Book Rec of the Day 8/31/07-9/4/07 (5 total)

“Poignant...an astonishing account.”—The New York Times

The story of Maria Grammatico’s life reads like a fairy tale. Her mother was too poor to care for her so she sent her to a cloistered orphanage in a rural Sicilian village. Maria suffered hard labor and deprivation, but she learned the craft of artisanal pastry making. She left the convent at 22 and opened her own pasticceria, which is one of the world’s finest. If you like food (there are recipes throughout), travel, and happy endings, read this book.

BITTER ALMONDS: RECOLLECTIONS AND RECIPES FROM A SICILIAN GIRLHOOD, by Maria Grammatico with Mary Taylor Simeti (Bantam Books, 2003)

Move over Holden Caulfield, there’s a new preppy in town. Lee Fiora, a girl from Indiana, wins a scholarship to the elite Ault School in Massachusetts. Unlike Holden, Lee is on the outside of privilege looking in, but her bundle of anxieties about her own awkwardness and her social standing have universal resonance. Sittenfeld’s first novel touched a chord with readers, who made it an instant bestseller, and with critics, who raved. Tom Perrotta calls it “funny, excruciatingly honest, improbably sexy, and studded with hard-won, eccentric wisdom about high school, heartbreak, and social privilege. One of the most impressive debut novels in recent memory.”

PREP, by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005)

Françoise Sagan was 17 and a high school dropout when she spent a summer knocking out this, her first novel. It was published a year later and became a worldwide sensation. The story of a precocious French girl and the tragic consequences of her reaction to her father’s new lover is one of those short, intense books about relationships like Love Story or Damage, that is utterly involving and unforgettable. Sagan went on to write 39 more novels, but no other had the impact and timelessness of Bonjour Tristesse.

BONJOUR TRISTESSE, by Françoise Sagan (1955; HarperPerennial, 2001)

HISTORICAL FICTION

Novelist Steven Pressfield’s beat is the classical world at war. He’s covered Sparta (Gates of Fire; Bantam, 1999) and Greece (Tides of War; Bantam, 2001), and now he tackles Macedonia, in a novel about Alexander the Great. A writer specializing in the grit and gore of ancient battlefields and the glory of conquest could have no better subject.

THE VIRTUES OF WAR: A NOVEL OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, by Steven Pressfield (Bantam, 2005)

Aspiring writers should not miss Pressfield’s thoughts on his craft, The War of Art (Warner Books, 2003). A pithy, wise, inspirational guide whose novel thesis is that art is war.

BROWSING PLEASURES

Cities are enormously complicated places to operate. Kate Ascher, former assistant director of New York’s Port Authority, uses New York City to explain how cities work. How does water get to your apartment? Who makes the traffic lights work and how? What does a steaming pothole mean? From the top of the highest antenna to the bottom of the newest water tunnel, Ascher shows readers in ingenious illustrations and short bursts of sparkling prose what it takes to make Gotham run. A fabulous gift idea for the curious-minded “but why?” types.

THE WORKS: ANATOMY OF A CITY, by Kate Ascher (The Penguin Press, 2005)