Celebrate Mardi Gras at Home!

It's Mardi Gras Day! We used to live in New Orleans, so this is a major holiday at our house, as you may have heard in my video, Celebrate Everything, Big and Small. We usually celebrate on Saturday and again on Tuesday. Before the pandemic, we had an annual party with all the food, music, etc. on Saturday. With my immune issues, it's now a small celebration with our oldest friends, who lived in New Orleans when we did. We enjoyed takeout from a favorite local New Orleans restaurant (a husband and wife team who were both chefs in New Orleans, under two of the top chefs there!), plus lots of shrimp. Today, Mardi Gras day, we will finish off the season with our annual tradition of Popeye's at that same friends' house (yes, Popeye's is authentic Louisiana food). And, of course, we've decorated for the occasion, and I'm wearing purple, green, and gold with my beads on!

 

Want to join the fun? Here is a collection of ways to celebrate Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Louisiana today...including food, recipes, travel tips, movies & TV shows, and, of course, some great books! You can also check out my column in Shelf Awareness from last year that features books about and set in New Orleans, Armchair Travel: Destination New Orleans. And if you prefer a video, check out my Recommendations for Mardi Gras Reathathon: Books, Movies, and TV Shows.

 

Great Adult Books Set In/About Louisiana (additional titles in my article linked above):

• The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - I listened to Calla Lily's story on audio and laughed out loud & bawled my eyes out! It takes place in southern Louisiana, with plenty of local color.
• Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen - I loved this memoir about the food, history, people, and unique culture of New Orleans.
• Trail of Crumbs: Food, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunée - although this food-focused memoir covers everyplace from Sweden to France to Korea, the author grew up in New Orleans, where the food culture impacted the rest of her life.
• Burn by Nevada Barr - part of her Anna Pigeon series, about a National Park ranger, this one is set in the French Quarter (where there's a National Historic Park). I haven't read it yet, but I plan to this year!
• Mardi Gras Mourning by Julie Smith - I first read this back in the 90's and am rereading it now for the Mardi Gras Readathon on Booktube. It's a classic detective novel, set in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, so the setting and atmosphere are great!
• The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate - outstanding historical fiction set in Loiuisiana, with a dual timeline in 1863 and 1987. It made my list of Top Ten Audios in 2023! 
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is another excellent dual timeline historical novel, about twin sisters born in Louisiana. One moves to New Orleans and the other twin decides to "pass" as white and lives a very different life.
• Horse by Geraldine Brooks - in this historical novel from one of my favorite authors, some of the story takes place in 1800's Louisiana.
  

Middle-Grade and Teen/YA Books Set In/About Louisiana:

• Ruined by Paula Morris - a teen/YA mystery/ghost story set in New Orleans (the perfect setting for a ghost story!)
• The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman - a compelling middle-grade historical fiction adventure (with a touch of time travel), where a girl from 1960 travels back to 1860 Louisiana
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick - a middle-grade novel about Hurricane Katrina - powerful and gripping
• Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys - most people are familiar with her two YA novels set during WWII (Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea), but this historical novel is set in New Orleans in 1950

Movies & TV Shows

• Chef  - a wonderful, uplifting movie about a family food truck that travels from Miami to LA, with a stop in New Orleans, of course! My favorite movie of the year in 2015.
• NCIS: New Orleans - though it's a crime show, it includes many scenes of New Orleans, mention of local restaurants and landmarks, and other local tidbits, plus some great local music. They usually do a Mardi Gras episode once a season, for extra fun. It's streaming on Paramount Plus (which used to be CBS All Access).
• Treme - we LOVED this HBO show, which we were somehow able to watch on cable at one point. You can see it now streaming on HBO Max or Hulu.
  
• You can also check out some classic movies and modern classics with New Orleans settings, like A Streetcar Named Desire and The Big Easy.
• Or tune in to watch parades and other scenes in New Orleans streaming live (or if you missed the parades, some great videos) at www.mardigras.com.

One of the locals in Louisiana

Travel
All this talk of Louisiana making you want to visit? I have written articles about visiting New Orleans  and Exploring Cajun Country - check them out and start planning your trip (plenty of food recommendations in both!). I'm certainly ready to go back!

