Award winning authors Judith Newton, Tasting Home, and Rebecca Coffey, Nietzsche’s Angel Food Cake, explore intersections of the literary and the gastronomical.
*Thursday, April 3, 7:30.At Books Inc., 2275 Market St., San Francisco*
In TASTING HOME, Judith Newton combines recipes with personal vignettes. Writing in the classic form of food memoirs by writers such as M.F.K. Fisher and Ruth Reichl, she takes us on a remarkable journey through the cuisines, cultural spirit, and politics of the 1940s til now. If Julia Child had cooked Italian for a gay husband, used sugar to sweeten a sour childhood, and hosted buffets for a better world, she could have written TASTING HOME.
•“Engaging,”“delightful and resonant,” /Publisher’s Weekly/ Starred Review.
• “In this captivating memoir, Newton draws the reader into a world where major events are brought to life with poignant food memories, pitch-perfect, lively, and engaging.”–Janet A. Flammang, author of /The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society/
• “Tasting Home is more than a food memoir. Influenced by the civil rights struggle, the women’s movement, and the AIDS epidemic, it is an odyssey of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth.” –Belinda Robnett, author of /How Long? How Long?/ /African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights./
• “This is a baby-boomer’s dream: a book full of anecdotes about coming of age during the sexual revolution of the sixties — with recipes!”–/Independent Publisher/
• “Whether she is discovering hippie health foods, testing the rich cuisine of Italy and France, or entertaining grandly at home in the Southwest a la Martha Stewart, Newton is talking the talk and walking the walk, and we are trailing along behind her, happily picking up the crumbs.”–Barbara Bamberger Scott/, Curled Up with a Good Book./
In NIETZSCHE’s ANGEL FOOD CAKE Coffey allows 22 cultural monoliths to share “their” succulent recipes, thereby providing answers to such pressing questions as: When Friedrich Nietzsche made angel food cake, did the angel survive the encounter? When Sigmund Freud handled raw fish, where did his thoughts take him? Exactly what did Dorothy Parker mean by the term “Parker House Rolls?” And how did Ernest Hemingway handle his favorite bullfight souvenirs? Warning. Eat the resulting food at your own peril.
• “Like good sausage, or a breakfast I once had in Manilla, Rebecca Coffey’s new book is filled with things I can’t describe and maybe don’t want to know about. I only know it’s wonderful.”—Jon Potter, /The Brattleboro Reformer./
• “Read the table of contents and you’re likely to chuckle aloud at offerings like Geoffrey Chaucer’s Stinking Bishop’s Tart and John Steinbeck’s Crêpes of Wrath. To take the joke a giant step further by actually creating the recipes would be, for most writers, a giant step right onto a banana peel, like continuing a joke after the punchline’s delivered. Coffey, however, is no amateur….” —James Heflin, /The Valley Advocate/
• “Oh my God, I love these! More! More! More! This will appeal to foodies and literary types, and will stretch the boundaries of the ‘cookoir’ genre, for sure.” —Erika Penzer Kerekes, Food Columnist, /L. A. Examiner/.
• “So brilliantly funny—and insane, obsessive, sprawling, vivid, satisfying, and lush.” —Dee LaDuke, TV Writer, /Girlfriends and Designing Women./
• “Hilarious, smart, intensely literary, and delicious in every way.” —Elissa Bassist, Humor and Women’s Literature Editor, /The Rumpus/.
