Paris, a Love Story: a Memoir by Kati Marton
What a compelling memoir about Kati Marton, an AP journalist back in the 1960 and 70's! She dives back in time to share her childhood challenges of growing up in Hungary after World War II and the Iron Curtain and of losing her parents to prison due to them speaking out against the Communists. I was shocked and disappointed to read of Peter Jenning's, her first husband and my favorite anchorman, chronic depression and subsequent control and verbal abuse issues. Then, the author, after divorcing Peter Jennings, meets and marries her soul mate diplomat, Richard Holbrooke. The love and respect she describes so eloquently made the shock and loss she encounters, when he dies unexpectedly, so much deeper and sadder. Her wise words and insights are lingering...
Click here for a NPR story with Kati Marton going deeper into her love and loss.
Goodreads Summary:
In this remarkably honest and candid memoir, award-winning journalist and distinguished author Kati Marton narrates an impassioned and romantic story of love, loss, and life after loss. Paris is at the heart of this deeply moving account. At every stage of her life, Paris offers Marton beauty and excitement, and now, after the sudden death of her husband Richard Holbrooke, it offers a chance for a fresh beginning. With intimate and nuanced portraits of Peter Jennings, the man to whom she was married for fifteen years and with whom she had two children, and Richard, with whom she found enduring love, Marton paints a vivid account of an adventuresome life in the stream of history. Inspirational and deeply human, Paris: A Love Story will touch every generation.
Wild : From lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
From the moment I heard about this HOT book, I knew that my list of connections would be long. Dealing with the death of a parent, living through tough times, hitting the trail for solace and diving into books for answers all call out to me, as they did Cheryl, the author. Her writing took me on an emotional roller coaster ride not knowing if I'd be laughing or crying next. She described life on the trail to a T and left me pineing for summer and the dust and grit of the trail ahead of me. NEW NEWS FLASH: Reese Witherspoon has been selected to play Cheryl in a movie adaptation of the novel.
Click here for Cheryl Strayed's website with videos, pictures and other books
Goodreads Summary:
A powerful, blazingly honest, inspiring memoir: the story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's devastating death, her family scattered, and her own marriage was soon destroyed. With nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Gorgeously told, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild is the vivid story of a young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes) by Luisa Weiss
Mmm, mmm I LOVE novels that contain recipes...fulfills my double fetish of a good story and a cookbook. At first, I was drawn to this book because of the setting. I spent a lonely week in Berlin back in the mid '90's wandering the narrow streets of East Berlin wishing I could find another lonely soul to explore all the ups and downs of this historical city. The fact that this book sprang from a blog further intrigued and eventually inspired me. I hope you also enjoy the story and recipes!
Click here for Luisa Weis's blog called The Wednesday Chef
Goodreads Summary:
It takes courage to turn your life upside down, especially when everyone is telling you how lucky you are. But sometimes what seems right can feel deeply wrong. My Berlin Kitchen tells the story of how one thoroughly confused, kitchen-maid perfectionist broke off her engagement to a handsome New Yorker, quit her dream job, and found her way to a new life, a new man, and a new home in Berlin—one recipe at a time.
Luisa Weiss grew up with a divided heart, shuttling back and forth between her father in Boston and her Italian mother in Berlin. She was always yearning for home, until she found a new home in the kitchen. Luisa started clipping recipes in college and was a cookbook editor in New York when she decided to bake, roast, and stew her way through her, by then, unwieldy collection over the course of one tumultuous year. The blog she wrote to document her adventures in (and out) of the kitchen, The Wednesday Chef, soon became a sensation. But she never stopped hankering for Berlin.
Luisa will seduce you with her stories of foraging for plums in abandoned orchards, battling with white asparagus at the tail end of the season, orchestrating a three-family Thanksgiving in Berlin, and mending her broken heart with batches (and batches) of impossible German Christmas cookies. Fans of her award-winning blog will know the happy ending, but anyone who enjoyed Julie and Julia will laugh and cheer and cook alongside Luisa as she takes us into her heart and tells us how she gave up everything only to find love waiting where she least expected it.
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