KC's Corner: Dog Days Reading List Part IV: Travel, Eat, and Read

Peat O'Neil will lead Travel Writing Intensive and two rounds of Travel and Food this year.

Click for Creme Catalan recipe

Reading other food writers gives you a sense of the range of ways people write about food and different styles. Where should you start? Peat O Neil,  author of Pyrenees Pilgramage, suggests grabbing a couple of cook books. If you are looking for previews of cookbooks and culinary arts try Appetite for Books. You might keep an eye on several food blogs like 
Outlawcook,  egullet, or Chowhound.  Looking for a book, check out Peat’s flash reviews of literary food reads:

Home Cooking/ Laurie Colwin.
She died young, but novelist Laurie Colwin lived large on a tight budget. Her tussles with stock pots and roasted birds in a New York City studio demystify the notion that great food can’t be produced on a hot plate. Novice cooks learn how to get started and become brave, original cooks. Writers see how to fold memoir into the mix and segue from the story line to topical recipes.


Is There a Nutmeg in the House?/ Elizabeth David
Anything by “ED” is worth reading, and this collection of essays studded with recipes and basted with history includes selections from her published and unpublished work.  Every food writer worth a dash of pink sea salt needs to know ED’s approach to cooking and describing food.


With Bold Knife and Fork /M.F.K. Fisher
Writers interested in culinary topics usually worship at a kitchen shrine to Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, a Californian who brought poetic nuance and elegant prose to instructions on how to make meals. Fisher cooked to express emotional intimacy, and infused her food writing with feeling.


Adventures of a Roving Gourmand/Jim Harrison
French bibliophiles consider Jim Harrison the best author of fiction alive; I don’t know what they think about his food writing. Harrison hails from the “hunt it, dress it, sear and sauce it” school of cookery.  His gusto for life, acumen and way with words are a treat.


Between Meals/Jim Harrison North
Here’s a book that shows how to eat, rather than how to cook or select ripe peaches in the  market.  Leibling wrote for the New Yorker and evidently never missed a meal.  A worthy model for aspiring restaurant reviewers and food writers.

K.C.'s Corner: Dog Days Reading List Pt. 3: Quintet of August Travel Reads

Peat O’Neil gives us her recommendations for travel reads in Dog Days. She will lead Travel Writing Intensive, a two part workshop offered at The Writer's Center in November. 

My corollary to “when you travel, read” is “when you cannot travel, travel by book.” Peat O’ Neil reads,  but not” too much,  ” travels, and then writes about her travels. In her own books such as Pyrenees Pilgrimage: Walking Across France, her notes form a terrific reading list for the wannabe traveler as does her blog on the book. Today Peat tips us off to a “Quintet of August Travel Books.”

Skating to Antarctica                                                                                                                         Escape the summer heat and humidity with Jenny Diski’s Skating to Antarctica, A Journey to the End of the World (Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1997) . The narrative skates the edges of Diski’s memories while the ‘Vavilov’ navigates around ice-floes. Come on board through Diski’s wry commentary on the eclectic collection of characters assembled on the Russian oceanographic research ship retooled to carry paying guests.  Diski mulls her personal history growing up in London while staring at the white and blue-grey seascape, revealing a cool inner-scape with her educated cranky-traveler voice, such a refreshing change from standard ‘wow-gee-whiz’ travel writing.

 Sacre Blues                                                                                                                                
 If you think Canada is just about hockey and “eh?” at the end of sentences, read Taras Grescoe’s book Sacre Blues, An Unsentimental Journey Though Quebec (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2000).  Quebec is a vast and singular nation-province in North America, about three times the size of Texas. Grescoe is a raucous guide through the history, politics, vice and culture of the largest French-speaking zone outside of L’Hexagone,  (the nickname for mainland France based on its shape). Consider this: Canada holds the world’s most extensive fresh water reserves at 8% of global supply and Quebec has 3% of global freshwater which makes the province a significant owner of the only strategic resource that humans really need to survive. Set aside Quebec’s gold, iron, lithium and other mineral resources because the gold of the future is water and Quebec is swimming in it.

No Vulgar Hotel                                                                                                                      
No Vulgar Hotel, The Desire and Pursuit of Venice (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 2007) steers a delicious passage through Venice and its history, notorious characters,  gossip and manners.  Written by Miss Manners herself -- Judith Martin -- this travel book offers short passages grouped by theme (e.g. Venetian dogs, pirates kidnapping brides, street talk) or famous visitors (e.g. Napoleon, James Whistler, Hollywood movie stars).  The author’s highly refined sense of satiric fun and episodic structure makes this book a stress-free trip to Venice with a peerless companion.

