The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

This historical fiction series that Hilary Mantel has created around the life and times of Thomas Cromwell is a towering achievement. It is so real, so imbued with life that it is easy to momentarily forget that all of the events are in the very distant past and that while there is an "edge of your seat" kind of excitement and tension that runs through this and her two previous installments, that in fact, it is all quite known. This book especially feels like we are silently sitting on Cromwell's shoulder, that while he continues to have confidence in the direction he is moving the monarchy and England as a whole that there are people who are ready and willing to bring him down. The book opens where the previous left off, in May 1536, at the moment the French executioner has struck off Anne Boleyn’s head with his sword. Cromwell is much taken with this sword: Toledo steel, incised with the words of a prayer. It is only later in the book that we learn the words on the blade: Speculum justiciae, ora pro nobis. Mirror of justice, pray for us. It’s one of many references to both mirrors and light stitched subtly throughout the book--which is just one window into the cleverness and prowess that Mantel displays in the writing of this chronicle. The question of whether Anne and the men executed for adultery with her received justice is one that haunts many of the characters in the novel, not least the king and Cromwell himself. The two ultimately diverge in their answers and there is always a penalty for not walking closely with the king. This is a spectacular end to an amazing trilogy.

Wydaho Roasters, Driggs, Idaho

This is a remarkable coffee shop where both the coffee roasting and the bakery are on site. The coffee is exceptional, there is no getting around that, and we now buy all our coffee from them. We usually try to pick it up when we are in town and then vaccuum pack it for future use, but we occasionally have to resort to mailorder. The game changer in my mind, though, is the bakery. The laminated dough made with Eurpoean butter is astoundingly good in all forms. My favorite is the cardomon buns, followed by the everything buns, but each and every use of it results in something special and so much better than what you could expect to produce in your home kitchen, and why bother because they do it so well. Wxtra special fun is that the bakery is open to the coffee shop so if you happen to be there in the afternoon you can catch the prep for the baking the following day. Finally, of note, they are open every single day, Monday through Sunday, 6AM-6PM. When we roll into town late in the day they still have their doors open, unlike many a coffee shop in the Teton Valley.

The Exceptions by Kate Zernike

This is a story that doesn't need to be told to too many women in academics, because most if not all of us have lived some version of the story. I loved Lessons in Chemistry, which puts a somewhat sardonic spin on the unbearable uphill battle that women, some quite brilliant, like Nancy Hopkins, and some more ordinary, like myself, have faced in trying to be respected, included, and effective. I found myself seething through the entire book, which undoubtedly made it seem longer than it actually is, but the accuracy is astounding, and there are many seemingly unbelievable details in here that I have experienced myself. This is a chronicle of discrimination against women in science. And because of her extraordinary achievement, Hopkins will go down in history as a champion who fought to make things more equitable for women in STEM. But the story is more than that. More accurately, it is the story of a scientist who wanted nothing more than to do her research. And she wasn’t willing to let anything stand in her way. Nancy Hopkins has an unbelievable pedigree for a woman in science. Harvard educated, her scientific training started when she was an undergraduate student working with Nobel laureate James Watson in Harvard College labs, and continued when she was a graduate student working with Mark Ptashne. She joined the faculty at MIT in 1972, and was so successful in science that she her mentor and collaborators have taken the highest honors--she is a superstar. Sadly, MIT did not treat her like one, and while she had international fame, she almost didn't get tenure because a guy didn't like her. She took it all, let it roll off her, lost her marriage, didn't have kids, all because she saw that it would get her exactly nowhere in the atmosphere she was in. It was the unfair allocation of lab space when she really need it that turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. And because square footage can be readily determined, Hopkins had a clear course of action. In a classic story, she spent nights crouching in the dark, measuring the amount of lab space occupied by the faculty members in her department. Those data, in combination with other evidence, served as the basis for the report that would be shown to the MIT administration. She found other women on the MIT campus who were experiencing similar discrimination—the 15 other tenured women in the school of science at MIT--and together they fought back.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

We watched this amidst the run-up to the Oscar nominees, and we were guessing what animated movies might make the cut--on the one hand, we did not think this was up to the task, but on the other, my spouse was hoping for something less emotionally complex, and in that scenario, this definitely fit the bill. It is not a good movie, but it is also not at all taxing in any way. This is a reboot of the teenage mutant turtles of yore--in this permutation the Turtles meet and befriend April O’Neal (voiced by Ayo Edebiri, of The Bear fame), an aspiring journalist and an outcast at her high school. She agrees to help them with a plan to win the human’s acceptance. Together they will track down a local menace named Superfly (a literal housefly mutated by the same green ooze). The Turtles will apprehend him and turn him over to the police. April will chronicle their feat and report it, leading the city to love and embrace them. This predictably goes awry, but these conflicts lead to some pretty creative action scenes, highlighted by some eye-popping animation and some clever cinematic effects. Not all of the action works, and the dialogue could use some help as well--disappointing as Seth Rogen is a co-writer. All in all, I would not recommend this.

