies,
spice- many titles
Baking with Julia: Sift, Knead, Flute, Flour, and Savor...
The Cake Mix Doctor - My family's favorite birthday cake is the coconut pecan Germans Chocolate cake recipe from one of her books.

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman
The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

I'll be reading The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh

some of my suggestions would be

Two for the Dough (it is the second in a series though)
In Watermelon Sugar
Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers
Relish: My Life in the Kitchen

This is one prompt I didn’t have a plan for. My grandson came up with his book “Green Eggs and Ham” and I think I will re-read a childhood favorite “From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler”.

I am reading the Peppercorn Tree by Jill Lovett. I can recommend Chocolat by Joanne Harris and Bread Alone by Judi Hendricks.

For this prompt, I read:
Sugar Street by Jonathan Dee - 3* - My Review

For this prompt i have read Isaac and the Egg

This is the second book in 2 days that i have given 5 stars and that I have stayed up fighting sleep to finish - My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I read Black Cake

I read My Mother Was Nuts by Penny Marshall

I read Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor

I read Against the Currant by Olivia Matthews for this prompt. I'm a fan of food cozy mysteries and this one is about a Brooklyn Caribbean bakery. Food descriptions were good, I liked the characters, and if you're looking for a quick, light book this is a good pick!

I am reading The Water Keeper

For this prompt I read Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede &Caroline Stevermer, because CHOCOLATE! :-)

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun

I stretched this one a bit. Sun is in some recipes for making iced tea and Ice Cream should be in more recipes than it is.
I love the cover on this book. It reminds me of the summer with bright umbrellas and the heat that makes me melt like the one on the cover.

I don't think it's a stretch, @Anastasia, because 'cream' by itself is in so many recipes.

I read Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, a book which made me cry. I'd never heard of the disaster related in the book, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff , the worst maritime disaster recorded. I liked the way the story was told by different characters, with varied backgrounds.

What are you reading ?
I read West Ham United The first season: Thames Iron Works FC 1895-96 by Brian Belton
The word I chose was "Season" which in a recipe book would mean to add salt ad pepper

Jill wrote: "What are you reading ?
I read West Ham United The first season: Thames Iron Works FC 1895-96 by Brian Belton
The word I chose was "Season" which in a recipe book wou..."


I'm currently making dinner with leftover ham, so I'd say "HAM" counts as a recipe word too!!

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, Vol. 3 3 stars.

One of my favorite ingredients:


Dying For Chocolate – Diane Mott Davidson – 3***
This is book two in the popular Goldy Bear Culinary Mystery series. It has all the elements of a successful cozy mystery series: an amateur sleuth whose career puts her in contact with a wide range of people (whether victim or suspect), a home situation with added tension, a love interest, and some great recipes. I have to admit that Goldy is pretty resourceful when getting herself out of a jam and doesn’t always rely on the big strong detective to save her. On the other hand, if she kept her nose out of business that isn’t hers … well we wouldn’t have this series.
LINK to my full review

I read The Golden Spoon, it is an enjoyable cozy mystery.

I read Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare

I decided to go with water and read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. It’s an absolutely amazing book!

Manda wrote: "I am reading The Water Keeper
"

I hope you like it!

I read Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr..

Pam wrote: "I decided to go with water and read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. It’s an absolutely amazing book!"

That's what I'm reading for this prompt also. Loving it so far.

I was trying to avoid ingredients to BIO, but ended up with House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A Craig, since I think salt has been in every recipe I've ever attempted. It was a fun quick YA read with mystery and magic.

I've really struggled with the 'often' for this prompt...but I'm reading and ARC of The Pumpkin Spice Café and have decided it's okay to count. I love pumpkin so its in lots of recipies I cook - pumpkin soup especially.

Bec wrote: "I've really struggled with the 'often' for this prompt...but I'm reading and ARC of The Pumpkin Spice Café and have decided it's okay to count. I love pumpkin so its in lots of rec..."

All kinds of "spices" are used in recipes, too!

I used The Empress of Salt and Fortune for this prompt by Nghi Vo. It's a novella (119 pgs) with a rabbit on the cover, but I had other books that filled those prompts and no others that easily fit this one. Plus, I salt practically everything I cook...

Bread & Oil: Majorcan Culture's Last Stand by Tomas Graves.

From the starting point of the traditional Majorcan pa am oli , the author discusses types of bread, olive oil and tomatoes, changes in Majorcan culture, his rock group, healthy diets, good Majorcan shops and restaurants, and includes some recipes.

I read The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer. Shiraz is a type of full-bodied red wine, which is also called Syrah. Another great GR Challenge book read this year.

I ended up reaching for a book that's been unread on my shelf for a while: A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters. I enjoyed the Brother Cadfael mystery series on PBS back in the day, and this title has two words that might be found in a recipe, though certainly the book itself has little to do with cooking.

The book is this first of the series and follows wordly Brother Cadfael, a Welsh brother in a mediaeval Shrewsbury abbey. This one was a rather slow burn and concerned his attempts to solve a murder following the controversial attempt by the abbey to unearth a Welsh saint. I hear the second book of the series, One Corpse Too Many, is often cited as the best, so I'll have to get to that one too.

I ended up reading Salt Lick by Lulu Allison. It is set in the not too far future (mostly ~60 years from now I'm guessing, but with some time spent in a couple of earlier time periods), and focuses on how people in England are handling the effects of climate change - starting with sea intrusion on the coast, and then the logical changes from there. The book started out slow, but gradually grew on me. I gave it 4 stars.

And I say "ended up", because I started off with a completely different book, that I found I had to put down (... slam down ... almost throw down...) because it was so gruesome. I knew it was horror, but I hadn't really read horror before, so I can't say you shouldn't read this necessarily. BUT, when I looked at a trigger warning site to see what triggers this book had, and then checked those triggers for other books with the same, I'd read several of those with no problems at all. I guess there's 'horror' and there's 'HORROR'.

The premise makes it sound like it's fairly humorous. At 20% in I found 2 humorous lines, and other things that could give me nightmares. SO not worth it for me. In case you want to avoid this idea (or in case this sounds like the best book ever for you), I'll share the title — The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins.

Thanks to Nancy for pointing out that Stir of Echoes qualifies for this prompt. I had read I am Legend a few years back, loved it, and was needing to read another Matheson.

Rather proud of myself for this one: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World as in 'let RISE for an hour...' :)

Jackie wrote: "Rather proud of myself for this one: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World as in 'let RISE for an hour...' :)"

Good one, Jackie! I love dinos and I loved this book.

Jackie wrote: "Rather proud of myself for this one: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World as in 'let RISE for an hour...' :)"



LOL and that was a really good book too!!

I'm tentatively planning to read this new book about mammals for next year's wild animal category