Country Driving                                                                                                                        
 Peter Hessler’s Country Driving , A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory (New York: HarperCollins,  2010) is a solid front-runner among the many travel narratives exploring 21st century China.  With unsentimental clarity and sympathetic humor, Hessler shows off the country with snapshots and profiles of people in modern China. The chapter about getting a driver’s license in China is hilarious reading for anyone, but particularly so for me.  A few years ago, I took the same test and shared the excellent highways with earnest but unskilled drivers whose road training occurred on a bicycle. Get an eyeful of the future’s global boss through Hessler’s eyes and experience.  The long-time Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker was an early Peace Corps English teacher and he demonstrates superior awareness of China’s people and psychology.

Without a Paddle 

Who would race twelve hundred miles around Florida in a sea kayak and finish in 19 days?  Warren Richey did.  Without a Paddle (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010) successfully tells of a grueling, exciting water race around Florida, including a forty-mile portage across south Georgia to connect the St. Marys River and the Suwannee River. Talk about high risk:  competitors paddle for weeks south east from Tampa around the Everglades and north to Jacksonville, then tow a loaded sea kayak (on portable wheels) along shoulder-less roads where semis loaded with felled pine logs roar past, then they paddle several more days across the Gulf of Mexico back to Tampa.  A travel narrative about a race when days and nights summon the same watery vista could easily fail to enchant a reader, but Richey is an experienced reporter and heroic paddler. Even if you would never consider entering the Ultimate Florida Challenge,  feel the pressure of the race, painful physical fatigue and emotional upheaval through Richey’s fast paced prose.

We are midway through the Dog Days, at least according to the Roman Calendar.  What are you, where are traveling before reading. What do you read before traveling? Look for a few more posts of Dog Days Reads. Want to submit a list or guest blog on Dog Day's Reading Lists. Post here or send to KelleyCoyner@yahoo.com. 

K.C's Corner: Dog Days Of Summer Reading List Part Two

Image: Joseph Robertson: Reads by the Sea
 

Dog Days Reading – More Lists  Part II

Where do you find nonfiction beach reading?

My sources include librarians, book store staff, newspaper lists, blogs, radio, and crowd sourcing friends and followers.

I grab the summer book lists printed on bookmarks from my library. My mother sends me e-newsletters from her Texas library. On vacation, I cruise indie book stores for staff picks and local authors. Last summer, Rough Guide Vancouver brought to my attention British Columbia Emily Carr’s writing as well as her paintings.  Since my long- ago days of group beach houses, I have stocked my beach book bag with titles recommended by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade & their Politics and Prose team. I miss them both, but I am glad to turn to new P & P owners  Lissa and Bradley for their two-part summer newsletter. In the first part you will find picks on writing and essays; there is a larger listing of nonfiction in part two with sections on American  and World History, Music, (science) at Sea,  Sports and even Mind Games. 

The web and the radio yield more lists. The Guardian offered a best of the best nonfiction list by category in June in time for summer.  Daily Candy’s summer reads ranks as my favorite for visual presentation. I like that The Christian Science Monitor’s 20 of The Smartest Nonfiction Titles for Summer Reading  does not mention David McCullough’s  The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. And I like that Maureen Corrigan’s radio essay does match McCollough’s book with two journey novels:  The Final Storm: A Novel Of The War In The Pacific  by  David Shaara and  an “alternative Western”  -- Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education Of Two Society Girls In The West by Dorothy Wickenden.  Librarian hits radio and the web in Nancy Pearl’s regularly posted and broadcasted lists on NPR. This will take you to her summer list which includes a bit of nonfiction. 

I looked for a list of science-based beach reading. Last year’s Scientist Approved Beach Reading by Physicist-blogger  Chad Orzel  dueled with The Washington Post’s Texts on the Beach: What Scientists Recommend for Summer Reading. I liked the sound of the titles from Scientist Approved better. Orzel featured Teach Your Dog Physics, a perfect title for the Dog Days. I thought both lists shorted natural history mentions. The Parkersburg News Sentinel came through with Summer Reading for Naturalists with suggestions such as Cricket Radio and The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds and the Invention of Monogamy, as did Science Writer Tina Tenneson’s Blog post on Summer Beach Reads (on ocean topics).

