Relish

 Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley, 173 pages.

Lucy Knisley was taught a deep appreciation for food from her earliest days, and this means she charts the course of her life in terms of food; what she was cooking and eating, forbidden foods, beloved foods, any foods where connection grew up. As the daughter of a professional chef and intense gourmet she had plenty of exposure to high quality foods, but just as many of the foods that made an impression were things like Mexican candy and the type of terrible culinary inventions that I think most people who have been to college are familiar with.

The blurb on this book was from Alison Bechdel, which feels appropriate because, despite the very different tone and subject matter, this book felt oddly reminiscent of Fun Home. I think it was the Knisley managed to write a biography that felt like it captured a child's perspective while retaining an adult's benefit of experience. I found this graphic memoir masterfully done, and the illustrated recipes at the end of each chapter felt like the cherry on top. This memoir feels like more than the sum of its parts, and I highly recommend it. 

A Moveable Feast

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway  240 pp.

Even though I'm not a fan of Hemingway's novels, I did enjoy this memoir of the time he spent in Paris and Europe when in his twenties. Also, it was very obvious what Hemingway wrote about was used by William Boyd in writing Any Human Heart which I recently blogged about. In this book Hemingway writes mainly about his friendships and acquaintances with other writers and artists including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Poiund, Ford Madox Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. It was Stein who named those writers/artists of Hemingway's age who had survived World War I The Lost Generation.  There is also a lot about food, wine, and other alcoholic beverages because, well..., Paris. He also wrote much about his then wife, Hadley, and their son Jack, aka "Bumby". Hemingway's writing about this portion of his life ends with the beginning of the affair which ultimately led to his divorce from Hadley in 1927.