Crawfish!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry!
Notice that many of the books and movies about Louisiana are focused on FOOD? Yes, Louisiana - and especially New Orleans - is known for its amazing, unique food. This blog post on how to celebrate Mardi Gras includes my own recipes for some classic Louisiana dishes, plus food you can grab locally today and webcams where you can vicariously experience Mardi Gras - there are plenty of suggestions in this post that you can still manage to do between now and Tuesday. Or save it for later if you like - we eat this food all year round. 

NOTE that Zapp's potato chips - which you absolutely MUST try) have been bought out by PA-chip maker Utz, so you don't have to get them by mail-order anymore. We can now find them in local stores like Wawa here in Delaware or ordered on Amazon (Cajun Crawtator and Cajun Dill are the best flavors.)

 Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Me & my sons, about 10 years ago

Fiction Review: Rabbit Cake

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett was my last full-length novel of the year, read in the last days of December, and I absolutely loved it. I didn't review every book I read last year (a new approach for me), but I wanted to review my favorites and this qualifies! I met Annie Hartnett in May at Booktopia 2023, an annual event I attend every spring in Vermont at the Northshire Bookstore. I loved her novel Unlikely Animals (my review at the link) and really enjoyed talking to her, asking questions, and listening to her talk about the writing of the book. So, I wanted to read from her backlist, and my husband gave me Rabbit Cake for my birthday. This warm, funny, deeply moving novel lived up to my expectations!

Elvis, named after Elvis Presley because she shares his birthday, is ten years old when her mother sleepwalks to the nearby river and drowns. For the next eighteen months, Elvis, her fifteen-year-old sister, Lizzie, and their father each deal with their shock and grief in different ways. Like their mother, Lizzie is also a chronic sleepwalker, and that increases and worsens in her grief, leading to ever more bizarre sights greeting Elvis and her dad in the morning, including terrifying spates of sleep-eating and egg stealing. Lizzie also decides to set a world record for baking rabbit cakes, following in her mom's footsteps, since she always made a three-dimensional rabbit cake for special occasions. Their dad discovers a local parrot in the pet store who mimics his wife's voice and comments and brings it home. He also starts wearing his wife's lipstick and bathrobe at home. Elvis is pretty lost, mostly worried about her dad and her sister, and determined to uncover the details of her mother's death. She loves animals (her mom was an animal biologist), so she continues working on the book about animals and sleep that her mom was writing and starts volunteering at the local zoo. But this family has a long way to go through their grief and coping to heal and reconnect with each other.

As in Unlikely Animals, Hartnett here has created wonderfully real characters struggling with some very serious issues, but she writes about it all with a hefty dose of humor (listen to the audio sample to get a feel for the tone). You can probably tell from my description above, which is just the tip of the iceberg, that these are some very quirky characters--and that's where some of the humor comes from--but aren't we all a little weird in our own ways? In spite of their flaws, the characters are very likable, and smart, precocious Elvis is a wonderful narrator. We see her family's issues through her eyes, as she strives to understand grief. The family goes through some big challenges along the way, from a runaway to a stint in a mental hospital to some stolen rats, but in the end, they find each other again and start to heal. I enjoyed every minute of this tender, compassionate, hilarious look at grief and family ties. It was the perfect way to end my reading year!

327 pages, Tin House

Blackstone Audio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Alabama 

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Listening to it makes me want to reread the book!

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too - a different one).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

    
  

Fiction Review: The Reading List

I love listening to the Book Cougars podcast, and their second quarter read-along choice was The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (this year's theme for their read-alongs is books about books). This warm, moving novel about the power of books to connect people came to me at just the right time.

Seventeen-year-old Aleisha is reluctantly working at her local library in Wembley, London, for the summer. She's not much of a reader, but she took the job at the urging of her older brother, Aidan; the library is a special place to him that he has loved since he was a young child. The siblings now work together to care for their mother, who is confined to the house due to mental illness. It's a difficult life for both of them.

