Sunday Dinner... or The Sunday Salon and 3 "Dinner" Books to wet your appetite.

Welcome to The Sunday Salon and Chick with Books! It's been beautiful weather here in South Carolina. The evenings are starting to be a little cooler and we've been able to enjoy dinner outside after a long day of doing "stuff". "Stuff" still includes unpacking moving boxes, but it also includes finishing up planting a butterfly and bird garden that I started a few months ago when we first landed here. Slowly I'm getting back to having some time to read, which got put on the back burner during all this moving chaos. My Mom came for a visit a few weeks ago and we lounged around a few days reading the books we picked up while on a shopping trip. Mom's book was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which she really enjoyed, and mine was The Stand by Stephen King, which at over 1000 pages I have not finished, but am enjoying quite a bit. This is the expanded edition, or what you may call the "unedited" version, where King expands some of the storylines he "abbreviated" in the original book because the publishers thought it was too long...

A few weeks ago I also read about The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle, which made me think of another book I read called Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent, which made me hungry for more "Dinner books", and so for this weeks Sunday Salon I thought I would share some "Dinner" with you...

First course... 

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle... "When Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together... At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in her utterly captivating novel, THE DINNER LIST."

What a fun premise for a book! Protagonist Sabrina has 5 people at her dinner, who would your 5 people be? This is one my nightstand waiting for a spare moment to dive in for dinner. (I might have to put Stephen K. down to read this now!) I gave you a teaser friday with the first lines, but from what I've read about The Dinner List, this is worth a full reading! Rave reviews!

Second course...

Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent... "When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life."

I happen to pick this up at the library as I was looking through the new book shelves one day. This was a while back because it is now in paperback and I read the hardcover. I have to tell you I was absolutely charmed by this book and loved it! The friendship and love that grow between Edward and Isabel is wonderful, the dinners Edward cooks are amazing to read about, and the story is just perfect. I read this in a few sittings because I wanted to savor it. It's a mere 240 pages, but I would definitely tell you to pick up a copy if you love "foodie" books and romances. This is not fiction though, it's 100% the real deal!

Final course...

Dinner with Georgia O'Keeffe by Robyn Lea... "chronicles the artist’s lifestyle and work through food. That it coincides with the “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is happenstance. While the show links Ms. O’Keeffe’s strong fashion sense to her art, the book goes further, adding the aesthetic of her homes and dinner table to the equation. Early on, the artist was a devotee of health foods. At a time, about 60 years ago, when the trend was hardly on the radar, she insisted on whole grains, some of which she ground herself; yogurt, which she could make; and organic ingredients. “She is quite a cook,” her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, once wrote."

Who would not want to have dinner with Georgia O'Keeffe?! An amazing bold artist who made a statement with every painting she did, who had an incredible sense of fashion and who we now learn was ahead of her time in the kitchen. The book contains 50 of her favorite recipes, with notes and quotes. Love the idea of her handwritten notes about the recipes are included. And from what I can tell, the photography is beautiful. This is on my wish list!

Do You Like to Read "Foodie" books... 

Books that have stories that include recipes or talk about food?

That about does it for this week...

Happy reading... Suzanne