So, I’ve bought some books throughout out the past couple months, both kindle and print, and I’ve visited several used bookshops in London. There are some great choices in the city. I’ll often haunt Skoob Books in Russell Square at the Brunswick. It’s in the basement of the shopping centre. It’s one of my second homes and I spend a lot of time (and money) at the place. The staff is fantastic and knows their stuff and are very helpful.
I also go to Judd Books a lot – the shop has tables outside that sell used books. There are a lot of academic books there, as well. I like reading essay collections about film theory and music, it’s kind of fantastic. The other Russell Square bookshop I’m visiting a lot is Gay’s the Word, the UK’s oldest queer bookshop. I remember going there on my first trip to London over twenty years ago (I feel old), and my write up on the bookshop was my first professional article that was published in a magazine, Transitions Abroad.
So, below are the books I got in the past couple of months (in no order):
Specialties of the House: Great Recipes from Great Chicago Restaurants – So, I’m from Chicago and have lived in that city for over thirty-five years and love its food culture. I miss it a lot, so I’m always on the prowl for Chicago culinary history books and this book is especially nice because it’s a cookbook of recipes from some local restaurants. Some of the places are closed and some still are around. I cooked already one of the recipes from this book – well, cook, I did a tomatillo gazpacho, which was a big hit. Jeff Smith, from The Frugal Gourmet wrote the forward and I was a fan of his programme (before the allegations of sexual assault). The other bonus of this book is it was a fundraiser for AIDS charities in Chicago.
Iconic New York Jewish Food: A History and Guide with Recipes by June Hersh. I love Jewish cooking – I’m always looking for great Kosher dining here in London and have still been looking. There’s a great place in Soho and near Russell Square called Tongue and Brisket where I get the turkey Reuben and the chicken soup. I also go to Golders Green, but that’s a bit far from where I live…I’m interested in urban culinary histories in the USA – and I’m considering doing something about food in film, possibly for a PhD – I’m still trying to figure that out, and I’m into reading about what kinds of food started in cities and the iconic restaurants in these restaurants…I’m still figuring it out, so I cannot articulate (sorry, Jann Warner) what exactly I’m looking to do.
The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook by Christopher Kimball. So, Christopher Kimball was the host of America’s Test Kitchen and the editor of Cooks Illustrated for many years before leaving and branching out on his own, Milk Street Kitchen. I’m a huge Martha Stewart fan and watched an old episode of Living, and Kimball was a guest on her show, teaching her how to make fried chicken. This was 1998, years ago and he is very young….He was promoting his then-new cookbook, The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook and I was very excited to get his book. I have several of his other books, namely the books he edited with America’s Test Kitchen.
The Cook’s Bible/The Dessert Bible: The Best of American Home Cooking by Christopher Kimball. After getting The Yellow Kitchen Cookbook, I looked for other Kimball books and discovered his first book and I was excited to find it (along with his baking book). This book, like his work with America’s Test Kitchen, is about technique as much as about recipes, which is why I love Kimball’s work. On television, he can be comically cantankerous but he’s so smart and does a great job in explaining the science and craft behind cooking, which is very important. So much of how I cook is through Kimball’s work – not just the recipes, but more importantly tips on how to chop, cut, stir, boil, fry, etc. He’s such an important food writer and one of the best.
The Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies by Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. I loved The Joy of Cooking – it’s basically a bible for home cooks. My copy is stained with cooking. Last year, I tried to make sugar cookies that would be decorated with icing and it was a hot mess. They were puffy and weird but tasted okay and I want to get them better this year. I’m looking forward to hosting a few holiday parties – and I’m thrilled we’re out of summer and settling into autumn – and am already gaming out the holiday parties. I have Martha Stewarts holiday books as well as Nigella Lawsons, and Rombauer’s book will be something I’ll thumb through to see about cooking something for the holiday. (Maybe I’ll bring a dish of something to work, as well.) I don’t bake – it’s too much of a science, if I’m honest, but I’ll give it a try.
Liberating Paris by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Bloodworth-Thomason is the writer-creator of Designing Women and was a Clinton speechwriter. I had this book years ago when it was originally published back in 2004 but it hadn’t made it in my move to London from Chicago. I’m looking to participate in a Ozarks literature journal and part of the research I’m going to be doing is Bloodworth-Thomason and her representation of the New South. She’s all about the New South and its liberalism and 90s-era feminism.
Liberating Paris is a very good book, set in Arkansas, and it’s a sweet and funny novel, one that was supposed to be made into a tv mini-series.
Williams-Sonoma: Holiday Entertaining – As I mentioned, I love holiday cookbooks, and we’re nearing Thanksgiving soon, so I’m very excited about these autumn/winter holidays and entertaining. Williams-Sonoma is very classy and elegant, so I was very excited to find this book at a local Oxfam in Russell Square (it’s near the British Museum).
Williams-Sonoma was always an aspirational for me – I never really shopped in them but have several books from the company, and pretend I’m Williams-Sonoma people. There were locations throughout Chicago, one near me when I lived in Old Town, on Michigan Avenue, but its pristine whiteness and aggressive tasteful decor kept me out (I was worried I’d set off the classy alarms at the door and be hustled out by the security guards). Anyways, I’m amassing a library of holiday cookbooks, and was thrilled to add this entry to it.