One day, a widower named Mukesh comes to the library for the first time and timidly approaches the desk to ask Aleisha to recommend a book. His wife died a year ago, and his three adult daughters worry about him but have busy lives of their own. His wife was an avid reader and always had a stack of books from the library on her nightstand. Their granddaughter, Priya, is just like her grandma, and Mukesh thinks that perhaps reading will help him to become closer to Priya and to his late wife, whom he misses so much. He found a library copy of The Time Traveler's Wife under their bed and read it. The novel opened a whole new world for him, helped him better understand his own loss, and gave him a glimpse of what his wife and Priya love so much about books. But he has no idea what to read next. When he asks Aleisha, she doesn't know what to say, but she found a list of books inside a book she was shelving earlier, so she suggests the first one from the list, To Kill a Mockingbird, and checks it out for him. Knowing the lonely man will return and want to talk to her about the book, Aleisha begins reading it also. That begins their own private book club, and the two isolated, struggling people both begin to reach out and connect, with each other and with their community.

The list Aleisha finds:

Just in case you need it:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Rebecca

The Kite Runner

Life of Pi

Pride and Prejudice

Little Women

Beloved

A Suitable Boy

(links to my own reviews, where available)

While Aleisha and Mukesh are at the heart of this story, that list makes the rounds of the community, and short, interstitial chapters provide a quick glimpse into the lives of other people who find the list of books in various places. In all, the novel weaves together the story of a community and of people coming together via the books they read. Mukesh and Aleisha are both suffering, and their healing journeys are highlighted here. It's a beautiful, heartwarming story, but it doesn't shy away from difficult topics like death, mental illness, and suicide. I read this novel during a difficult time in my own life, grieving the loss of our 13-year-old grand-nephew, and like the characters, the gentle but honest tones of the novel helped me to cope. It's all about people and connections, but it is also a love letter to books (I've read all but two of the books on the list). I greatly enjoyed experiencing these books (many of them my own favorites) through the eyes of these characters just discovering the power of reading for the first time.

400 pages, William Morrow

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - R

Diversity Challenge (and East Asian mini challenge)

Travel the World in Books - UK

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. It sounds like a wonderful audio production, with multiple narrators.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

  
  

Celebrate Mardi Gras!

It's Mardi Gras weekend! We used to live in New Orleans, so this is a major holiday at out house, as you may have heard in my recent video, Celebrate Everything, Big and Small. We usually celebrate on Saturday and again on Tuesday. Before the pandemic, we had an annual party with a few friends (many of whom also lived in New Orleans when we did) on Saturday. Tonight it will be a smaller Zoom gathering, but I have a pot of jambalaya cooking on the stove, a fresh King Cake from a local bakery on the counter, plus we'll pick up some steamed shrimp and trade some jambalaya for bread pudding with some friends! Tuesday, Mardi Gras day, we will finish off the season with our annual tradition of Popeye's at a friend's house (yes, Popeye's is authentic Louisiana food!).

 

Want to join the fun? Here is a collection of ways to celebrate Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Louisiana today...including food, recipes, travel tips, movies & TV shows, and, of course, some great books! You can also check out my column in Shelf Awareness from last year that features books about and set in New Orleans, Armchair Travel: Destination New Orleans.

 

Great Adult Books Set In/About Louisiana (additional titles in my article linked above):

• The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - I listened to Calla Lily's story on audio and laughed out loud & bawled my eyes out! It takes place in southern Louisiana, with plenty of local color.
• Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen - I loved this memoir about the food, history, people, and unique culture of New Orleans.
• Trail of Crumbs: Food, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunée - although this food-focused memoir covers everyplace from Sweden to France to Korea, the author grew up in New Orleans, where the food culture impacted the rest of her life.
  

Middle-Grade and Teen/YA Books Set In/About Louisiana:

• Ruined by Paula Morris - a teen/YA mystery/ghost story set in New Orleans (the perfect setting for a ghost story!)
• The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman - a compelling middle-grade historical fiction adventure (with a touch of time travel), where a girl from 1960 travels back to 1860 Louisiana
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick - a middle-grade novel about Hurricane Katrina - powerful and gripping
• Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys - most people are familiar with her two YA novels set during WWII (Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea), but this historical novel is set in New Orleans in 1950

Movies & TV Shows

• Chef  - a wonderful, uplifting movie about a family food truck that travels from Miami to LA, with a stop in New Orleans, of course! My favorite movie of the year in 2015.
• NCIS: New Orleans - though it's a crime show, it includes many scenes of New Orleans, mention of local restaurants and landmarks, and other local tidbits, plus some great local music. They usually do a Mardi Gras episode once a season, for extra fun. It's streaming on Paramount Plus (which used to be CBS All Access).
• Treme - we LOVED this HBO show, which we were somehow able to watch on cable at one point. You can see it now streaming on HBO Max or Hulu.
  
