reviews

Committed

One year ago, I read the book Committed, a review copy I had received from the fabulous folks at Penguin. In case you missed my first review, here's a brief synopsis:

At the end of her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian living in Indonesia. The couple swore eternal love, but also swore (as skittish divorce survivors) never to marry. However, providence intervened in the form of a U.S. government ultimatum: get married, or Felipe could never enter America again.

I very much enjoyed the read and passed the book along to my cousin to enjoy as well. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a paperback version of the book is being released today!

The book is part autobiography, part travelogue, part historical study, part academic theory. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, but I was particularly fond of Gilbert's firsthand experiences. Truth be told, I read quickly through the heavily researched bits, but slowed to savor the personal accounts. She's insightful, clever, humorous.

{For those of you who have the book—or plan to get a copy—I just adored Gilbert's description of her dinner at Keo's house. The basin filled with frogs, the chicken on a twine, the blowing fan, and, of course, the love! Doesn't this pique your curiosity? Frogs in the sink!}

My friends at Penguin have a paperback copy ready to send to a lucky commenter, so leave a comment letting me know your plans for Valentine's Day! If you don't have plans yet (like me), leave a comment telling me what you would like to do on Valentine's Day. I will choose a winner at the end of the week!

Separate Beds

Buchan masterfully captures the Nicholsons’ personal story with her richly drawn characters—and makes it reflect all of our own frazzled—and salvageable—lives. --Publisher's Weekly

This Thursday, January 20, Elizabeth Buchan's latest book, Separate Beds, will hit the shelves. She has written a number of fabulous books and this one promises to be another gem.

Here’s the synopsis:

Tom and Annie's kids have grown up, the mortgage is do-able, and they're about to get a gorgeous new, state-of-the-art French stove. Life is good- or so it seems. Beneath the veneer of professional success and domestic security, their marriage is crumbling, eaten away by years of resentment, loneliness, and the fall out from the estrangement of their daughter, and they've settled into simply being two strangers living under the same roof.

Until the economy falls apart.

Suddenly the dull but oddly comfortable predictability of their lives is upended by financial calamity-Tom loses his job, their son returns home, and Tom's mother moves in with them. As their world shrinks, Tom and Annie are forced closer together, and the chaos around them threatens to sweep away their bitterness and frustration, refreshing and possibly restoring the love that had been lying beneath all along.

Doesn't it sound so timely and interesting?

The kind people at Penguin will be sending a copy to one lucky reader! To enter, simply leave a comment below. I'll choose a winner on the release date--this Thursday--and your book will arrive soon thereafter so you'll be one of the first to have a copy!

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance

"A wickedly funny debut. Baker is both self-absorbed and generous, whip-smart and naïve; she apologizes for none of it." -People

I'm going to admit: when I received this book from Penguin, I almost decided to keep it for myself. Penguin lets me decide whether or not I offer the book as a giveaway and this one just looked so funny, so delightful that I was going to hoard it. But, I checked my local library and there's a copy there, so I'm offering this copy to one of you. The library copy is currently checked out though, so while y'all are commenting, I might read a few pages. You'll have to forgive me. I promise not to spill any wine on the pages and it will arrive almost new to the winner.

Here's the synopsis:

It's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. Every year, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. This year, her Queen Bee costume (which involves a funnel stinger stuck to her butt) isn't attracting the attention she'd anticipated. So once again, Elna finds herself alone, standing at the punch bowl, stocking up on Oreos, a virgin in a room full of thirty-year-old virgins doing the Funky Chicken. But loneliness is nothing compared to what Elna feels when she loses eighty pounds, finds herself suddenly beautiful...and in love with an atheist.

Here's a little video about the book:

Ready to read it? Leave a comment. I'll choose a winner in a week.

Good Enough to Eat

"Like a perfect dish of macaroni and cheese — rich, warm, nuanced, and delicious." — Jen Lancaster

Stacey Ballis is fabulous. She recommends wrapping gifts in fishnet stockings, won a mixology cocktail contest with her recipe for a Mionetini, and blogs at The Polymath Chronicles. Oh! And she also writes books. Her latest novel is Good Enough to Eat, just released this month. Here's the skinny:

The last thing Melanie expected to lose when she went on a diet was her husband.

Former lawyer Melanie Hoffman lost half her body weight and opened a gourmet take-out café specializing in healthy and delicious food. Then her husband left her-for a woman twice her size. Immediately afterwards, she's blindsided by a financial crisis. Melanie reaches out to a quirky roommate with a ton of baggage and becomes involved in a budding romance with a local documentary filmmaker.

In this warm and often laugh-out-loud novel, Melanie discovers that she still has a lot to learn about her friends, her relationships with men, and herself-and that her weight loss was just the beginning of an amazing journey that will transform her life from the inside out.

Doesn't it sound fantastic?

I happen to have a copy, courtesy of the kind people at Penguin, and I'm giving it away to one lucky reader. To enter, leave a comment!

The book also has a small collection of recipes, from guilt-free to decadent. After the jump is a recipe from the book — a decadent one, because that's the way we roll at Slice of Pink.