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

I have not read the author's memoir, but apparently she regrets her first book, feeling like she did not look the reality of being black in the American South squarely in the eye, that she was too lenient, and therefore not true to the struggles her characters faced, and vowed to be an Old Testament God. This book goes back to the beginnings of the reality Ward has lived and written about, to the arrival of the slave ships, and the plantations where those slaves were put to work; a reality so dark it is like being taken by the hand and led into hell. Annis is the mixed-race daughter conceived through rape; she and her mother are slaves in the rapist’s house. Her grandmother, born in west Africa and given to the king of Dahomey for his army of warrior wives, was herself sold into slavery by that king when she fell in love with someone else. Annis, in between dodging the attentions of her father; she learns of Aristotle and his bees, and listens to their tutor read The Divine Comedy. Then her mother, in punishment for trying to protect her budding daughter, is sold on; then Annis, for having the temerity to love another slave, a woman, is sold on, too. She has to walk, chained to others, to get to New Orleans where she will be sold again. During the journey Annis is attended to by spirits of slaves past, including a guide who likes to take the form of Annis’s grandmother but is not her. It is a horror, but an excellent read, which I could not put down and read in a day.

Tatanka Tavern, Driggs, Idaho

The view here is spectacular--sitting on the third floor gives one a spectacular view of the valley, and while that is not enough to bring you here, it is a nice perk. This has some interesting beer on tap and a limited but enjoyable menu. We have tried the stuffed mushroom appetizer and it is very goos, and the salad selections are good, and my favorite is that you can get them small for yourself or large to share with the table. But the pizza is the star of the show. There is another pizza place that can contend for the best pizza place in the neighborhood, but having tried them both this is our favorite. The wood fired oven is a plus, but the toppings are interesting and the crust is thin but not too thin, and both times we have eaten here we have left happy. You can build your own, but the combinations on offer are quite good.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

This is a classic, and one (of many) that I somehow missed along the way. It was the author's debut novel, published when she was just 23 years old. She and her husband Reeves McCullers were penniless, awaiting the last portion of the advance on the book so that they, both aspiring writers, could move to New York City. Reeves had gone off to work on a boat on Nantucket island and McCullers had little premonition of the literary sensation the book would become – or how completely it would transform her life. It was published in the summer of 1940. Despite Roosevelt’s New Deal, the depredations of the Great Depression had sucked hope from America’s bones, birthed a generation that had only known want and that was skeptical of the possibility of change and the United States was on the cusp of entering the war raging in Europe and Asia. The book is set in the time it was written in a poor Georgia mill town. The cast of characters is: There is Mick, tomboyish, dreaming of taking lessons so that she may learn to compose music. There is Jake, labor agitator, often seeking and never finding, in between bouts of drunkenness. There is Doctor Copeland, dignified and well-read, who engrosses himself in Black liberation through his studies and finds that he can no longer understand his children, his people. There is Biff, owner of the New York Café, always watchful and worried. They each struggle with feelings of isolation, the sense that no one shares their concern and yet none of them connect with each other. Instead they reach out to John Singer, a deaf man who works understands speech by reading lips. Because he does not speak, Singer rarely interrupts, and the others—rather ironically it turns out—come to view him as a good listener. It is a sad story about a sad time that we hope not to return to.

American Symphony (2023)

I am sorry that this movie did not make the cut from the short list of Best Documentary to the nominated list this past year, but it is a very good documentary. It follows Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s band leader and the Oscar winner for the movie "soul", for a year. I think to start it was to see the creative process unfold, which does happen, but what also happens is that the musician's long time partner, Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms about her diagnosis and recovery from leukemia, marries him and then her cancer relapses. So there is the creation and the pain, the growth and the contraction of their lives. Batiste comes across as both visionary and very human. I read a review that knocked this as not going deeply enough into either the creative process that went into Batiste's American Symphony nor into the fear and grief that cancer begets, but having walked on the path of the later, both personally and with a loved one, this is pretty evocative of that process, and how to do it authentically but also to survive it. I really enjoyed this.

