The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food

Author - Judith Jones ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Knopf was reviewed on 22-Oct-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Knopf. If you enjoy cooking, if you enjoy browsing through cook books, if the secrets of great meals excite you, and above all if love good food then this is a book for you. It is not only about good food and cooking, it is a memoir of a fascinating woman who lives an interesting life, and has the writing skills to make her account a page turner.

For me Julia Child is a hero. When my wife and I talk about cooking, my wife often says, "Yes, I know Julia Child said to do it this way therefore that is the way it must be done, right?" Fortunately my wife has a will of her own.

I had to read about the woman who discovered my hero and helped to make her famous. There are insights into a lot of other wonderful cooks that Judith helped to get published.

If you are a cooking freak this is a must read book, if you just love to cook and to read about cooking this is a must read book, if you enjoy an interesting story about an interesting woman this is a good book for you.

Why only four stars? There are some parts of the book that I feel could have been left out, but that is an opinion with which many will differ.

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2) Hardcover Book The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Knopf. The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food belongs on your shelf with Frances Mayes´ Under the Tuscan Sun and Bill Buford´s Heat. It will awaken your senses and make you long for a crusty bread, an artisan cheese and a fresh peach.

Author Judith Jones is a longtime editor at publisher Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and a lifetime epicurean. It would be a mistake to dismiss Jones as "just a cookbook editor," even though her authors include Julia Child, Marion Cunningham, and Lidia Bastianich. She´s responsible for publishing The Diary of Anne Frank, and she edited the work of Anne Tyler and John Updike, among others.

It´s apparent that her two loves, great literature and food, converged in a special way when she worked with Child and the other chefs. Jones gives her readers a glimpse into how she brings a cookbook to life as well as how she coaches a cook into a writer. Giving each chef a unique culinary viewpoint with the food and a unique voice as a writer was Jones´ primary focus.

Starting with a childhood of bland English and New England fare, Jones recounts how she was born wanting more. More flavor, more variety, more goodness. After college and WWII she lived in Paris for several years where she met her late husband Evan Jones. Together they explored the food of different cultures and brought the best of it home to New York, then Vermont. They also excelled at finding the best local food available.

Personal details are sparse. Readers craving gossip about why she and Evan never had children or whether their relationship played a part in his divorce will be disappointed. But foodies who want to know if she really ate beaver liver and tail will get their answer.

Jones concludes the book with recipes from childhood, later discoveries including French and Asian favorites, and her newest passion: cooking for one. Pictures of Jones, her husband, and many of her authors are sprinkled throughout.

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food is part memoir, part travelogue, part cookbook and is easily more than the sum of its parts.

Armchair Interviews agree¤

3) Hardcover Book The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Knopf. Judith Jones has a way of writing that makes it feel as through she´s in the room with you, personally telling you the story. This is one of the rare books that I come across and seem incapable of putting down. As a word of warning, you will inevitably be quite envious of her travels and experiences. Furthermore, if you´re anything like me, it will make you want to immediately make a trip to France, find an apartment, and live for the day. My! What a dangerous thought!¤

4) Hardcover Book The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Knopf. I received this book as a Christmas present. The author is a young American who falls in love with French cooking while living abroad. She finds a great guy in the last throes of his first marriage, and marries him for life (until he dies some decades later). They relocate from Paris to New England, and she goes on to a life in publishing--the first to discover Julia Child. Her memoir is laden with the great chefs of her time and the sumptuous meals they ate together. She and her husband also entertained often, both of them being adept in the kitchen. Recipes blend with her story, but remember that French cooking is her specialty. She writes this as a senior citizen, and her long and complex history with food shines through.¤

5) Hardcover Book The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Knopf. Initially I found this memoir a disappointment. Ms. Jones has done as much as anyone alive to give us access to new culinary ideas, and it is fair to say that she championed the books that shaped our current gastronomic thinking, as well as editing them. Nonetheless, her account of all this can come across as superficial and chilly; the prose is well crafted, but it sounds as though she´s talking about someone else, and not someone that she knows personally or cares about all that much. The book begins to sound more like a personal memoir when she introduces her country home, where there was emphasis on growing their own food as much as possible, and it comes alive when she talks about the loss of he husband of 50+ years, and how impossible it seemed to go on with something as simple as cooking dinner bcause they had always done it together. Her account of her grief and slow recovery is marvelous. She is never overly revealing but shows her humanity in a way that´s both sympathetic and elegant. Her story of eating a beaver´s tail, and how her account of it shocked and horrified readers, provides a fascinating counterpoint to her own gradual coming to life again after a loss that seemed catastrophic. As a fan of her late husband´s food writing, I found myself thinking "Evan would have loved that story."¤

6) Hardcover Book The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Knopf.

From the legendary editor who helped shape modern cookbook publishing—one of the food world’s most admired figures—an evocative and inspiring memoir.

Living in Paris after World War II, Judith Jones broke free of the bland American food she had been raised on and reveled in everyday French culinary delights. On returning to the States—hoping to bring some joie de cuisine to America—she published Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The rest is publishing and gastronomic history.

A new world now opened up to Jones: discovering, with her husband, Evan, the delights of American food; working with the tireless Julia; absorbing the wisdom of James Beard; understanding food as memory through the writings of Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey; demystifying the techniques of Chinese cookery with Irene Kuo; absorbing the Italian way through the warmth of Lidia Bastianich; and working with Edna Lewis, Marion Cunningham, Joan Nathan, and other groundbreaking cooks.

Jones considers matters of taste (can it be acquired?). She discusses the vagaries of vegetable gardening in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and the joys of foraging in the woods and meadows. And she writes about M.F.K. Fisher: as mentor, friend, and the source of luminous insight into the arts of eating, living, and aging.

Embellished with fifty recipes—each with its own story and special tips—this is an absolutely charming memoir by a woman who was present at the creation of the American food revolution and played a seminal role in shaping it.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 19-Nov-2008, 03072649559780307264954, 550-940-7X1-271-MYB-IUB-8

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