Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City by James Gardner

I discovered this book when I was doing some last minute preparation for a trip that I did not plan, so knew very little about the places we were going as a result. I had been to Buenos Aires over two decades before, on a trip with my parents, who neither speak Spanish nor were much interested in Latin American history, which is to say that I did not plan that trip either, and therefore did not get as much out of it as I might have. I did not read the book until I had gotten back, but the city was quite fascinating to visit and I came home wanting to know more--this book is a great antidote to that desire, because it takes you step by step through the long history of a resilient city. Buenos Aires was settled early in the Spanish colonization of the New World and like a number of South American cities, it played a secondary role to Potosi, the Bolivian mountain city out of which enough silver came to build a bridge from there to Spain. The story of how it began and then changed over time is pretty fascinating and also unique--the history of South America is one that I am less familiar with, and this is a good story well told.

The Mesmerist by Caroline Woods

My spouse got this book out of the library as an e-book and it came up in his search of murder mysteries. It does chronicle a murder, but it is by no means a book that I would put in that genre--it is more like historical fiction. He thought I would like it more than he, but in the end, it went the other way around. The book centers on a place that really did exist. Founded by a group of elite Quaker women, the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers opened its doors in 1876 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Amidst the glitz of the Gilded Age Twin Cities, the Bethany Home provided unmarried and outcast women and mothers with food, shelter, work, and a second chance at life. This book tells the story of three women within the walls of the Bethany Home in 1894: the real-life Bethany Home treasurer Abby Mendenhall, the naive and lovestruck resident May, and the mysterious and mesmerizing new resident Faith. As these women each fight to overcome the hardships dealt to them, they must also learn to survive perhaps the gravest danger of all: what is right in front of our eyes. Underlying their individual struggles there is a gruesome, bone-chilling, and immensely puzzling murder that overlays all that happens in the book.

Marching Band (2024)

I did not watch a lot of great movies on my long haul trips so far this year, but this is the winner. French film-maker Emmanuel Courcol has a nice touch with this dramedy. Benjamin Lavernhe plays Thibaut, a distinguished and sensitive orchestra conductor who collapses mid-rehearsal in Paris and is told he has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant donor. Thibaut is adopted and this means tracking down his biological brother out in the boondocks: factory worker Jimmy, played by the formidable Pierre Lottin, whose gift for deadpan comedy really only gets free rein at the very beginning of the film. Thibaut has the tricky task of asking someone who is a total stranger if he wouldn’t mind donating his bone marrow. But this fraught situation reveals – a little programmatically, perhaps – that Jimmy has a real musical talent, like him, plays trombone in the raucous factory band and nurses a passion for jazz on vinyl. Thibault sees in Jimmy a vision of what his own life could have been without his adoptive mother’s comfortable middle-class background, and sees Jimmy and himself through the lens of class, politics and society, and not the supposed destiny of pure talent. It is a great story well told, and it has the subtext of what the affirmative action of class provledge affords those who are born into it.

Food For Thought by Alton Brown

I liked this but I did not love it. That also sums up my feelings about Good Eats, which was a show that my family--five men--liked more than I did. I think the science of cooking was a great hook for them and it did almost nothing for me, although I did not find him annoying, which is not a given for this sort of show. Same can also be said about this book, which really is a collection of ruminations and expositions on a wide range of topics mixed in that mostly adds up to a bit of a memoir. There is a fair amount about what it was like to be him as a child, growing up in the South and largely without a father, how he really struggled in a traditional classroom and he repeatedly tells us this, that he barely got out of high school, but never seems to realize that the way he learns is not the way others learn, and that is where public education failed him. He strikes me as a kinesthetic learner--maybe he has since figured it out. There are a few details about his current life, and the story about what they did during COVID and what he learned about his wife and himself is charmingly told. Then in between there is the part about how he came to be known by all of us, how he more or less stumbled in to what he is now widely known for. This is a better book once I reflect on it, because the story telling is non-linear, but at the end you do emerge with a sense of things about him. If you like food memoirs, this isn't really that, but it is food adjacent and enjoyable with that lens.

Crizia, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We had some spectacular food on a recent trip to Argentina, and this was my favorite meal. While Argentinian beef is world reknowned, it really isn't my thing, and what you might forget in all the hype about the parilla grill, the gaucho, and the grasslands is that it has hundreds of miles of coastline. This restaurant is all about things that come out of the water. Owner-chef Gabriel Oggero works with small-scale independent producers, fishermen and farmers in order to source the very best seasonal ingredients (the restaurant also has its own rooftop city garden). Oysters are a particular speciality and fish-lovers will delight in a menu which is completely focused on seafood and shellfish.

