Category Archives: Literature in the Lymes

“The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls” by John R. King

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This week Jen dives (appropriately) into “The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls” – the same falls into which Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunged subsequent to hand-to-hand combat at their top in Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem.” To Jen’s discerning approval, John R. King resolves the mystery of the two gentlemen previously presumed dead from the fall.

Without my esteemable father-in-law Everett Morss’ book piles, I would not have found this book.  I shudder at the thought.  Often a book has a remarkable plot or is well written.  Either of these lead to one’s enjoyment.  This book has the honor of being both; brilliantly written and one hell of a story.

I was quite literally captivated from the first paragraph to the last.  What a clever, clever book.  Sherlock Holmes and his arch-rival James Moriarty are locked in a battle to the death.
Beginning where one of Sherlock Holmes final scenes unfolds, this novel starts as a violent squabble at the falls high in the Swiss Alps and ends in a way you would never guess.  Never.  What is really happening?  To whom are we allied?  What is the source of this feud and how has it led to murder?
Other characters, Moriarty’s daughter Anna and a young Stephen Carnaki, are equally formidable.  Seen from many points of view, the evil is incarnate in surprising places.  It emanates from sources unknown and the lion and lamb are both suspect.
Above and beyond the calignostic plot, there floats a delicately erudite fancy.  King extolls the joys of math and music and deductive reason with an almost romantic touch.  These characters are not just brave and bold, but smart.  Genius is not a word to bandy about lightly, but it applies in many contexts within the story.
The ideas are so thought-provoking in many cases that you find yourself just holding the book and staring off into space.  What if it were this simple?  What if that were possible?  Hmmm.  How very artful.
John R. KIng takes Arthur Conan Doyle’s great characters, mixes them with that of William Hope Hodgson, and fabricates something entirely new and original.  Holmes fan or not, this book will galvanize you.
Look beyond the everyday.  Try a new perspective and, like magic, doors open that we did not know were closed.  “The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls” is a contemplative thriller – the best of two worlds.

“Julie & Julia. 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen” By Julie Powell

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Never fear, Jen is here, and if you are in need of last-minute inspiration for the perfect gift for anyone from your closest friend to the mother- (or even father-) in-law, consider Jen’s book choice for this week.  It’s the excellent, “Julie & Julia,” which documents Julie Powell’s decision to cook in one year all 524 french recipes in Julia Child’s seminal culinary work.

I would be a very rich girl if I had a nickel for every time i’ve mumbled about making better food if I only had a better kitchen. Hogwash.  (Although we all know I’ll keep doing it … the mumbling, that is.)  Meanwhile Julie Powell, an almost 30-year-old Texan New Yorker wants to do something worthwhile but what?  Job is a bust.  Apartment is cruddy.  How about Julia Child- worship?

Worship/cursing is the inevitable outcome of the Julie/Julia journey.  With blatant disregard for a small budget, even smaller kitchen and full job schedule, Julie decides that in one year she will cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s epic tome, “Mastering The Art of French Cooking.”*
She starts a blog and develops a small, but rabid, following, eventually ending up on TV and in the New York Times.  She documents her every move and, despite quite the mouth, she is a riot.
How she accomplishes what she does in that nasty kitchen is awe-inspiring.  She succeeds, despite dreadful odds, and, as proud as she is of herself, we are too.
With hard-won, rare ingredients, she bones ducks, sears foie-gras, jellies aspics and whisks up mayonaises.  Whip up a béchamel at 2 a.m.?  Pas de probleme …
Occasionally without water or heat, with only the tiny, fearless Gimlet at her side, she conquers meals that would leave me hiding in the downstairs loo.  Riz a l’Indienne, for which she has a much better name, springs to mind.  Veau-Prince-Orloff for a packed house makes me sweat just thinking about clean-up.  Uh.
Her mother thinks she is crazy.  Julia Childs herself finds her a tad disrespectful, but do we?  Nonsense.  Julie is a coup de cuisine foudre on a pizza delivery landscape.
Her accompanying comments and stories are, much like the esteemable Ruth Reichl, as much the story as the food.
What a fun book.  I defy you to not want to present both Julie, and her tolerant husband, with your heartfelt congratulations.
* Having yet to unpack some books from our last move, I just trudged happily off to the garage in search of the familiar fleur-de-lis covers only to come back dejected and covered in fertilizer chalk.  I suppose I’d hide from me too if I was a French cookbook.

“The Host” by Stephanie Meyer

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After a brief Thanksgiving break, our much-missed Jen is back – and with a vengeance.  As always she challenges us to think outside the box, and this time to consider, “What makes us human and how it can not be taken for granted.”  Her book choice this week is another Stephenenie Meyer selection, but this time one written for adults, namely, “The Host.”

Before you start cursing me under your breath, this Stephenie Meyer is an adult book.  I would have been unable to resist anyway, but at least you might have been spared. Continuing on my, “Be a better person and appreciate what you have,” tirade….The Hostshould make you do just that.