• You can also check out some classic movies and modern classics with New Orleans settings, like A Streetcar Named Desire and The Big Easy.
• Or tune in to watch parades and other scenes in New Orleans streaming live (or if you missed the parades, some great video clips) at www.mardigras.com.

One of the locals in Louisiana

Travel
All this talk of Louisiana making you want to visit? I have written articles about visiting New Orleans  and Exploring Cajun Country - check them out and start planning your trip (plenty of food recommendations in both!). I'm certainly ready to go back!

Crawfish!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry!
Notice that many of the books and movies about Louisiana are focused on FOOD? Yes, Louisiana - and especially New Orleans - is known for its amazing, unique food. This blog post on how to celebrate Mardi Gras includes my own recipes for some classic Louisiana dishes, plus food you can grab locally today and webcams where you can vicariously experience Mardi Gras - there are plenty of suggestions in this post that you can still manage to do between now and Tuesday. Or save it for later if you like - we eat this food all year round. 

NOTE that Zapp's potato chips - which you absolutely MUST try) have been bought out by PA-chip maker Utz, so you don't have to get them by mail-order anymore. We can now find them in local stores like Wawa here in Delaware....though we still ordered a carton of assorted flavors for Mardi Gras! (Cajun Crawtator and Cajun Dill are the best.)

 

Me & my sons, about 10 years ago

 

Nonfiction Review: Crying in H Mart

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner has been one of the most popular books this year and is on many Best Books of 2021 lists. My husband gave it to me for my birthday this summer, and I couldn't wait to tackle it for Nonfiction November. It was just as moving and powerful as I'd heard, and I enjoyed this heart-breaking story of a mother-daughter relationship, set against the backdrop of Korean food and culture.

The author is Korean-American, born in Korea to a Korean mother and an American father. They moved back to the United States when she was very young and ended up settling in Oregon. Michelle had a complicated relationship with her mother, who clearly loved her very much but could also be very hard on her and demanding. She held her daughter to high standards. During her teen years, Michelle went through a typical adolescent rebellion, beginning to play music in a band and moving away from her mother emotionally. After college across the country in Philadelphia, she began to reconnect with her mother. She also met the man who would become her husband. At twenty-five years old, just as Michelle felt like she was beginning to get her life together and enjoy her mother's company again, her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer, endured horrible treatments, and soon died. Throughout their relationship, from early childhood to the end of her mother's life, Korean food and culture (and Korea itself) provided common ground for the mother and daughter, and after her mother's death, Michelle turned to these familiar things for comfort and healing.

As with most memoirs, a plot summary doesn't even begin to convey the full story. Michelle's writing is evocative and immersive, especially for someone so young, and she tells her story with a great deal of raw emotion. Reading it made me smile and tear up ... and so miss my own father, who died of melanoma six years ago. Here, she describes in one sentence the complexity of her relationship with her mother:

"There was no one in the world that was ever as critical or could make me feel as hideous as my mother, but there was no one, not even Peter, who ever made me feel as beautiful."

There is plenty of emotional depth here but also such vibrant details about her visits to Korea and about the food her mother, and later she, cooked. Most of it was unfamiliar to me, but her descriptions are so rich and vivid, I could almost taste the flavors. So, for both memoir lovers and those who enjoy food writing (or both!), this is a powerful, beautifully written book.

239 pages, Alfred A. Knopf

Random House Audio

One of my favorite podcasts, Happier with Gretchen Reuben, chose Crying in H Mart  for its book club this summer and interviewed Michelle Zauner in Episode 334. You can listen to it here or in our favorite podcast app. I've been saving it and will be listening to it tomorrow!

