The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes

I have epic love for Julian Barnes, his writing hits all the right notes with me. He's poetical and dry and witty and really literary and clever yet nothing at all resembling a butthead. Read my earlier review of his amazing book Arthur & George, then go read Arthur & George. This is the first non-fiction book I've reviewed here and indeed read in years (if we don't count boring uni stuff - and let's not). But I was happy to pick this up and put the three other books I was reading down because a) it's Barnes and he's my literary version of Bear Grylls - I'm strangely but completely addicted; b) it was two bucks at Co-op and I would have been happy to pay up to $5 for a Barnes with the crazy warp and bent cover I was awarded as a bonus; and c) it's a book about cooking, and I like cooking.

The title is pretty intriguing too - pedants in kitchens is something I know everyone is familiar with but I wasn't sure how on earth you'd write a book about it. And I was pretty darn pleased with the results of my investigation. Barnes was as sparkly and delightful as usual in his writing and since he turned out to be The Pedant in the Kitchen I was pleased to see some glimpses of his life and forge an understanding of his personality a bit better through his relationship with food and cooking. It's probably a maxi somewhere but I bet you can tell a whole lot about people by looking at their attitude about cooking, in much the same way as you can surmise whether someone is good or evil depending on if they prefer cats or dogs, Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, Jacob or Edward.


Barnes is the titular Pedant which means he is a perfectionist in the kitchen and believes in the truth claims made by cookery books and follows recipes down to the last letter, gram and degree. So The Pedant in the Kitchen is really the story of Barnes the writer, reader and amateur cook, reading and reviewing the cook books and recipes that have influenced or inspired him. So we find he loves Jane Grigson, becomes frustrated with Nigel Slater and finds comfort in the old-fashioned charms of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. Other than recipes that just don't work because household kitchens aren't anything like those in restaurants, what Barnes the Pedant is actually fighting against is the vocabulary of cooking. He calls for a more accurate dialect that can actually indicate what a 'pinch', a 'heap' a 'slug' and  a 'handful' actually equate to in terms of chilli, salt or blueberries.


Though I don't agree that a lot of reform is needed - actually I don't think any is needed, I'm the exact opposite of Barnes in the kitchen, being physically, mentally and emotionally unable to follow a recipe exactly - I really liked that Barnes' book about cooking, a non-fiction memoir sort of book about cooking, showed all the same preoccupations as his fiction. The playfulness masking quite an ingrained struggle for truth is here. A sort of metaphysical  game of hide and seek with the value of words. It's cool and I'm not even sure he knew he was doing it in The Pedant in the Kitchen. If he didn't it makes it even cooler. That, and that there's no mention of Nigella Lawson - I don't know if this book was too early to fall under the siren's call of her cooking shows / books / life or if Barnes just never bothered with her. I guess we won't until I read it in his memoir. My favourite part of the whole thing was actually the dedication- 'To She For Whom The Pedant Cooks' which became 'She For Whom' throughout the book where Barnes was The Pedant. That's pretty nice don't you think?

***^/***** (3.5 stars for an easy as pie, light and fluffy read)

The Love Letters of John Keats - Edited by OE Madden

What a fox right?

I'm holding out for one of the beautiful new editions of Keat's letters to Fanny Brawne for myself, but the one I borrowed from the library is lovely enough for now, even without the pretty movie tie-in cover. Keats would understand the starving artist thing I'm going through even if you lot don't.

Like trillions, the fact of love letters between John Keats and Fanny Brawne exploded to my attention through Jane Campion's beautiful film Bright Star. I weep like crazy when I first watched it, then watched it again and cried even more. I've always liked Keats, he's quite the Romanitc Emo laddie and I adore the fact that he kicks Wordsworth's butt in terms of literary output by 25 (the age when Keats dies and before Wordsworth writes a thing) and general poetical awesomeness. I really dislike Wordsworth. But Bright Star brought Fanny Brawne to life too - and it's their story that I needed to pursue in The Love Letters of John Keats.