What if someone thought you were doing a poor job as a species?  Assumed you were cruel and selfish; that you were blind to the natural beauty of your planet and really could not be trusted.  What if that someone decided to step in and fix things by removing you completely?
Extra-terrestrial bodies known as Souls need hosts for their species to survive.  They are small, silver and remarkably kind.  They have been on many many planets and try to maintain them in a better fashion than they were found.  This sounds entirerly affable in principle.However, what if it was us?  Our planet?  Our bodies?  What if we were systematically eradicted?
Melanie is a ‘wild” human.  She was able for many years after the insurrection
to remain hidden.  When she is captured and becomes ‘host’ to the Soul, Wanderer, we first meet.  The Soul is inserted through an incision in the neck and uses her centipede-esque attachments to connect to the central nervous system.  Once inserted she becomes the person, usurping memories and capabilities.
Wanderer expects to live a peaceful, conforming life, carrying on as humans would without fear, violence or any adversity at all. She has no desires beyond using her host to lead a predictable, calm, human-type life.  Her desires are pre-conditioned; live in harmony and learn.  La-la-la.
Guess what?  Not gonna happen.  (Of course not … don’t you know me better than that by now?)  Melanie’s consciousness refuses to relinquish ownership and the two must co-habitate in this one body.  Amazingly, with all of this happening, the beginning of The Host is sloowwww.  Persevere because it will be worth your while.
Wanderer and Melanie come to tolerate one another and Wanderer is surprised to find non-conforming human desires surfacing.  With a growing, grudgingly-acknowledged mutual admiration, they travel to anticipated safety and other humans . Wanderer doubts her role as invasive parasite.  In fact, she grasps the here-to-fore unconscious idea that she is invasive.
As she grows to love her human host and herself, we do too.
I can see my father rolling his eyes …  This is not a scary alien book.  I am not a fan of that idiotic, teen scream-Queen genre and would not recommend any such thing to you.  “The Host” is an introspective look at what makes us human and how it can not be taken for granted.

“Little House in the Big Woods” by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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It’s cold.  We are in a recession.  We are at war and many, many people are out of work and scared.  I thought it would be a good time to read some books that remind us of how strong people can be.  How hard they will work and how little they really need to survive.

My children are all sick in bed today.  No leaving the house for chores.  No selfish activities.  I tucked them all under two down puffs amidst a million pillows and read to them about the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder.*  In “Little House In The Big Woods,” Laura Ingalls is forever a young girl living in a small log cabin at the edge of what was still the untamed wilderness of our country.
In the 1860’s, she lived in Wisconsin with her father, mother, two sisters, cat, dog , assorted horses, cows and the occasional pig.  Her immediate family was her world. Their hard work made their lives possible with little outside contact.
Her father built their home and barn.  He killed bear, pigs and deer for their meat; grew grains for their bread; harvested their gardens for their fruits and vegetables.  He cut wood for their heat.  He made their beds and chairs.  Their mother made everything else, from sheets to dresses.  She made their cheese, butter, and preserves.  They made their sugar from maples, their blankets from animal skins, their lamps from kerosene salt and red rags for color.
The Ingalls were completely self-sufficient and completely happy.  What they did not have they did not need.
In winter they stayed inside.  In one room with one fireplace and a trundle bed.  The girls had paper-dolls and homemade dolls.  They played in the attic with pumpkins and corn under the rafters filled with herbs, onions, hams, venison and peppers.  They worked hard to make what they needed and maintain what they had.  At night, when their father returned from hunting, he played his fiddle and told stories.
In summer they worked the fields, visited friends and family, and collected food for the next winter.
Highly anticipated special occasions were few and far between – Christmas with cousins, a dance at sugar harvest, and a trip to town.  The real joys were taken in the day to day life they all lived together.  Making cheese, frying the tail of a slaughtered pig – they found contentment in places we no longer even think to look.
Of course, as I reread the other books, I will remember the fears and the dangers.  Illness was often fatal.  Mary went blind from a fever.  Unable to care for themselves, they would have had nothing.  But the early books, this one in particular, remind us of how lucky we are.
When we are cold, we need heat.  When we are hungry, we need food.  When we are lonely, we need company.  If we can remember to prize the ability to meet these needs and help those who can not – we all have much much more than we realize.  If you are lucky enough to have a warm house, curl up and remind yourself how little we all truly need to be happy.
* Little House In The Big Woods, Little House on The Prairie, Farmer Boy, On The Banks of Plum Creek, By The Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on The Prairie, These Happy Golden Years.

“Cooked” by Jeff Henderson

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Mr. Henderson is the executive chef at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.  He is supremely talented, motivated and a shining example of mind over matter.  The matter being a ghetto upbringing in California.

Before he wowed critics with his innovative cooking, he was cooking something else and somewhere else.  He sold drugs on the streets of San Diego and Los Angeles until he was busted.
He served almost 10 years of a 20-year sentence in the pen.  He was a scarily successful drug dealer, who made his first million by the age of 24.  He stole, he lied, he cheated and he paid a very high price.  As he said, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”
Well, he did and he freely admits it was the best thing that could have happened to him.
His time in prison was time for introspection and education that never would have been available otherwise.  He studied religions, he studied people, he read books and all newspapers.  He befriended white collar criminals, mafia dons and kosher Jewish bakers.  He is one of the best examples I have seen of making the most of one’s surroundings.  He learned where and when he could.  He learned from the people around him instead of shutting them out and wallowing in self-pity.
Like many criminals, he initially thought he was not accountable for his actions.  The white man, the gangsters, his family – they were to blame for the choices he made.  As he grows, he accepts that no one is responsible for him, but him.  He made the choices and now he has a chance to unmake them.
Cooking becomes an all-consuming passion.  He learns the ins and outs of kitchens in prison.  He cooks and cleans and judges culinary heirarchy from inside.  He proves to be a model inmate and is rewarded with opportunity.
It is fascinating to be on the inside with him.  When he is released, he not only pursues his dream to be a chef, but he also speaks to inner city kids about his life.  He tells them exactly what he has done and what happens to drug dealers and gangsters.
As he works his way inch by precious inch up the ladder to his final goal, it is rewarding to witness his transformation from self-hatred to love.  He deserves every bit of his success and, “Cooked,” is a remarkable account of this remarkable man’s journey.