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, read by the author, and/or download it from Audible. It sounds great - I always enjoy listening to memoirs read by the author and this excerpt explains the book's title and essence.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   
  

Or you can order Crying in H Mart from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Fiction Review: The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

I just finished listening to a Big Book on audio (yes, audios count for the Big Book Summer Challenge, too, based on the page count in the print book): The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames. This novel was published in 2019, and I’d heard rave reviews of it and had been saving it for Big Book Summer!

 

It's the story of a woman named Stella, who encounters many life-threatening incidents during her childhood in a rural mountain village in Italy and her youth and adult life in the United States. Stella’s father returns from WWI when Stella is very young, though he soon leaves the family again for America. Stella, her mother, and the siblings his father leaves behind after each visit are often left on their own, with no support (he rarely sends money home). It’s a hard life, but they are mostly happy when her father is away, surrounded by loving family, their modest home and garden, and the beautiful Italian countryside. Stella is especially close to her sister, Tina, and protects her. When her father insists the family emigrate and join him in America, it means massive changes for them all. The story is told from the perspective of a family member in Connecticut in the present day, telling the family history by following her grandmother Stella’s life from childhood through adolescence, maturity, marriage, and all the way to old age. Stella’s life is never easy, she accurately refers to her father as a monster, and she seems to never experience a day of happiness.

 

In case you couldn’t tell from that description, this is a very dark novel. It's well-written and engrossing, with a vivid sense of time and place in its different settings and interesting characters. However, it is also very dark and quite disturbing at times, dealing with some terrible instances of abuse that I found hard to listen to. And I was greatly troubled that much of it goes undiscussed in the family and unpunished (there is finally some odd resolution but not until the damage has been done). It’s a long novel, following multiple generations of the Fortuna family, and while I was interested and engaged in the story, it was just too much darkness for me. I can handle some difficult themes if there is also hope; there was none here, at least not for Stella. All in all, it is an engaging, richly-described family history, covering two countries, a hundred years of history, and multiple generations, though with a tone of despair and some disturbing scenes.

464 pages, Ecco

HarperAudio

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

  
  

Or you can order The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Fiction Review: A Gentleman in Moscow

Partway through reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles this month, I said to my husband, "When I hear everyone I know saying a book is amazing, I should listen!" That was the case with this unique and extraordinary novel. I kept hearing rave reviews of it, both from friends and reviewers, but somehow I didn't get around to reading it on my own. So, I am grateful that one of my book groups chose it as our April selection. Everyone else in the group agreed that this is a warm, funny, beautifully written, and uplifting novel.

In 1922 Russia, thirty-year-old poet Count Alexander Rostov goes before a Bolshevik tribunal, upon his return to the country from Europe. They declare him an "unrepentant aristocrat" and sentence him to house arrest at the Metropol, a fancy hotel across the street from the Kremlin. The Count has been living at the hotel since his return anyway, but now he is quickly moved from his luxurious suite with its expansive views to a tiny room in the attic on the sixth floor. He can move about the hotel freely but can not leave its premises. For someone used to dining in the best restaurants, attending the theater and ballet, and traveling extensively, this is quite a difficult transition for him, and Rostov struggles at first. Then, a precocious nine-year-old girl named Nina befriends him one day in the lobby, wanting to know what real princesses are like and how they behave. The two become fast friends, and Nina opens his eyes to a whole world behind the scenes of his familiar hotel, as they explore basement passages, get to know staff, and hide in the balcony to watch meetings held in the ballroom. Rostov is naturally resilient and upbeat, and Nina helps him to see his circumstances in a new light, even long after she returns to school. He forms deep friendships within the walls of the hotel, excels at a job he acquires there, and builds his life there over the decades. Eventually, another little girl comes into his life who will again transform him, and he, in turn, must care for her.

It is easy to describe what happens in this novel but so much harder to describe how it made me feel. From its first pages, the book is entirely engrossing, Rostov completely charming, and Nina irresistible. The writing is beautiful and filled with so many thoughtful, insightful passages that my copy has many tabbed pages that I need to transcribe to my Quote Journal before I return it to the library. Here are just a couple of brief examples of Rostov's astute musings:

"But imagining what might happen if one's circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness."

"By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration--and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour."

