Lean In

This week, I left my family to travel to London on business, carrying my brand spanking new copy of Sheryl Sandberg's new book, Lean In, feeling like a walking cliche. Normally, I'm not one to go for the "I am woman hear me roar, and let me teach you how to roar too" style books. However, I got sucked in by the hype, the reviews and frankly by the fact that we are both women in business who seem to have had some of the same challenges. Also, I tried to stick to my rule of not judging or dismissing something before I actually give it an honest chance.

I'm glad I did. I'm not going to lie, there's some of the "we are women, we need to support each other" kumbaya stuff. Call me cynical but I have a tendency to gloss over that. However, there were some very compelling points made by Sandberg that I could not ignore or be cynical about, largely because there were many times that reading this book felt like holding up a mirror to my own career/life and experiences.

Medium Raw

Life really derailed my blogging these past couple of months - both figuratively and literally.  Reading Keith Richard's book slowed me down and work and life just kind of kept getting in the way of me sitting down to write some reviews.

So, on to it.  After Keith, I continued on the memoir theme and picked up chef Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw.  I'm a Tony Bourdain groupie.  I loved Kitchen Confidential for bringing to the light of day, the counterculture of the food scene, the real food scene: behind the curtain and focusing on the people who actually work the food scene.  But my infatuation really started with his short lived show "A Cook's Tour," where Bourdain went around the world looking for truly authentic and crazy food experiences.

Life is a Grind

Life is a grind.  Literally and figuratively.  Don't worry this isn't going to be some philosophical rambling on the meaning of life or a "woe is me" moment on the challenges life brings us, I am actually referring to Keith Richard's autobiography Life.


There is something so unbelievably cool about Keith.  I love him. I love his seeming immortality.  I love his crazy hair and clothes.  I love the song Happy, which he sings, on Exile on Main Street.  I don't think anyone looks cooler with a cigarette in his mouth than Keith Richards.

Summertime and the Readin' is Easy

The lazy, hazy days of summer are upon us (evidence, the lack of posts).  I'm heading to Greece with the family for three glorious weeks of beach time.  With three kids (the youngest is almost 18 months), I'm not sure how much time I'll get for reading.

For those of you who do have reading time over these dog days of summer, here are my top three picks:

There is Only One Julia

I'll give Julie Powell full credit.  Yes, Julie Powell of the "Julie/Julia Project".  Julie Powell, the one who proved writing a cute blog doesn't make you an author.  Yes, I liked her first book well enough as you can see here. However I absolutely despised her second memoir Cleaving.  It was so bad.  That's all I'm going to say about it. I'm not even reviewing it.

Anyway...back to Julia.  The real and powerful, one and only Julia Child.  In the movie adaptation of Julie/Julia, Julia is given more time (yay) and Meryl Street portrays her with humour and aplomb.  So I picked up My Life in France, Julia Child's memoir of her time, primarily in Paris, with her husband Paul and learning how to cook.

Real life is always better than fiction

When I was in my teens, I went through a serious biography phase. It was all I read. Specifically, biographies of old movie stars (I was going through a parallel phase involving watching old movies on TVO Saturday nights). Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant were all favourites. I read Mommy Dearest which was so horrifying, I still have trouble watching Joan Crawford films. Lana Turner's autobiography was as scandalous as any National Enquirer issue.

I don't know why, but I went off biographies for a long time. For some reason, I'm inching my way back in. I was recommended Barbara Walters' Audition and I saw a documentary based on Michael J. Fox's second memoir Always Looking Up, both of which caught my fancy.

Between Two Worlds Part II

I was just re-reading my last post. Although I was indeed inspired by some unknown force, the fact that I did it so quickly meant that I was a little sloppy.

Zainab Salbi did write another book focused on the work of her foundation Women for Women Internatioal called: The Other Side of War: Women's Stories of Survival and Hope. I have every intention of reading this and looking for inspiration from brutality.

Between Two Worlds

I'm sitting in the Barcelona airport with about 15 minutes of WIFI time and about the same battery life. After going so long without posting, it's always surprising when inspiration is going to hit.

This book sat on my nightstand for quite some time. Doug read it and wasn’t enamoured with it but once again, I decided to take his opinion with a grain of salt and soldier on to read it. One day I will learn to trust his judgment on stuff I will like and won’t like.