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

Lots of people found this to be an immersive satirical novel takes the reader on a thrilling journey through the eyes of a writer who struggles to make her own way in the cut-throat world of publishing. It was the reader's fiction choise for Goodreads, and the New York Times put is on their Notable Books list for 2023; it found critical acclaim elsewhere as well. I, on the other hand, did not care for it. I am not much for satire, of course, and that could be the heart of my problem with it, but I just found it cringe worthy, not eye opening. The plot it this: a young white author who steals the manuscript of her dead Asian friend, finishes it, and publishes it as her own. She works to maintain the lie that her first big hit novel The Last Front, a story about Chinese workers in the British Army during WWI, is indeed her work and her work only--she is convincing both the reader and herself. The irony is that not only does she face accusations of theft and plagiarism, but the optics of a white woman writing about and therefore profiting off the work of an Asian event, which creates a platform for accusations of racism. The issues with who can write about what being taken to an extreme are well presented, but I struggled with the unfortunate series of events and where the story landed as a result.

New Taste of India, West Liberty Iowa

This is another roadside attraction on I-80--the availability of Indian food close to the highway and adjacent to a gas station is something we have done in Nebraska but this is a first for us in Iowa. It is not much to look at on the outside--it looks like it is closed! And it is a little hard to find, even. The decor is decidedly unchanged from the last inhabitants, and it is geared more to those picking up takout than wanting the dine in option. That said, it is friendly and very accomodating of our party of 9 which included four generations and ranged in age from 1 to almost 90.

There were some great options on the menu. Starting with the rice, which was fluffy and perfectly cooked. That and the garlic naan were real highlights, because they are something you are going to eat no matter what you order. The vegetable samosas were similarly good, nothing special exactly, but very good--we were less thrilled with the samosa chat and would skip it next time. The butter chicken and the chicken korma were both exceptionally good--we ordered more to take home to help finish off the the other dishes we had leftover. I enjoyed this meal more than any I have had recently in Iowa City, and it is well worth a stop if you are traveling through.

The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut

The first book that I read by this author was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize (which I admit is an award I have been remiss in not reading the nominees for, but started righting that this year and there is some truly great literature to be found in it)--he is Chilean and someone who not only writes but thinks deeply. This is a fictionalized portrait of the visionary Hungarian scientist, John von Neumann, who contributed to the Manhattan Project and laid the foundations of modern computing is a darkly intelligent and yet propulsive novel. It is basically a triptych of sorts--what came before von Neumann, his part in the story, and then what comes after. The first part is the (mostly true) story of Paul Ehrenfest, a brilliant Austrian physicist who descends into madness, murdering his fifteen-year-old son and then taking his own life. Ehrenfest feared what he saw was coming in the 20th century: the rise of fascism, the atomic bomb, the blurring lines between human and machine consciousnesses, and speaks to the reader, who is already living in a world of AI and returning totalitarianism. We move on to von Neumann, who in addition to working with Oppenheimer and being the father of Game Theory, also laid the foundations of modern computing (MANIAC is the acronym for a computer he developed) and foresaw the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Then we flash forward to the rise of AI, whose promises enrapture its developers even as they fret over its apocalyptic potential. It is excellent and kind of terrifying at the same time.

Dream Scenario (2023)

Nicolas Cage, who has navigated a lot of diverse and funny lead character portrayals in middle age, plays a nondescript evolutionary biology professor named Paul Matthews, who suddenly appears in the dreams of his students, daughters, and people he does not know. He doesn't do anything in their recurring dreams. He more or less just strolls through the background in his sweater and glasses, sometimes flashing his dopey, pleasant smile. Paul soon becomes a phenomenon, with people who are strangers stopping him on the street to tell him that he was in their dreams. He initially is puzzled by the attention, and then as people try to commercialize the event (inevitable) he starts to feel like he himself is important because of something that he isn’t doing and cannot control. The dreams are changing over time, which everyone could see coming, and they go from him observing to him interacting, both socially and sexually, and then the dreams turn quite graphically violent. Once you suspend belief, there are a lot of funny moments, some cringe worthy moments, and some opportunities to put yourself in Paul’s shoes and contemplate what you yourselves would do should you find yourself suddenly and for no good reason to be world famous. Do you dream of Tik Tok fame? What would that look like?