Though it takes place mostly within the walls of this one building over the course of decades, the novel took me on a tremendous emotional journey, making me cry twice and laugh out loud over and over. That, to me, is the mark of a truly great novel: one that can make me feel. My entire book group felt the same way. In fact, our average rating as a group was an unprecedented 9.6 out of 10! It is poignant, funny, and compelling and is all about living in the present and finding small joys in every day life. I absolutely loved reading it and highly recommend it.

462 pages, Viking

My book group was thrilled to hear that this wonderful novel is being adapted into a limited TV series starring Kenneth Branagh--I can't wait!

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith, and/or download it from Audible. It sounds great on audio!

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   
  

 

Or you can order A Gentleman in Moscow from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Celebrate Mardi Gras Today!

A Mardi Gras float heads down Canal Street - Mardi Gras 1988

Today is Mardi Gras day - we used to live in New Orleans, so this is a major holiday at out house! We had our annual party with a few friends (many of whom also lived in New Orleans when we did) on Saturday, and today, we will finish off the season with our annual tradition of Popeye's at a friend's house (yes, Popeye's is authentic Louisiana food!).

 

Want to join the fun today? Here is a collection of ways to celebrate Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Louisiana today...including food, recipes, travel tips, movies & TV shows, and, of course, some great books! You can also check out my column in Shelf Awareness from last year that features books about and set in New Orleans, Armchair Travel: Destination New Orleans.

 

Great Adult Books Set In/About Louisiana (additional titles in my article linked above):

• The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - I listened to Calla Lily's story on audio and laughed out loud & bawled my eyes out! It takes place in southern Louisiana, with plenty of local color.
• Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen - I loved this memoir about the food, history, people, and unique culture of New Orleans.
• Trail of Crumbs: Food, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunée - although this food-focused memoir covers everyplace from Sweden to France to Korea, the author grew up in New Orleans, where the food culture impacted the rest of her life.
  

Middle-Grade and Teen/YA Books Set In/About Louisiana:

• Ruined by Paula Morris - a teen/YA mystery/ghost story set in New Orleans (the perfect setting for a ghost story!)
• The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman - a compelling middle-grade historical fiction adventure (with a touch of time travel), where a girl from 1960 travels back to 1860 Louisiana
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick - a middle-grade novel about Hurricane Katrina - powerful and gripping
• Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys - most people are familiar with her two YA novels set during WWII (Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea), but this historical novel is set in New Orleans in 1950

Movies & TV Shows

• Chef  - a wonderful, uplifting movie about a family food truck that travels from Miami to LA, with a stop in New Orleans, of course! My favorite movie of the year in 2015.
• NCIS: New Orleans - though it's a crime show, it includes many scenes of New Orleans, mention of local restaurants and landmarks, and other local tidbits. They usually do a Mardi Gras episode around this time of year, so check your cable On Demand.
• You can also check out some classic movies and modern classics with New Orleans settings, like A Streetcar Named Desire and The Big Easy.
• Or tune in to watch parades and other scenes in New Orleans streaming live (or if you missed the parades, some great video clips) at www.mardigras.com.

One of the locals in Louisiana

Travel
All this talk of Louisiana making you want to visit? I have written articles about visiting New Orleans  and Exploring Cajun Country - check them out and start planning your trip (plenty of food recommendations in both!). I'm certainly ready to go back!

Crawfish!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry!
Notice that many of the books and movies about Louisiana are focused on FOOD? Yes, Louisiana - and especially New Orleans - is known for its amazing, unique food. This blog post on how to celebrate Mardi Gras includes my own recipes for some classic Louisiana dishes, plus food you can grab locally today and webcams where you can vicariously experience Mardi Gras - there are plenty of suggestions in this post that you can still manage to do TODAY! Or save it for tomorrow if you like - we eat this food all year round. 

NOTE that Zapp's potato chips - which you absolutely MUST try) have been bought out by PA-chip maker Utz, so you don't have to get them by mail-order anymore. We can now find them in local stores like Wawa here in Delaware....though we still ordered a carton of assorted flavors for Mardi Gras! (Cajun Crawtator and Cajun Dill are the best.)

