Author Q&A
Every episode, we have a Sound Bite in which the authors recommend their favourite book read recently and their favourite cookbook. After all, that’s what Word of Mouth is all about, sharing tips on books and authors.
First up are author couple Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion. We cooked the main meal for their episode out of this cookbook, and they were right: it was delicious.
Favourite books
Anne recommends The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton
Graeme recommends The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Kate recommends The Night Watch by Sarah Waters.
Favourite cookbooks
Anne and Graeme recommend:
Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells.
A Kitchen in Burgundy by Anne Willan
Following is a round up on each book, and a buy button if you decide you’d like to read it for yourself. For a full explanation of why Anne, Graeme and Kate loved these books, check out our Youtube channel at: https://youtu.be/aIZTyqVzKBA
The Quality of Silence
Rosamund Lupton
On 24 November, Yasmin and her ten-year-old daughter Ruby set off on a journey across Northern Alaska. They’re searching for Ruby’s father, missing in the arctic wilderness.
More isolated with each frozen mile they cover, they travel deeper into an endless night. And Ruby, deaf since birth, must brave the darkness where sight cannot guide her.
She won’t abandon her father. But winter has tightened its grip, and there is somebody out there who wants to stop them. Somebody tracking them through the dark.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
Heather Morris
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, two Slovakian Jews who survived Auschwitz and made their new home in Australia. In that terrible place, Lale was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival – scratching numbers into his fellow victims’ arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Lale used the tiny freedom of movement this position awarded him to exchange jewels and money taken from murdered Jews for food to keep others alive. Had he been caught, he would have been killed; many owed him their survival. It is a story of hope and courage, and, surprisingly, love and romance.
The Night Watch
Sarah Waters
The Night Watch is a story of four Londoners set during World War II. It is a compelling read that takes the reader into the heart of wartime London – think air raids, blacked-out streets – to where secrets and sexual adventure thrive in the dark. Three women and a young man with a past, take centre stage. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses like a man and wanders the streets, searching. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances…
Bistro Cooking
Patricia Wells
Bistro is warm, Bistro is family. Bistro is robust soups and rustic salads, wine-scented stews, bubbling gratins, and desserts from a grandmother’s kitchen. Bistro is everyday china and elbows on the table and second helpings. It is best friends over for no particular reason. Bistro is earthy, not fussy, easy, not painstaking. And Bistro Cooking presents 200 no-nonsense, inexpensive, soul-satisfying recipes inspired by the neighborhood restaurants of France.
Patricia Wells is a journalist, author, and cooking school teacher who has lived in France since 1980.
A Kitchen in Burgundy
Anne Willan
A Kitchen in Burgundy is a personal book, elegantly interweaving chapters on Anne Willan’s life in the seventeenth century Chateau de Fey in Burgandy and its surrounds. This is a welcome into her home, her kitchen, and the La Varenne Cookery School. Willan has had an extraordinary career in the culinary arts and is recognized as one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on French cooking. She founded École de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris in 1975 and was inducted into the James Beard Foundation Awards Hall of Fame for her “body of work” in May, 2013.