Savannah Seasons: Food and Stories from Elizabeth on 37th by Elizabeth Terry with Alexis Terry. Elizabeth Terry was a personal heroine of mine and a Southern cuisine legend. She came to Savannah and opened her legendary Elizabeth on 37th, which looked to Southern cooking but wanted to incorporate indigenous and local influences as well as historical ones – her menu would be made up of recipes that were inspired by long, exhaustive hours of research at the Georgia Historical Society. She’s a James Beard-winning chef and writer and was a superstar and became an institution. I was so excited to find this book at the Russell Square Oxfam, as well –
Under My Thumb: Songs that Hate Women and the Women who Love Them edited by Rhian E. Jones and Eli Davies. In the seventh episode of the eight season of Roseanne, “The Getaway, Almost,” Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) are driving in the car, reminiscing about the music they listened to as teens, and realized that so much of the lovely pop songs they adored actually harbored toxic messages. Boomer heroes like Burt Bacharach and the Beatles were revisited with a critical eye and the two characters realized that women were squeezed out of pop music in their time. At one point, Roseanne muses, “You really didn’t hear any good songs by women until Janis.”
I picked up Under My Thumb from the Gower Street Waterstones (near University of London and University College London) because I love good music criticism and feminist theory on pop culture, particularly how pop music reflects patriarchy and misogyny but wraps it innovative or compelling pop packages that impart the message incidiously.
Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy by Charles Busch. When I think of New York entertainment or Queer New York culture, I think of Charles Busch who has been one of the leading figures of queer pop art for the past forty years. A drag queen and performer, actor, and playwright, he’s a legend and an icon – a New York institution. His most famous play is The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife which is a sophisticated, hilarious comedy but he’s also a brilliant camp artist.
I’ve been looking forward to his book, especially because he’s lived through so much theatre and cabaret history throughout the 1980s and 1990s, having worked with some fantastic figures in New York performing arts.
Busch and his theatre work is the subject of an upcoming book, Beyond Ridiculous: Making Gay Theatre with Charles Busch in 1980s New York by Kenneth Elliott, a theater director. I’ll read Leading Lady first and then get Beyond Ridiculous as I’ll be keen to read about this moment in contemporary history from two related, yet separate perspectives.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy – this is one of my favorite books, though I don’t normally read apocalyptic literature – I find the genre somewhat cliched and repetitive at this points, since so much exists, but McCarthy’s The Road is an incredible piece of work. I haven’t read this in a while – I had the book back in the States, but it didn’t make the move (I had to get rid of a bunch of my books – about a good third of my library was sold or donated). The Road was made into a film by John Hillcoat.
It’s a disturbing book and predictably depressing and bleak, but I found this to be a great book.
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon – I bought this at Skoob with The Road because I was thinking I should read more fiction. The Manchurian Candidate was the basis of a brilliant film 1962 film, directed by John Frankenheimer. The plot – which admittedly is dated – is the height of cold war thriller fiction.
The plot is convoluted to say the least – a guy is brainwashed in a conspiracy theory and becomes a sleeper agent. A password triggers the man to become an assassin – lots of it stretches credibility and the paranoia dates badly (though now it’s a bit worrying to read this in the context of our current landscape of conspiracy theorists spreading lies throughout the internet and social media. I read Condon’s book years ago. It’s not my favorite, Prizzi’s Honors is (it’s hilarious), but it’s a good book that captures the kind of fear and anxiety that America had during the Cold War.
Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon: The Collected Reviews by Kim Newman – I love Kim Newman’s work – he’s a fantastic film critic and film writer. I’m not a fan of horror movies as a genre – though I do have some exceptions, as a rule, it’s not a genre I gravitate towards, given how terrifying it can be (even the cheapo b-movies). Newman wrote for Empire and does witty and smart takes on horror movies and this is a great collection of his reviews.
Will I watch these films? Probably not (though there is a chance I may see some of the cryptid movies) but Newman’s smart and pithy work is worth reading even if I’m not familar with the films.
Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food by Fuchsia Dunlop – I read Dunlop’s 2008 memoir Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China and fell in love with her writing. In that book, she wrote about her journey to studying and researching various regional cuisines throughout China. She is far more prolific than I thought she was; I have her follow up book, 2012’s Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking, which is an ambitious – but accessible – book.
She’s an accomplished food journalist and writer, so I’m excited about reading this book, especially since Chinese cuisine is my favourite kind of food and I’m always interested to read its roots and its cultural reach.
Abroad in Japan: Ten Years in the Land of the Rising Sun by Chris Broad – I bought this at a Waterstones. I am a big fan of travel narratives, particularly of writers living in Japan. Broad’s book was displayed with posters and blurbs so I thumbed through the book and found it interesting.
Broad is a YouTuber, with videos of his adventures in Japan (https://www.youtube.com/@AbroadinJapan/videos) and though I’m wasn’t familiar with his channel, I started watching some of his videos after getting the book, wanting to see his work. Though travel narratives are often quite light and fun, Broad has also covered the Fukushima nuclear disaster – and though Japan, particularly contemporary Japan is quite bright and exciting, it has a sad and tragic history. The bits I’ve read are funny and sharp, but I’m expecting some touching moments, too.
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die edited by Robert Dimery – I know these books are often kind-of BS but I like these collected lists because it gives me a wide breadth of the kind of music that’s out there and why I should give it a try.
The cover references the classic Andy Warhol cover for the 1967 seminal album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. (I bought a t-shirt at the Camden Town Market with the banana.)
These books tend to be a bit rock-orientated and a bit too male (and white), but it’s a good base to start…I also like to read the different essays about the albums – they’re a bit short for my taste, but I’m looking forward to thumbing through them when putting together my playlists.
A Seat in the Aisle 
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