I don’t want to sound insensitive. The first (and largest) part of the book is the story of Zainab Salbi who was growing up in pre-Hussein Iraq to a loving, well-to-do family only to see her family get dragged into the brutal world of Hussein’s sadistically cruel and insane rule. There is no doubt this life was absolutely harrowing. He was truly a monster and terrifying and I believe no one but the people who had to live it, truly understands the fear he instilled in everyone around him. However, in my mind, this section was too long and it seemed to be nothing more than a series of anecdotes, stories and memories tied together chronologically and I was tired of it after a while.

To me, the most interesting part of her story was the birth and growth of her not-for-profit foundation helping women who have been the subject of systematic rape and terror in other war torn countries. I wanted more on how she developed the foundation, gained support, built the foundation from the ground up. The other part of the book that could have also been more interesting was her reconciliation with her mother. In the first half, she spoke of her mother with no less than loving reverence so the fact that she had a bubbling anger and growing rift, honestly came as somewhat of a surprise.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for Salbi. She has clearly lived a life that I cannot even begin to understand or relate to, and I am honestly so thankful for that. I am happy that she survived it and could share it, and I hope she tries to write again about her foundation and maybe get a better editor to help pull the story together.

Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
Zainab Salbi
Gotham

Grief

I don’t know why I haven’t posted for so long. I have been reading like a maniac and when I sat down to write this, I wasn’t sure what to start with. So, I thought, the best way to go forward was chronologically. It is especially timely since the book I read after my last post was The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

Why timely? November is a hard month for me and my family. It was in November that my step-father Peter died. In fact it was November 28, 2005. I will never forget it. I was there, he died in my arms with my step-brother Savvas and my mom all around us. It changed me forever – for better or for worse, remains to be seen.

I have had this book for quite some time and have been putting off reading it because it is a very personal account by Joan Didion’s of the death of her husband, John Dunne (brother of Dominick Dunne for those of you into the society gossip scene) and the year following. John Dunne died suddenly of a massive coronary in their New York apartment shortly after having a quiet dinner at home. Didion captures that moment and the 12 months post her husband’s death and her grieving process. The added element here is that their daughter Quintana had been in a coma for a while with some unknown viral infection and did not regain consciousness until after her father died and then continued to struggle with illness.

Everything about the circumstances surrounding Didion’s experience are different from my own. Peter was my step-father, not my husband. He battled Stage 4 lung cancer for a year before succumbing – this wasn’t sudden. But grief and pain seem to unite my feelings with Didion’s story. At first I was very sceptical of reading this book for so many reasons. However, soon after I started reading, I was fascinated by her story, how she captured the most minute, seemingly inconsequential details; how she couldn’t remember certain things; how she felt and didn’t feel; how her narrative was at times crystal clear and others completely disjointed. It was all very relevant though completely unrelated.

I still mourn Peter’s loss. I was an adult when he came into my life and he was only with me for 10 years. During that 10 years, I watched him, listened to him, ate many meals, shared many arguments and disagreements, laughed a lot and most importantly felt his love. For my family and many close friends, it’s no secret that I have had a “strained” relationship with my natural father. In the short 10 years he was in my life, Peter taught me so many things (even when I didn’t want to learn them). He was the best father and pappou (grandfather) I could ever ask for.

I was really glad I read The Year of Magical Thinking, and although it made me cry, A LOT, it made me remember. Remembering is something that I am no longer afraid of because although tinged with a little pain and sadness (usually tears appear as well), it fills me with the joy of something I never asked for or expected but nonetheless will be eternally touched by and grateful for: the memory of the unconditional love of a father.

The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
Knopf Publishing Group

The Way to a Man's Heart

Everybody who knows me, knows that one of my biggest passions (besides reading) is food. I love eating good food and I am fanatic about cooking good food. The first channel I turn on when I watch TV is the Food Network. I love cooking shows, cooking websites, cook books. However, there is nothing in this world that gives me more pleasure than cooking for an appreciative audience of friends and/or family - especially when there is wine involved.

So once again, Michelle comes to the rescue in my hunt for reading material when she loaned me Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen . Turning 30 and going through a bit of a "what am I doing with my life" crisis, Julie Powell decides to do something ambitious. With her husband egging her on (forgive the pun), Julie decides to take on the huge feat of attempting to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. In addition to the cooking, Julie's husband convinces her to record her journey on a blog.

