The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Ok, first of all, I made a mistake here. I added this to my library holds, I cannot remember why, but it happened in the flurry of articles about "The Best Books of 2025 So Far". Somehow in the rush to capture things I thought I would like but had not discovered, I missed that this book is categorized under "Horror", which is a genre that I most definitely do not read. Consider that as you read forward! I thought this was a non-fiction book, and I have a stack of them to read out from the library, so I brought it on a plane trip, and even though I recognized my mistake, I felt committed at that point, and read it. This isn't a fun read or even necessarily an enjoyable one, and the subject matter is dark and difficult to stomach at times. It is however is an unforgettable novel about a Pikuni vampire seeking revenge related to all that happened to both the buffalo and the Blackfoot in the mid-nineteenth century. So if horror is your jam, you might enjoy this.

La Mexicana, Coralville, Iowa

We had a family dinner here recently to celebrate my son's birthday. It is definitely our favorite Mexican restaurant in the Iowa City area--we literally drive by 6 or 7 other Mexican restaurants to get to it, we feel that strongly. My son has three small children and it has several advantages to recommend it for this occasion. One is that it is continually open, so that we don't have to get there before the lunch service ands or wait for the dinner service to begin--that is not an issue, and the added bonus is that if you are eating at an odd hour it is likely that you can get a table for 8 or more without difficulty. Truely, we never have an issue with it--there is a lot of flexible seating, and the service is fast, so turnover happens quickly. Second is that it is a bit loud and raucous while being kid friendly, so perfect table manners are not absolutely required. Then there is the food--all three of the aforementioned small children could find multiple things on the menu that appealed to them, and in actuality the chips with a salsa and a bean dip were most popular and they took a bulk of their ordered food home. There are several options that are popular and good for the adults--the chili relleno and the choripollo to name two. On this occasion there were a lot of tacos, but the rice and beans are very solid and we all leave happy every time. Finally, there is a grocery store connected to the restaurant and that was a fun stop for candy and cookies on the way out.

There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone

There is one common thread when reading about homelessness in America--it is always gut wrenching and unfair. This is no exception. The twist is that the five families that the author follows in Atlanta are all working. The people in this book work a lot, and earn very little. Sleeping in cars, crashing with friends or paying for a decrepit room in an extended-stay hotel, they are trapped in an endless circle of poverty and uncertainty. Politicians have been incentivized to define homelessness narrowly, including only people living in shelters or on the street. A true measure of homelessness in America would be six times the official figure, pushing the number up to more than four million. It always leaves me wondering how you can feel exceptional when as a country you step on the most impoverished amongst us. The allowance for wages that do not add up to being able to feed, cloth, and house one's family is what underlies this tragedy. That things like food stamps and Medicaid serve to make people depend on government subsidies when the companies that employ people should be shouldering that burden.

Wish (2023)

This movie got a lot of very bad reviews, and where the story goes, this is a sub par addition to the Disney ouevre. The best rap of it is that it is all about emphasizing Disney's 100th anniversary, and that wishing upon a star is one of the oldest Disney tropes out there. From my point of view, that is 100% okay, that making a movie that harkens to their past once every 100 years is excusable. The downside is that the story does not drive the plot, the foundational concept does. So here is the story. Asha is a 17-year-old about to interview for an apprenticeship with the beloved King Magnifico of Rosas. The King is the keeper of magic in Rosas, a man who can extract the wishes of his flock, keeping them in a chamber high above the city, and choosing one wish in a ceremony to allow to come true. Asha hopes that her 100-year-old grandfather Sabino will finally have his wish granted, but she discovers that Magnifico isn’t well named. He’s more of a hoarder of wishes than a granter, and someone who doesn't keep his promises. Of course this is Disney, so Asha isn’t just an ordinary girl who learns about the absolute corruption of absolute power—she becomes a magical figure herself when a wishing star grants her abilities that turn her into a leader for her people. Asha literally wishes on a Star, and said Star comes down to cause chaos and help Asha start a revolution.

A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes (1929)

I have recently gotten hooked on the Friday videos by Ann Patchett that she does from her bookstore in Nashville, Parnassus Books, and this book was recommended in the series that they do on important books from the past that have been forgotten and shouldn't be. In thinking about the book and preparing to write this review, I found a review by someone who read it as a teenager and then again as a middle aged man. He found it full of adventure and strange and unknown things that enthralled him--that was definitely not my experience, nor was it his the second time around. This is an odd story, creepy even, told from both adult and child points of view and takes place sometime before 1860. The Thornton children and 2 mixed race children are placed on a ship to get them to England, where their parents are waiting for them. Their ship is boarded by pirates pirates, a profession that is no longer profitable but they haven't cross trained to do something else, but neither are they completely blood thirsty villains either. They are unable to wrench any valuables from the ship they have boarded, and they take the children to their ship in an effort to convince the Clorinda captain to hand over his money. He does so, probably more to save his own skin, but, about the children, he gets confused and thinks the pirates have murdered them, and, so, he sails away in the dark. The pirates awaken to find they have the children now as unwanted passengers. You will have to read to see what happens--it is in some ways worse than you think and in other ways better. Richard Percival Graves, in his biography of Hughes, placed this novel between RM Ballantyne’s optimistic adventure story The Coral Island, published in 1858, which shows a group of children cast away on a deserted atoll “to be naturally good, decent and self-reliant,” and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, published almost 100 years later, in which the civilized values of adult society are soon jettisoned by the schoolboys who turn to savagery on their island. A High Wind in Jamaica takes no sides as it patrols the eccentric, sometimes amoral borders between a child’s and an adult’s natural territory.