Do you ever crowd source book recommendations? Here’s what I got when I asked via Facebook, Twitter, and FFP:

FFP readers list: Your Facebooked and tweeted suggestions ran long on biography, memoir, and histories of World War II and the Civil War. Many were reading Life by Keith Richards. Others listed  Saul Bellow’s Letters and Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, James L. Swanson’s Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (P.S.),  and Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand. One commenter is reading  Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer and  many, many were reading David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.

One commenter from last week’s Dog Days Read List Part I post listed a list: Rock the Casbah, Playing With Fire. The Lemon Tree, We Look Like the Enemy, Hour of Sunlight, Painting For the Absolute, Utter Beginner, Don't Be Nice Be Real, Writing to Change the World, the Chicken Chronicles, Curious? and Ill Fares The Land.

What are you reading?


K.C.

My next couple of posts will focus on traveling reading and travel writing.  Want to write an article on your summer travels, take a look at  Peat O’Neil’s  Travel Writing Intensive , a two part workshop offered this fall.

 

 

 

 

K.C.’s Corner: Candid Tips on Book Reviews

A couple brief posts (with links) by Kelley Coyner this month:

You cannot go to every event especially one that isn’t even in town. But you can listen via podcast. Thanks to Erica Dreifus and The Writer’s Institute at the City University of New York you can hear eight top New York Book Review editors discuss how they came to book reviewing and what they look for in book reviews.

Nonfiction Publication a Tweet Away
The Writer’s Center’s friend Creative Nonfiction is sponsoring Tiny Truths: CNF's Daily Twitter Contest. Submissions accepted year-round. Winners retweeted daily and 10-12 winning tweets appear in every issue of Creative Nonfiction. Read a feed of CFNs Tiny Truths.

Welcome to K.C's Corner

by Kelley Coyner

In an effort to cover more nonfiction on this blog (which I admit I don't do regularly), I've enlisted the help of member Kelley Coyner. She will post on the topic on the first Monday of every month (at least at the start). BUT there are ways for you to get involved too. Take it away Kelley.

Late one night my husband came upon my father digging through a bookshelf of history, biography, and travel logs like “a raccoon rummaging for food. “ I was not there, but I imagine that had my husband come upon Dad a bit later he would have found him in a corner of the living room with a circle of books around his chair splayed open on the floor. Dad would have scribbled in the margins and dog-eared pages. He likely chased Tim down with a word or a phrase or an entire chapter to share from a book.

Tim will tell you that the passion for good writing runs strong in the Coyner bloodlines as does the propensity to “ransack others’ bookcases to find something to read.” I am an omnivore in my reading, but a writer of nonfiction. My father was a poet, but preferred read nonfiction.

In many ways Washington is a mecca for nonfiction writing. As a lawyer, political appointee and policy wonk I have had plenty of chances to write nonfiction. Now Kyle’s now offered a “corner” of First Person Plural to blog about nonfiction. KC’s Corner will feature a range of genres including biography and history, nature and environmental writing, and long-form journalism, essays and flash nonfiction. I plan to blog about readings and conferences, trends in nonfiction publishing, ethics, and more. The editorial calendar is evolving, but here is the path I have sketched through summer:

Evolving Editorial Calendar
To begin some structure to KC’s Corner and related posts, I have charted out several months of subjects. I would like to feature some guest blogs each month. I hope to tie those to the main theme. This is the first cut. Stay tuned for details.

April : Flash Nonfiction
May : Biography
June : Nonfiction Beach reading
July : Nature/Environmental Writing
August : Travel Writing


Will you do one thing to help get this off to a running start?

• Comment here with a blog topic, a title of a favorite book on nonfiction writing, or a tip on upcoming reading, workshop, or conference on nonfiction;
• Guest blog about your work in progress, a local nonfiction event, or an interview of another writer;
• Send a work of flash nonfiction; or
• Review a new work of nonfiction.

Will you share this post with fellow writers?
Contact me (coyner.kelley AT gmail.com) with your ideas.

***

Kelley Coyner’s nonfiction writing includes The Viva List Latin America: 333 Places and Experiences People Love (contributing writer and editor), and articles in Americas, Mothering, Library Sparks, and Comet Magazine. She served as the (nonfiction) Writer in Residence at the American school in LaPaz. (By day she writes strategic plans, policy briefs and blog posts for public policy blogs.)