What ensues is a commentary that swings from hilarious to reflective to manic and sometimes a little whiny but I'm okay with that. It's a journey of self-discovery for Julie Powell and she charmingly interjects some Julia Child with snippets from her letters and some biographical notes. It's not just about the cooking but someone trying to figure out who they are and what they are made of. The Julie/Julia project blog is no longer active but she has a new blog she has been writing on since the book was published in 2005. What is so refreshing, is that there is little or no difference between her tone in the book and how she writes on her blog: honest, a little disbelieving, and always bordering on the edge of complete panic. It makes her very human. I'm adding her blog to my blog roll so I can follow her adventures.

I think I may take a look at Mastering the Art and while I can definitely say that I will not be attempting organ meats or aspic, I may need to give the vodka gimlet some serious consideration.

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

Julie Powell

Little, Brown & Company

Babies & Broads

Not exactly weekly but nonetheless, trying to maintain some consistency in posting.

On a recent trip to Barcelona, I decided to give a book my brother-in-law recommended as “light & a quick read”. It was both of those things – I read it all on the leg from Munich to Toronto. an Innocent, a Broad is a memoire written by Ann Leary. Ann Leary is married to Denis Leary…who I absolutely love. I thought, if you can be married to him, you must have an interesting take on life.

an Innocent, a Broad is a memoire about a specific moment in time: the birth of their first child Jack. Jack’s birth (like so many) is not the fairy tale that you see in movies or hear from mothers’ groups (“Oh…I was in labour for 2 hours and didn’t need an epidural….and it was a beautiful moving experience….yeah right, whatever), or read in magazines. Written about a time prior to her husband “becoming” Denis Leary, Ann Leary takes you through every pregnant woman/mother’s worst nightmare: she goes into labour prematurely in a foreign country. Mind you the foreign country is England, where they speak English, which is a plus, but has a different view on childbirth and medical care.

So there you are: what started as a 2 week vacation turns into a stint in a hospital, thousands of miles from home, in labour, when you’re not supposed to be in labour and you are told you are going to be in hospital until you give birth.

With an endearing though sometimes annoying recounting of a stereotypical American ignorance of anything non American, Leary’s style is easy to read, like hearing a girlfriend recount a story over numerous cups of coffees. She goes through things and asks questions that you wouldn’t read about in What to Expect When You’re Expecting. She articulates exactly what every pregnant woman goes through about how they look and feel about themselves. She eloquently captures every single fear that any of us who have gone through a pregnancy, has about giving birth and then lives through the fears to come out on the other side. She does it almost exclusively by herself and emerges and unintentional “woman/mother power story.”

Although I enjoyed this book (Jack as it happens is now a perfectly healthy teenager and quite proud of his birth story), it didn’t quite break my streak of mediocrity. That being said, I am reading something right now, about half-way through that is knocking my socks off. But I thought that about Wicked too…so I’m going to reserve judgment for a bit.

an Innocent, a Broad
Ann Leary
Harper Collins

New Year's Resolution

I made a New Year's Resolution to blog more regularly. I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted until I actually went on my blog to reconnect with it. Wow. I read in a magazine that when making New Year's resolutions, the way to increase your chances of success is not to start on January 1st. Clearly, I took that to heart. So here I am.

I didn't travel much at all in the fall. In fact the last post I did was from my last trip in 2007. Unlike past Christmas holidays, I didn't read very much at all - just one book, a gift from Doug - Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

Tony Bourdain is completely irreverent, arrogant, fearless and I love him. For those of you who don't know him, Bourdain is a New York chef who had a popular show on the Food Network called "A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal" where he traveled to popular and exotic locales to eat anything and everything that was put in front him (including a still beating cobra's heart in a particularly harrowing episode in Vietnam). This man gets off on food. Seriously gets off on it.

Kitchen Confidential kind of put Bourdain on the map from a writing perspective. The book is a memoir of his adventures and development into a chef (dropping out of Vassar, going to the Culinary Institute of America) including summer jobs cooking in kitchens in the Hamptons and then massive leaps to executive chef's jobs in various New York city restaurants. All this while partying like a mad man. The "underbelly" of the restaurant world comes alive with Bourdain's brash and bawdy style. Excessive drug use, sexual exploits, dealing with the mafia - in some ways it sounds like a Harold Robbins novel. No matter the particular foibles of the various characters: waiters, line cooks, pastry chefs, sous chefs or even Bourdain himself, the one thing that comes shining through is the passion for the food. Pure, unadulterated, passion.

I will definitely read more of Bourdain's stuff - some may find his style a little over bearing but I quite enjoyed it and found it highly entertaining. I may even go to his restaurant the next time I'm in New York, but if it's a Monday, I won't order the fish.

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Anthony Bourdain
Bloomsbury