Huda F Cares? by Huda Fahmy

I loved this. It is a saucy Huda who is an average teenager living within a traditional Muslim family in America. She wants to blend in but she sticks out. Here is her origin story: for much of her life, Huda Fahmy, a Muslim American born and raised near Detroit, was dogged by questions about her hijab. Later, as an adult living in Houston, she was frequently asked, “Aren’t you hot in that?” The answer became the name of her comic strip, “Yes I’m Hot in This,” which Fahmy began posting on Instagram. It also became the title of her first book, a graphic novel for adults published in 2018. In this she and her family travel to Disney World--by car--and somehow manage to both survive and have fun. They are trying to adapt to a world where they stick out and are cause for concern, all while being typical teenaged girls. It is frisky and serious at the same time.

Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (2023)

I had never heard of Nikki Giovanni but this documentary, which has great footage of her back in the 1960's as an early 20's as she is being interviewed by James Balwin, entirely confident and contained within herself, and he clearly enjoys the interchange. The filmmakers carefully synthesize a combination of new and archival footage of Giovanni, discussing and sometimes embodying her work in her typically direct, unsentimental, and deeply moving style. The end result, for me, was to fall in love with someone who was previously unknown to me. She was one of the luminaries of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s into the 1970s, and she is now a 79-year-old who continues to address the pain and joys, the anger and resilience of the descendants of the Middle Passage, who know much about uncertain and dangerous journeys. The title of the documentary comes from something she saud, that if they want to populate outer space they need to send black women, because they have been getting it done for centuries. It’s genuinely refreshing to see Giovanni celebrated for having a personality that extends beyond her youth into her elder years. Yes, she’s rightfully shown speaking to and lighting up auditoriums full of fans, many of whom are Black women, but not just because they presumably share similar experiences or skin color. Rather,the filmmakers show and contextualize scenes of Giovanni’s public appearances, some televised and others filmed at recent speaking engagements, as proof of her animating presence. It’s one thing to hail Giovanni as an iconic presence and another to show her talk about and exemplify the qualities that have made her and her work so indispensable. The scenes where she reads her poetry are particularly good, and this is well worth watching.

The Sharper Your Knives, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Finn

This memoir claims to be about chronicles the author’s journey to fulfill her dream of attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the world’s most famous cooking school. Unfortunately, to my ear, it isn't so much about that as it was about her personal life, which included not being happy in her job, struggling with intimacy, and not being able to relax and enjoy living in a foreign country where she did not speak the language. She also went to Le Cordon Bleu, but other than a recipe at the end of each chapter, there really isn't much in the way of details or reflection on that experience. That disappointed me because while I do not share the dream of attending cooking school in Paris, I did pick up the book to figure out what that was all about. I did pretty quickly figure out that this would not go on to my bucket list of things to do--I was pretty sure it wouldn't, because while I would love to live in France, I do not want to live in Paris, and cooking school would be enough of a struggle for me, I would want that to be in English. The only thing that surprised me from this is that there is a translator, so you can actually do it as a non-French speaker--no, that did not change my already made up mind. The parts of this book that are not about cooking were, for me, unsatisfying, a little melodramatic, and a lot like things I do not relate to and don't need to dig further into. So on the whole, I would not recommend this.

Mantra, Davenport, Iowa

We had an Indian meal along I-80 a bit back and our kids in the Quad City wanted us to compare and contrast the two, so we met them at his place, which is right around the corner from the Figge Museam, a favorite destination of ours in downtown Davenport. We brough my mother along and while she doesn't have a lot of experience with Indian food, she was with us at the previous restaurant. Our kids favorite dish is butter chicken, which was good, but the New Taste of India's was the definite winner for us, as is their Chicken Korma, their rice, and their naan. The samosa's were about evenly matched, but the tamarind and mint chutneys here were better. The Saag Channa was very good, and definitely better than the spinach dish we got at the other restaurant. The one thing I would get again if we were to go back is the Tandoori Chicken--it was flavorful and moist, and we managed to make quite the dent in the whole one that we ordered. The parking was easy on the street, and it is open 7 days a week, which is a real plus. We very much enjoyed eating with four generations, and any time we get to do that we appreciate it!