I always find it strange reading letters, or texts like diaries or journals which were never intended to be published. And these love letters from Keats to Fanny are just so private I felt like a literary spy. They were exquisite, playful, desperate, loving and occasionally cruel. Keats in love was also in torment. He wanted Fanny but he didn't want to want her and the letters are sort of a battleground where these battling forces play out. It's epic!

In the above letter he starts: "My dearest Girl, / I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy - the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good."

A bit later: "If I cannot live with you I will live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you - I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my glooms again. "

And signs off - "I wish you could infuse a little confidence in human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any - the world is too brutal for me - I am glad there is such a thing as the grave - I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there... I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me. / God bless you, / J.K"

Poor doomed Keats, he had so many issues. And I love that he just lays them all out there on the table in his letters to Fanny. What I really really wanted was to read Fanny's replies. It's awful they've been lost to history because she is such an enigmatic figure in all this. Snippets can be gleaned about her from Keats' letters, questions and responses to her questions and it's easy to surmise that she'd have to be made of pretty feisty stuff to keep Keats' intensity under wraps and to inspire such ardor in him in the first place, but it would be so great to hear her voice in their love story. That's what was so special about Bright Star, viewers get to see two people in love vs the world, not just the tragedy of the young poet genius.

****/***** (Four out of Five stars) (Because the edition wasn't very nice, not because the letters weren't.)

Vampire Beach: Bloodlust - Alex Duval

So... vampires. We haven't ventured with this blog into those dark seductive kingdoms yet but all periods of calm must be shattered eventually by a cacophany of screaming fangirls over all the dreamy bloodsuckers. I'm not going to lie, I generally lose my mind and most of my verbal capacity over vampire stories. They're like a drug to me and I scream with the most obnoxious girl tweens out there. I own t-shirts, a life sized cardboard cutout, every dvd and the sheet music realted to various different vampire populated books and shows and several sagas would count amongst my most loved/obsessed over tales OF ALL TIME. The Vampire Beach series will never ever count amoungst them. Bloodlust is the first in the series but since I'll never read any of the rest on purpose I feel I can safely make some huge sweeping generalisations about the whole lot.



I photographed it here sitting on a book of Keat's letters to Fanny Brawne so it wouldn't be so frightening for you all. The fact that Vampire Beach: Bloodlust is 'Young Adult' fiction meant that I didn't and couldn't expect the same sort of vampires-as-sex-gods rauchiness that brilliant Paranormal Romance series like the Sookie Stackhouse / Southern Vampire Mysteries / True Blood books and spin off tv show could play with. BUT then I of course I realised two true things: the sexiness isn't even the most important or interesting thing about vampire stories AND that just because a book is toned down for a younger audience, doesn't mean it has to be shit. In fact the Vampire Academy series and (yes I'm finally gonna say it) Twilight books were both written for the same crowd and both managed to be completely AWESOME.

Thinking about it, the biggest and most obvious problem with Vampire Beach was that it was boring. It wasn't compellingly written, the characters were uninteresting and vapid. And most importanly it didn't capitalise on the amazing figure/symbol of the vampire AT ALL. No one even said the word vampire until page 129 and by then it only had 40ish pages to go. Plus even around the utterance of the magical word - NOTHING HAPPENED. If I summarised the plot of the book right now: Boy moves to beach, falls in love with girl who has boyfriend, she's a vampire, someone dies, this doesn't bother anyone much. LAME and I wouldn't even be missing anything out from the narrative. Maybe Duval was trying to pad out a much bigger and grander storyline? I hope so. I also hope he won't lose all his readers before something worthwhile happens but I think it's especially hard to keep people interested in bad vampire stories. If you like vampires you'll be spoiled for choice of books / movies / tv shows in any age bracket.

Just a short, harsh review - like a bandaid. Now we can all move on with our lives. Sorry Alex Duval - maybe try werewolves next time??? It's much harder to write a nothing book about them - no excepts them to be anything other than boring :)

At least it didn't take long to read: *^/***** (1.5 from 5 stars)