ON THE SCREEN
Holiday Cooking Class
The other evening, we enjoyed a cooking demonstration. Clarkson University, the Chief Penguin’s alma mater, invited alumni to see and join their campus chef in the preparation of several dishes. They included a colorful cranberry and whiskey cocktail, baked brie, baby potatoes wrapped in bacon, and julienned root vegetables with pistachio butter.
The ingredient list was shared ahead of time and full recipes after the event. The chef was very well organized, moved efficiently through the steps, and we could almost taste the results! This was a different kind of viewing experience and a very successful one! We haven’t yet bought any ingredients, but we will likely try at least one recipe.
The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)
The Queen’s Gambit, the name for an opening chess move, is a suspenseful seven-part series, even if you don’t play chess or understand the intricacies of the game. It’s the 1950’s and when Beth Harmon’s mother dies in a car crash, the eight-year-old is sent to a very strict orphanage. Lonely and feeling out of place, she lingers in the basement where the custodian plays chess by himself. Observing and later learning from him, she demonstrates a real aptitude for the game.
As a teenager, she is adopted by a childless couple. With the encouragement of her new mother, Beth enters a state chess championship, mostly to earn the prize money. As the 1960’s advance, Beth’s prowess takes her across the country and around the world. She stands out as female in a very male world One wonders if and when she will stumble.
At first, I thought her character was based on a real person, but this is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis published in 1983. Good entertainment!
RECENT READING
CHILDHOOD IN POSTWAR BRITAIN
This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the popular and award-winning Maisie Dobbs mystery series. She has now put her hand to writing about her childhood growing up poor in rural Kent. Born in 1955, when asked if she considered herself more a child of the 50’s or the 60’s, she reflected that her childhood was really Edwardian. Steeped in nature and the countryside, she and her brother John spent summers spent picking hops with their parents. They also lived for many years without indoor plumbing or a telephone. It was a spare life based on hard physical labor of all sorts.
In sprightly prose, Winspear shares her delight in being outdoors in all weathers and her love of stories, stories told by her mother, but also by her many aunts and uncles. Her parents started married life as vagabonds of a sort. Later, her father established a business as a home contractor while her mother rose in the civil service as a prison administrator. The memoir is a collection of stories and reminiscences, many grounded in the horrors of WWI, with only a bit about how Winspear became a writer. More than anything, it is a loving and candid tribute to her parents, both deceased, and to a way of life now gone. (~JWFarrington)
A NOVEL FOR LIBRARY LOVERS
The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
Writers of historical fiction often settle on a particular period and then create multiple works set in that era. Fiona Davis focuses her novels on notable historic buildings in New York. Earlier works highlighted the Dakota apartment building, the Barbizon hotel for young women, and the art school housed in Grand Central Terminal. Her newest, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, takes place largely within the New York Public Library’s grand edifice. In the early years of the 20th century, an interior apartment for the library superintendent was tucked away out of sight.
In 1913, Jack and Laura Lyons, the superintendent and his wife, live in this apartment with their two children Harry and Pearl. Jack is responsible for the safety and security of the building including its rare books. When books go missing, he is a prime suspect. Fast forward to 1993. Sadie, a special collections librarian, is organizing an exhibit of rare first editions and other works in the Berg Collection, when several volumes go missing. How the thefts in 1993 are linked to the events of 1913 make for an intriguing story of family relationships and the world of books.
Davis has done her research, and it shows in her knowledge of the NYPL and the trade in stolen books. She also brings in changing sexual mores and the constraints faced by women who desire more than just housewifery and motherhood. The reader can assume there will be a happy or satisfactory ending, but how the author gets us there keeps us engaged. (~JWFarrington)