Restaurante Lurrak, Arbonne, France

We spent almost a week in Basque country and one day of it was spent in French Basque ountry. We did not get to a memorable bakery, and we did not get any cheese, so that was disappointing to the point of needing to go back when time is less of an issue, but the restaurant we ate at was perfect.

The emphasis on seasonal food, and the fact that we were there when it was white asparagus, artichoke, and strawberry season was exceptional, and we were able to have these delicacies almost every day. The top picture is of a lightly pickle and thinly sliced kohlrabi that was absolutely the best version of this spring vegetable that I have ever had. The kitchen was small, as was the restaurant, but it was a memorable and delicious lunch!

A Blissful Feast by Teresa Lust

The trouble with going to the less traveled spots is that sometimes it is hard to find books that cover said regions. I have an acquaintance who travels extensively and often who swears by travel blogs as a source from which to plan your trips. She travels off the beaten path, and I am seeing the wisdom of her way. So I picked this up because it starts in Piedmont, a region that I am traveling to very soon. The author's maternal grandparents came from the Italian Piedmont, and it's there that she begins her what is part memoir, part recollection of culinary lessons and cultural insights in three parts of the country. The book contains more than 35 recipes for the likes of braised rabbit with white wine and rosemary, breakfast biscotti, and tagliatelle made with fresh eggs, the real instruction comes through the stories Lust tells about the cooks who fed her and whom she worked alongside to learn how to cook regionally in Italy. Ancient and contemporary Italy overlap in her stories of cooks and marketplaces, restaurants and holiday feasts, regional rivalries and evocations of Dante. She went to Piedmont to learn Italian at a language school, and she recounts her struggles when the limitation of her language skills led to challenges in her understanding the conversations she had with the cooks, bakers, and butchers but as her skill improved her stories have more depth and interest. It really stuck with her, because she is now a professor in Italian language study at Dartmouth, and some of the stories towards the end of her book are about trying to take the cuisine of Italy home to New England. I especially appreciated her story of harvesting hops shoots and how perplexing it was for the farms caretaker to understand what she was about. There is a hazard that you're likely to want to make your own trip to Italy, and luckily I had that in hand before I started the book.

Nonnas (2025)

One of my kids and I watch movies together when my spouse is on call or out of town. We watch things that are not clear winners, and also things that might not hit the spot for him--in this case I think he would have been ok with this (we watched Kung Fu Panda 4 this way, and that was a clear win-win. We found it modestly entrertaining and he would not have agreed I predict). This is inspired by the life of Jody Scaravella, who moved into the attic bedroom of his childhood home to care for his mother. When she died he was bereft, set afloat and asea, not knowing quite what to do next. In the midst of his grief, and maybe not thinking as clearly as would be ideal, he opened Enoteca Maria on Staten Island in 2007. Still thriving two decades later, the restaurant became famous for the grandmothers or nonnas in the kitchen. Each of them cooking dishes from different Italian regions. His concept was that the restaurant and the food would remind you of home, that the kitchen would be populated not by prodessional chefs but by people who were cooking food they had made for their families for decades. There is also a thread here of hanging on to your culture, and that the recipes that our grandmother's made being made now is a way to hang on to that history. It’s about holding onto tradition—conjuring our ancestors through the things they pass down to us—whether it’s culture, inheritance, or food. I just saw a recipe for Molasses Cookies in my grandmother's handwriting in my recipe book this past week and it made me think of so much more than her or those cookies. Even though I did not find the recipe that I was looking for, it was quite lovely to peak in to my past.

Confessions by Catherine Airey

This is a complicated novel that shifts between the past and present, between narrators, and also between truths--there are a lot of secrets herein. It opens opens in New York on 9/11. Sixteen-year-old Cora, who is playing truant, watches the news from her apartment, and knows that her father is dead. Michael was an accountant who worked on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Cora’s mother Máire died seven years earlier, so she is now an orphan. From here, the story cuts back to 1974, to rural Ireland, and a narrative told by Cora’s aunt Róisín. We see Cora’s parents, Máire (Róisín’s sister) and Michael (who lives next door) growing up in Burtonport, Donegal. Máire travels to the USA to study at NYU. She is a born artist, but troubled, and people prey on her. Michael joins her, trying to help. The second half of the novel stitches to and fro across the decades, ending in 2023. Passages are narrated by Róisín, Michael, and Cora’s daughter Lyca, who uncovers half a century’s worth of family stories and secrets, and must decide what to do with them. They shape shift in all sorts of ways besides who is narrating and this complex task is handled well--the story comes out surprisingly seamless despite a myriad of ways the story is told. The secrets Lyca uncovers are borne by the women of the family, and involve addiction, adoption, rape, mental illness, gay rights, abortion rights and intergenerational trauma: it takes on big subjects and as debut novels go, this one is impressive.

Restaurante Alameda, Hondarribia, Spain

This was a fancy restaurant in a bustling seaside town in Northern Spain, the most atmosperically fancy place we ate on this trip. There were gorgeous sculptures made from large pieces of wood that towered over table in the dining room, while we ate outside on the reiver's side. The food was all from the region, and it was seasonal. We started off with Fois gras truffles and several fish dishes, and finished with some fruit forward desserts. The one pictured here, a green apple and green pea sorbet, was unusual, refreshing and unexpectedly delicious. The food here was notable for unexpected pops, and I would highly recommend this as a destination.