The Breaking of Eggs

Here's the synopsis:

61-year-old Feliks is a naturalized Frenchman, a displaced Pole and former Communist-and a curmudgeon-who has made his living writing a yearly travel guide to the countries behind the Iron Curtain. In 1991, with the Curtain now fallen, Feliks finds his beliefs beginning to crumble around him. When a rapacious American publisher offers to buy out his life's work, Feliks must travel to the country he has long despised, and so begins the wry and moving tale of a man who awakens from self-imposed isolation into a changed world he must get to know all over again. So unfolds a story of family, war, politics, a second chance at love, and one man's quest for himself.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Leave a comment for a chance to win! {And while you are at it, join the Penguin 75th Anniversary Celebration!}

The Sharper the Knife, the Less You Cry

This is the funny and inspiring account of Kathleen Flinn’s struggle in a stew of hot-tempered chefs, competitive classmates, her own “wretchedly inadequate” French, and the basics of French cuisine. Flinn was a thirty-six-year-old middle manager trapped on the corporate ladder—until her boss eliminated her job. So she cashed in her savings and moved to Paris to pursue her lifelong dream of attending the venerable Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. Fans of Julie & Julia and the late Julia Child will be richly rewarded by this vibrant tale of self-discovery, transformation, and ultimately love.

I am so excited to check out this book! How about you? Enter to win a copy by leaving a comment.

{And while you are at it, join the Penguin 75th Anniversary Celebration!}

The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection

This book is not exactly a Valentine's Day book.

Here's the premise:

Virgil comes home from work one day to a message on his answering machine-his girlfriend is breaking up with him. This news should be devastating, but instead it's deeply troubling, because Virgil doesn't know the woman and doesn't have any memory of being in a relationship with her. The event sends Virgile into a tailspin of unrelenting self-analysis, causing him to question his memory, his sanity, even his worth as a lover.

As I said, not exactly a Valentine's Day book. But, since I picked up the package from Penguin on the morning of Valentine's Day and since Will and I decided to spend part of the Valentine's Day afternoon enjoying books and lattes at a coffee shop, I cracked open the cover and started to read. It was either Virgil's existential crisis or studying for the Multi-state Professional Responsibility Exam. And, let's be honest, just about anything beats studying for the Multi-state Professional Responsibility Exam.

That is how I ended up reading half the book on Valentine's Day and then, putting off studying for another few hours, finished it off the next morning, cozy in bed on a school holiday.

I should warn you now: I am biased. I throughly enjoyed this book, cover to cover, but I'm decidedly partial to this story for the following reasons:

One: The book is quirky. I like my movies, my men, my friends, my coats, and especially my books to be quirky. I've had entirely too much conventionality in 30 years to spend time reading yet another common story (you know the ones I mean, the books whose covers have certain stale elements: high heels, shopping bags, and/or long, sexy legs). This is not a common story.

Two: The book is very Woody Allen, a self-conscious sort of comedy. Our hero is eccentric, neurotic, charmingly odd. He wears the same corduroy pants and V-neck sweater every day, watches only black and white films, and uses the same Bic pen. The character study is simply superb: light enough to be entertaining, substantial enough to be satisfying.

Three: The book is set in Paris. And not just set in Paris, but well-stocked with snapshots of Paris: rain falling on the boulevard de Strasbourg, baskets of croissants, benches along the avenues. Virgil attends parties in Paris apartments and meets friends at cafés and walks to work past the Louvre. I love Paris and I love that Virgil loves Paris and that, clearly, our author loves Paris as well.

A quirky character reacquainting himself with the idea of living while walking the streets of Paris? Perhaps not such a bad Valentine's Day read after all. Yes, not so bad, and, in fact, quite delightful.

Thanks to the very generous folks at Penguin, I'm giving away a copy of the book. To enter to win, just leave a comment below telling me your all-time favorite love story. Or, if you prefer, your all-time favorite break up story. Movie, book, play, true-life tragedy--your call. I'll random draw a winner at 5PM on Wednesday, February 24.

Update: the random number generator generated the lovely Kayla as our winner! Congrats!

Committed

When I got married, over six years ago (at the ripe age of 23), I was not a skeptic on the institution of marriage. I'm still not a marriage skeptic, no doubt because my own marriage has been lovely, but I was, undoubtedly, a wedding skeptic. I wasn't so sure about the big white dress and thousands of dollars spent on floral arrangements and a D.J. that would play Hot in Here, whether I wanted him to or not. We satisfied my wedding skepticism by doing things our way—I wore a tea length party dress, we bought buckets of daisies, and hired an oldies band for a simple backyard picnic.

I love when people do things their way. Which is why I so enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Viking; $26.95). Here's the skinny:

At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous bad divorces. Enough said.)

But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government, which—after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing—gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again. Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert tackled her fears of marriage by delving into this topic completely, trying with all her might to discover through historical research, interviews, and much personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is.

The book is part autobiography, part travelogue, part historical study, part academic theory. I throughly enjoyed the read (what’s not to love about anything non-law at this point in my life?), but I was particularly fond of Gilbert's firsthand experiences. Truth be told, I read quickly through the heavily researched bits, but slowed to savor the personal accounts. She's insightful, clever, humorous.

{For those of you who have the book—or plan to get a copy—I just adored Gilbert's description of her dinner at Keo's house, staring on page 150. The basin filled with frogs, the chicken on a twine, the blowing fan, and, of course, the love! Doesn't this pique your curiosity? Frogs in the sink!}

I haven't yet read Eat, Pray, Love, which is probably for the better considering what appears to be constant comparison between the two (with EPL coming out the clear victor). But, I'm looking forward to reading EPL, I suspect I'll enjoy it, and I don't even mind that I've read the two books out of order. Like Gilbert, I do things my way.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a review copy of the book for free from the wonderful folks at Penguin.