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

This is a really interesting story--the book itself and then what happened to it when it became the most banned book from school libraries. This is a memoir. The author came out as bisexual in high school describes it as relatively uneventful: they lived in the Bay Area, which is so open and welcoming that if I were trans I might never travel it is so great, and they had supportive classmates and parents. But coming out as nonbinary years later was far more complicated--at the time there wasn't much of a vocabulary for it, and so they wrote this--which was released in 2019 by a comic book and graphic novel publisher. The print run was small — 5,000 copies — and the author even worried that the book wouldn’t find much readership. Then, last year, the book’s frank grappling with gender identity and sexuality began generating headlines around the country. Dozens of schools pulled it from library shelves. Republican officials in North and South Carolina, Texas and Virginia called for the book’s removal, sometimes labeling it “pornographic.” Silver lining--as a result, lots of people discovered and read this book, so it's banning was a key ingredient in bringing it out into the light. I would definitely recommend this.

Totem (2023)

This is a movie about culture in modern day Mexico, with one foot in the 21st century and one firmly in the land of their ancestors. It is also about family and anticipatory grief. The movie opens with a mother and daughter driving across a bridge. THe seven-year-old Sol and her mother engage in a rite of superstition, holding their breath and making a wish. Sol declares that her wish is for her father to live; her mother focuses on the road ahead. The movie goes on to follow a day in the life of Sol and her family as they prepare a birthday party for her sick father-—an event that’s gravity sets in as the hours pass—both a celebration of another year and a preemptive, heartfelt sending off. Presented largely from the point of view of two children, this film immerses the audience in a boisterous family gathering, where a handful of adult siblings have gathered to celebrate the birthday of their brother, a painter named Tonatiuh. Tona is barely seen for most of the movie, confined to a back room where he refuses visitors. Naturally, this confuses his daughter, who spends the day wandering the house alone, building a pillow fort in the living room or collecting snails in the garden, and wondering why her father doesn't love her. There are several things that sink in as you watch this calm and collected depiction of "A Day In The Live" of Sol. One is that this family will remember Toma after he is gone and his memory will be a blessing--but that Sol is not being prepared for the death of her father, and that will be a trauma to unpack later. The other is that a culture that revolves around food, family, and friends has a lot to recommend it. This is quietly lovely and well worth watching.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

This won the Booker Prize and while it wasn't my favorite of the long listed books (I still have three left to read, but of all of the ones I have, The Bee Sting is my pick for the top prize), this is really quite good. It is yet another horrifying look into what the near future could look like. Since we already have had Catch-22 in the United States, and are quickly devolving into The Handmaid's Tale, neither of which I thought were plausible when I read them as a young adult and now seem all too real, so I no longer dismiss anything as too far fetched. Eilish Stack is a respected microbiologist, a mother and the wife of a union leader. After a long day of work, she craves only a spot of peace and renewal. Spoiler alert--it doesn't come--instead there is a knocking on the door and two plainclothes men who ask Eilish about her husband, Larry, are polite and solicitous. Since the Emergency Powers Act was passed, the whole country has been thrumming with anxiety. But Larry imagines that his work with the teachers union can’t possibly be labeled seditious. “There are still constitutional rights in this country,” he insists. And yet the next labor demonstration is violently broken up by police. Larry is detained without access to counsel or visitors — and then he’s disappeared. And so it goes, in an entirely believable way. This is not to be missed.

King Sushi, Driggs, Idaho

There are some good places to eat out in the Teton Valley, but this is our favorite so far. It is an innovative sushi place that serves a number of Asian inspired dishes to keep the members of your party that are not all in on the raw fish. This is what we have--we get there while it is still happy hour, and we have some of the handrolls that are discounted for the early birds. Then we get the Imperial Shrimp, which is a battered shrimp that is deep fried, tossed with some sweet chili sauce and served atop some spiralized diakon--this is my favorite. The pork buns are more pork than bun, which makes then a favorite of my spouse (my son prefers the opposite ratio, and he would skip next time as a result. I like the Citrus Tako while the rest of my party focused more heavily on the sashimi, and we all enjoyed a house roll or two. It is a lively place, they take reservations, and we make it a point to go when we are in the Teton Valley00which is often, but not often enough.