I live in a very land-locked place, so having a dozen small plates of this kind is amazing to me, and then there is the presentation--there is an emphasis on natural things, with stones and wood featuring prominently as the vehicle for each dish, and then the ceramic plates and bowls are impressively gorgeous as well. The attention to detail is special, and I would definitely return here should we be in Buenos Aires in the future. As a bonus, it was a few minute walk from our hotel, where I would also return.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

I have been completely absorbed in getting all my badges for teh Goodreads challenges, and this fulfilled one of them. A satire and an indulgent romance tale, this is the first book in a trilogy penned by Kevin Kwan, starting in 2013-so this is a throwback, but also has the advantage that if you get into it, you can read the whole thing, you do not have to wait for the next two books to come out. I would usually advocate reading the book before seeing the movie, which is not what happened in this case--luckily I liked the movie, despite it's somewhat off putting title, and saw it long enough ago that I did not remember it clearly enough to be off put by the inconsistencies between the two. The book takes an in-depth look into the immense wealth, lavish lifestyles, culture, family expectations and innuendo that swirls around the rich families of Asia. With a specific focus on the heir of one of Singapore’s most well regarded families, Nicholas Young, the author considers the problems that arise when a son of old money in Asia, brings his Chinese American professor girlfriend back home. The complications of this potential ill match in the marriage stakes is set against another grand high society wedding. The upcoming nuptials of Colin, a close friend of Nicholas Young, provides Kevin Kwan with the room to explore the jetting setting life of the elite set of Singapore and surrounds. A story of wealth, love, family, honor, duty and culture, this book could either makes you stop and think for a moment what it would be like to live in this absurd world of affluence or it could make you grateful for your own flawed family.

Champions (2025)

This is a very enjoyable and entirely predictable romantic comedy. I watched this while I was traveling, and one plane landing while I still had about a quarter of the movie to go. While I was switching planes and waiting to board, I played out what I thought would likely happen and while I was not 100% correct, I nailed about 92% of it. That, in my mind, is what makes a successful movie in this genre--that you know exactly what will happen and you can't wait to watch it unfold. This is also a very likable sports comedy – what I did not know until I read a review of the movie is that it is a remake of the 2018 Spanish film Campeones (inspired by the real-life story of the Aderes basketball team in Burjassot) that delivers belly laughs and heartfelt charm in equal measure. Woody Harrelson plays Marcus Marakovich, an irascible assistant coach working in minor league basketball whose life unravels when he fights with his superior Phil (Ernie Hudson) on court and then drunkenly rear-ends a cop car on the road. To avoid prison, Marcus accepts 90 days’ community service coaching “adults with intellectual disabilities”. He is not what you would call enthusiastic about this, in fact he is rude and narrow minded, but as you might predict, they win his heart, and it is just a fun movie to watch.

I Leave It Up To You by Jinwoo Chong

I am usually not one for the gimmicky story line, but I have to say that I did enjoy this book--I did not read his first book, but it was apparently in the sci-fi genre, and this one gets extra points for breaking out of that mold as well. Jack Jr. wakes up from a coma after almost two years. He missed COVID altogether. He slept through it, which is maybe what a lot of people wished they could do. Prior to all this he had turned his back on his family and their Japanese restaurant run by his Korean family in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He had not seen them for quite some time when he had the accident that left him unconscious, but in the end they were the ones that stuck by him. While he was out, everyone else gradually evaporated, including his fiancé, and what he was left with was his family and their restaurant. So, reluctant as he had been to stay on, he returns, and it turns out that you can go home and lo and behold, he has quite the talent as a sushi chef with a knife. So much so that when his nephew makes videos of him preparing food he becomes a TikTok sensation. At the end of the day, this is a crowd pleaser. It kind of veers into YA territory in that respect, because usually when things are going too well for the characters, in an adult fiction piece of work you would expect a wrench in the works, but for the most part things progress smoothly and positively for the characters. It turns out we also want the best for Jack Jr. and his post-coma, post-COVID life as he picks up the pieces of what he left behind and re-examines how he lives, so a lot can be forgiven.

A New Deal For Quilts by Janneken Smucker

I stumbled upon this book as I try and read a lot of books about modern quilting in general (which is not what defines this book nor the quilts shown within) and quilting in general--this I would categorize as the History of Quilts. I did not know this, but might have surmised it if I had thought about it for half a minute, but during the Great Depression there was a large resurgence in quilting--quilts were used not just for bed, but because so many people became homeless during that time, they were used to delineate makeshift dwelling, and served as door and window cover for people living in broke down sheds and abandoned buildings. The photos in the book are as telling as the narrative, and are largely taken by government workers. They show quilts made by women and the women making them in some instances--there are black women and white women. There are poor women and middle class women. There are women living outside and those living inside. It was a time of making do with what you had, but some of these quilts were just exquisitely designed and pieced out of things that they had and things that they repurposed. They were an ode to scrap piecing, and fit beautifully into the throw nothing away philosophy of modern quilting.

The Road From Belhaven by Margot Livesey

This is a quiet book, set in Victorian Scotland, where the author returns to the life of her mother, who led a hard scrabble life replete with unappealing choices, the gift of second sight, and who died young. Lizzie can see see events that have yet to happen, but she cannot change them and she knows well enough that sharing her gift with others will lead to trouble. It is a time of superstition, and seeing the future is equated with the devil rather than as a gift from God. She makes quite a few mistakes, including the one where she believes the man she loves that he will marry her, only to find herself abandoned once she falls pregnant. The rest of the book flows from the subsequent choices that she makes as a result of this error in judgement, and what she does to survive, hide her secret, and find her way back to her child. In a time when America is populated by a large group of people who want to go back to a time when women have no reproductive choices in order to better control them makes this story more poignant. The patriarchy is alive and well, and while that used to annoy me, it now makes me very angry, and thus harder to relax and enjoy this story, which is well written and atmospheric.