Me & my sons, about 10 years ago

Memoir Review: Running on Red Dog Road

I'd never heard of the memoir my book group chose for January, Running on Red Dog Road: And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood by Drema Hall Berkheimer, but it sounded intriguing to me. I ended up enjoying it very much, and it was a great book to kick off my new year: light, warm, funny, and nostalgic.

The author goes all the way back to when she was just four years old, starting her memoir with some of her earliest memories. It was during WWII, and her mother and aunt were Rosie the Riveters, working up in Buffalo, New York, while Drema and her sister lived with their grandparents in a cozy little house with a Victory Garden in rural West Virginia. You learn everything you need to know about Grandma on the first page, when she admonishes Drema to say "Japanese," even if everyone else is saying "Japs," while she's making a little apron to cover the Venus de Milo lamp her mother sent home from NY! Grandpa is similarly a kind and loving man, still working in the mines in spite of black lung disease in order to earn his pension and preaching on the weekends. The memoir describes an idyllic childhood in this caring family, as Drema and her best friend, Sissy, run and play and secretly "sin" (playing gin rummy on sleepovers at Sissy's house). There are some serious and sad events in her life, as well, touched (as are all lives) by death and challenges like alcoholism. Mostly, though, the author focuses on the highlights of her childhood, which include snake handlers, gypsies, and moonshiners!

The tone of this memoir is mostly lightness and fun, with a great sense of humor. It's just a pleasure to read. While everyone in our book group enjoyed reading it, some were disappointed that there wasn't more depth to the book--more digging into the hard stuff--but I think she set out to write from the perspective of her child self, who lives a happy and carefree childhood. And she does this quite successfully, capturing the lightness and fun of being a child during a simpler time. All of us enjoyed the nostalgia of the memoir, and we spent much of our book group discussion reminiscing about our own childhoods and families. It's that kind of memoir, that makes you smile and say, "Oh, I remember that!" It is also a love letter to her grandparents and her family, and the memoir opens with a modern scene of her grandmother, 100 years old, at a birthday celebration with five generations of women in the family present. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this delightful childhood memoir, smiling all the way through and often laughing out loud.

208 pages, Zondervan

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Listen to a sampleof the audio book here and/or download it from Audible. The narrator has a lovely Appalachian voice - the sample is from the beginning of the book, the prologue at her grandma's 100th birthday and the start of the childhood memoir. Try it - you'll be hooked!

You can purchase Running on Red Dog Road from an independent bookstore, either locally or online, here:

Or you can order Running on Red Dog Road from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Graphic Memoir Review: Guts

I loved Raina Telgemeier's first two middle-grade graphic memoirs about her childhood, Smile and Sisters (as well as her graphic novel, Drama), so I was excited to see a new book released, Guts. This graphic memoir is all about her experiences as a middle-grader dealing with chronic stomach problems and anxiety. Like the others, it is honest, warm, and funny, as well as a great way to talk to kids about a difficult topic.

The book starts with young Raina and her mom both getting a stomach virus, never a pleasant experience for anyone! Afterward though, Raina develops a phobia about vomit and some lingering stomach pains and upset, though the doctor can find nothing wrong. Raina tries to live her life--going to school, spending time with friends, eating meals with her family--but her symptoms get worse and worse, and her fears and anxieties expand. Now, she's worrying about friends, school, food, and just about every aspect of her life and adopting strange coping mechanisms, in a fruitless effort to have more control over her life. Eventually, she is diagnosed with IBS and anxiety, gets some help from a therapist, and finally opens up to her friends.

A sample page from Guts by Raina Telgemeier

As with all of Raina's memoirs, it is refreshing to see the matter-of-fact way that she addresses problems that many kids deal with but don't want to talk about. In fact, this book would make a great starting point for kids who themselves experience similar issues and don't know how to open up about what they're feeling. The book also provides a roadmap for healthy coping: talking to your parents, seeing a doctor, working with a therapist, and trusting your friends. And, besides, this book is also humorous and a lot of fun! As always, Raina imbues her real-life account with plenty of laughs and her trademark colorful, realistic drawings that help to bring the story to life. This is another winner from Raina Telgemeier, whether you and your kids are looking for support and encouragement or just plain old entertainment.

211 pages, Graphix (Scholastic)

You can purchase Guts from an independent bookstore, either locally or online, here:

Or you can order Guts from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.