All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson

I watched the Oscar nominated short documentary "The ABC's of Book Banning", which I loved, and from which I got a list of books to read that have been banned in school districts. This Young Adult book is about growing up Black and queer, and always feeling different but not having the words to express it. Over the past couple of years, at least 29 school districts have banned the book because of its LGBTQ content and for being sexually explicit. It is both sad and ironic because part of what he is writing about is how hard it was for him to come to terms with himself, at least partly because there wasn't much in the way of information about people like him, and how he suffered for it. The goal is less to protect than it is to further ignorance, to perpetuate prejudice, and to augment suffering. Oh, but you probably already knew that. The book opens with a prologue that warns there is some disturbing and explicit material contained within. That is true, but it is mostly about his growing up experience; the challenges he faced due to growing up in poverty, being black, figuring out he was gay, and how to inhabit himself in a comfortable way. None of these are straightforward tasks, and he does have a loving family around him, but mostly he has to figure it out on his own, and he does, and then he shares that journey with the rest of us.

Fallen Leaves (2023)

This film has been submitted by Finland for the Best International Film category and was shortlisted for that back in December. I do not have a lot of experience with Finnish films, but this seems very much related to the Scandinavian film school, where even humor can be dark. I read a review which posited that this is a perfect film, which is defined as: A perfect film knows what it’s about, knows what it wants to say, and knows that even when what it has to say is unusually simple, what it says can’t be reduced to words or any form of description apart from the thing itself, and that a perfect film has to be seen in order for its perfection to be appreciated. There is a lot going on in this sparse movie, most of it without much in the way of dialogue. The movie is a muted romance that goes through conventional narrative paces. A man, Jussi, and woman, Ansa, both shrouded in loneliness, almost meet, then do meet, then can’t meet, then meet again, then come to an understanding that unites them. The complications are familiar ones. There’s booze, there are bad jobs, there’s an encroaching outside world full of troubles. This are a lot of socially conscious aspects of this, down to Ansa’s evening radio broadcasts delineating the Russian invasion of Mariupol deliberate bombing of civilians, ending with a report of the loss of life at a maternity hospital. I had just watched the documentary of this, and the radio reports accurately reflected those atrocities. Finland shares a 830 miles border, so it is quite relevant to them what their neighbors consider standard operating procedures if they think it is theirs to take.

Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger by Lisa Donovan

The restaurant business has hours like the health care profession but with less compensation and worse benefits. And even though women perform 80% of the meal preparation within their households, fewer than 7% of American restaurants are led by female chefs. The author has a pretty big chip on her shoulder about that and she is pretty direct, sometimes vulgar, sometimes passionate about those disconnects. About a year ago my spouse and I embarked on a food memoir reading journey together that started while on long road trips in the car and has extended beyond that, I have come to see that most chefs who write memoirs have circuitous foodway journeys, and she is no exception. She grew up in the South in a lower-middle class military family, with a father who dumped the anger and frustration he was powerless to control in his life outside the house onto the women inside his house. She did not come naturally by the wherewithal to leave that all behind, and she recapitulated that with a bad boyfriend, and looking for a way to support herself and the child she had left that relationship with, she turned to food. She is now a James Beard Award-winning author who worked as the pastry chef to Tandy Wilson and Sean Brock, two of the South's most influential contemporary chefs, and — in part thanks to her famed Buttermilk Road pop-up suppers — developed a following in her own right for her bold inclusion of such traditional and often overlooked fare as Church Cakes and pies as the finishing flourishes to fine dining experiences. This is a chronicle of that journey and how it led her away from working in restaurants, at least for the time being. I liked this, but I did not love it.

Super Mario Brothers Movie (2023)

Nobody in my family thought this was a good movie, but I staunchly defended it as an enjoyable watch. At the time we watched it we were feeling a bit overwhelmed with the heavier things on offer for Oscar potential nominees and needed some lighter fare. We passed on Nimona as being a longer shot than this for a nomination (which turned out to be both wrong—it did get nominated—and wrong because it is a much stronger movie than we anticipated), and settled on this. This is a visually packed movie, which I am sure has a lot of references to Mario and Luigi and video games over the years—how could they avoid it? Staying power is something to celebrate, surely, and while I did not get any of it, you can tell it is there amidst the clutter. The story line is that Mario and Luigi are trying to get their plumbing business off the ground in Brooklyn. For reasons that escape me, other than that they are about to embark on a great adventure and that it has to start somewhere, find a massive chamber of pipes under Brooklyn, get sucked into one, and end up in the Mushroom Kingdom, which is being threatened by the villainous Bowser (Jack Black). The notorious bad guy has found the Super Star he needs to make his final assault on Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the residents of her kingdom, including Toad (Keegan-Michael Key). Bowser doesn't just want power; he wants to make the Princess his bride. So, creepy stalker stuff that Mario does an intervention and he and Luigi work on cementing their goofy hero status.

