AM I ALONE in having a too-long list of authors I’ve been meaning to read, it seems forever, yet somehow never get around to? Allegra Goodman, a prolific and much-beloved novelist, is on that list for me, but I’m taking charge. Right now.
USA Today called Goodman “a modern day Jane Austen.” Need I say more? Her latest novel, The Cookbook Collector, is next up for my summer reading. From the publisher’s synopsis:
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-thre-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much—as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.
Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters,The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.
Apparently we here on TSP are not alone in thinking that sisterly reads are perfect for summer time: the American Library Association’s great Booklist site suggests “sisters” as a perfect August book club theme. So what are you waiting for? Read along with me; I’m taking The Cookbook Collector on vacation with me (beach, here I come!) and will finish it by August 12–plenty of time for a virtual sisterly read-along!
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