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

The author has once again set a fictional story in the midst of an historical event. As is her fashion in writing, we are plunked down into the action, and the rest of the story unfolds piecemeal across the story. The setting is the doomed settlement of Jamestown, Va. at the start of the 17th century. Our heroine, a young servant girl, has slipped out of the fort where her English companions are starving, freezing and suffering from smallpox — or already dead. She chose to flee and left behind her everything she had, her roof, her home, her country, her language, the only family she had ever known. The reasons beyond this for her flight are pretty consistent with the situation many young servants faced in the homes of what were essentially their masters. On so many levels they were not at all safe there, and it was a situation that encouraged malevolence rather than prevent it. So while the girl has fled with nothing and no one, and the wilderness is not safe or forgiving either, the reader is left to contemplate what fate is the harder to survive.

Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (2023)

After more than our share of movies with heavy messages and long running times, we were ready to take a break and watch some high end quality animation, and this did not disappoint. One review summed it up nicely: “The Great Escape” meets Colonel Sanders". If you are familiar with the previous Chicken Run, or you have seen claymation coming out of this studio in the past, you will not be disappointed by this. It is the usual story, chickens against the evil master, this one aiming to raise clueless chickens who unbeknownst to them are about to be turned into chicken nuggets. Still, even without Wallace and Gromit, most of the trademark joys are here: the compound of squashy creatures and heavy machinery, the wide, open-ended rictus of a toothy smile,the knowledge that no matter how bad it gets, our heroes will prevail, and the desceptively uncomplicated animation that defines claymation. Very enjoyable.

The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl

The author presents this as a literary devotional of sorts: there are fifty-two chapters, one for each week of the year, that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard each and every week,, with each chapter coupled with an illustration that the author's brother provided. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of highs and lows: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer. Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where the author raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires both hope and commitment. I wanted to love this, and I did love the illustrations quite a lot, but found this to be a little too superficial emotionally for me to think deeply about what the author presented.

Apolonia, Apolonia (2023)

This documentary is both quirky and strangely thorough. It was short listed for Best Documentary, but did not make the final list of nominees—I try to watch quite a few of these because for the three to four months between the ten categories that produce a short list are announced and when the Oscars occur is the only time that I actively and intentionally watch, talk, and think about documentaries. This is an intricate portrait of Apolonia Sokol, the on-the-rise French figurative painter whom Danish documentary filmmaker Lea Glob met in 2009 and filmed for 13 years, is full of such details. Sokol’s story of trying to find her artistic groove is a captivating one, but it is Glob’s own presence in the film that makes an equally memorable point about womanhood and artistry, and helps to double down on the film’s multifaceted thesis. The result is something deeply reflective about femininity, culture, commerce, friendship, sexuality and the various souls who dwell in the impossible intersection of it all. I know nothing about the nuts and bolts of being and becoming an artist. This walks the viewer through some pretty gritty realities of that world, all the while being true to it’s subject. Very well done.

How To Build A Boat by Elaine Feeney

I came to read this book because it was it was long listed for the 2023 Booker Prize, which is a list that I more or less read top to bottom each year. A motherless, neuro-divergent boy, Jamie, bonds with his childless teacher, Tess. Very few people connect with Jamie in a way that works for him, and not is Tess able to do so, she appears to get him when so many people around him do not. Jamie’s first day of secondary school was a complete catastrophe, except that he met Tess, an English teacher who treats him with kindness. Tess, like Jamie, never got to know her mother. Each feels lost in their own way. Tess and Jamie spend the school term getting to know each other and themselves. They learn to find their own places in the world, away from the expectations of others. Along the way, Tess, who’s struggling with infertility and a crumbling marriage, develops an attraction to the school’s woodworking teacher, who helps Jamie with a boat-building project that may allow him to process his mother’s death at last. Much like I found to be the case in The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night, scenes depicting Jamie’s challenges are made all the more upsetting by the fact that he cannot understand the full danger of the bullying he faces or of the bigotry being planted in the students’ minds by school staff members. His inborn rationality proves both a help and a hindrance, serving as a barrier to adults’ bad intentions and to more flexible ways of viewing the world that could help him better deal with his overwhelming emotions. This is ultimately a sweeter look at living with autism.