Category: Books

The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel (Ecco, 194 pages)

Matt Siegel is obsessed with food — not with eating it, but with learning about it. Siegel’s first book, The Secret History of Food, was born of his pastime of reading about the origins of the things we eat, going down the rabbit holes of history via Google searches and library books.

This means that many of the stories the former English professor tells here have already been told by someone else in formats less engaging. Siegel (not to be confused with the longtime Boston DJ) lives in Richmond and is a hunter-gatherer of the quirky detail, the sort of information that sticks to the brain, and he writes in the folksy style of beer-fueled conversation. His is a voice that sometimes seems too conversational; a grimmer editor might have cut a number of weak jokes. But too much editing and this would be a lengthy magazine article instead of a book.

Siegel begins by arguing that it’s not just eating food but cooking it that changed the earliest humans into modern man, because the process of cooking food changed us into more social creatures, with “larger brains, larger gatherings, more free time, and more collaboration.” In a way, cooking domesticated humans much like humans domesticated wolves, as did the gradual development of table manners. People in Asia and Europe, for example, replaced bladed utensils with chopsticks and rounded dinner knives, for example, to cut down on mealtime stabbings, Siegel writes.

From there, he leads a global tour of foodstuff, to include corn, cereal, vanilla, ice cream and pie, the latter of which was a primary means of fattening the early colonists in New England.

New Englanders didn’t invent pie, but we perfected it, having wrenched it from the hands of the English, who primarily stuffed it with “birds and nightmarish sea creatures.” Back then, Siegel writes, a pie crust wasn’t something to be enjoyed; it had a practically indigestible coating that was seen as a disposable container — “the inedible Tupperware of the Dark Ages.”

“Far from being a delicacy or dessert, it was merely a convenient way of congealing various bits of bird and beast into something portable and relatively stable,” Siegel writes. The name derived from the word magpie, the bird, which should have been our first warning. And the colloquialism “eating humble pie” appears to come from the unsavory pies that household servants used to make for themselves with animal guts unused by their employers.

New Englanders, before they turned the pie crust into a container for fruit, spices and custard, also indulged in meat pies, to the point where a pie of some kind was a staple at every meal, regardless of time, causing one 19th-century physician to write that the “brave men who made up the Boston Tea Party … were pie-biters from Boston.” The physician added, “the Yankee pie is a mighty stimulator of energy … conducive to vigilance, aggressiveness and longevity.” Not everyone agreed; someone in England once criticized Ralph Waldo Emerson’s custom of having pie for breakfast, prompting The New York Times to publish a defense of Emerson’s eating habits, which led to a years-long cross-Atlantic debate.

While Siegel’s pie report is the most New England-centric of the book’s content, his other stories are no less compelling, to include the chapter called “Honey Laundering,” which covers every aspect of the one food that that never goes bad (it can crystallize or turn cloudy, but even then is fine to eat). Among the most interested honey facts: Beehives have historically been weaponized, lobbed at enemy ships; beekeeping was a craft kept alive by the Christian church because beeswax was needed for candles; and you definitely want to buy local honey, even though there are few laws that guarantee its safety and source. (The cheap honey in grocery stores may contain chemicals and pesticides, and some counterfeit honey consists of corn syrup and yellow food coloring.)

Vanilla, Siegel writes, is the victim of slander, because despite its reputation for blandness it is the second most expensive spice to grow (behind saffron). Vanilla beans are the product of a type of orchid, and the pods take years to mature. “So you could probably have a kid and put them through kindergarten in the same time, and for less aggravation, than it would take to seed and harvest your own vanilla crop.”

Also, you probably don’t know what vanilla really tastes like, Siegel says, because up to 99 percent of “vanilla” flavoring in food comes, horrifyingly, from “things such as wood pulp, tree bark, rice bran, chloroform, or castoreum,” a secretion extracted from the nether regions of North American beavers.

From there, Siegel segues into a cornucopia of facts about ice cream, which include Thomas Jefferson’s recipe for ice cream (just a guess, but the cheapest brand at your supermarket is probably better) and how ice cream came to be classified as “essential foodstuffs” during World War I, which may be the best thing Herbert Hoover ever did.

And on he goes. Like his own reading journey that led to this book, Siegel coaxes the reader through turn after turn in a rabbit hole of information, marrying easy prose with weird facts, such as the Aztecs’ obsession with chili peppers (used for medicine, face washing and torture) and how common foods such as tomatoes and potatoes were once considered poisonous and satanic. The best chapter, however, is on the strange origins of boxed breakfast cereal, and let’s just say if John Kellogg were alive today he would be canceled and no one would eat corn flakes or Grape-Nuts (the recipe for which is said to have been stolen from a sanitarium safe).

There’s little original material in this book, but the selection and presentation are fresh, and Siegel is an able and entertaining curator of the information. Also, he named his dog Waffle, so bonus points for that. B+

---

Book Notes

Another football season, another book about Tom Brady and Bill Belichick — oh, wait.

TB12’s defection to the South disrupted a cottage industry, dissecting the 20-year partnership between the New England Patriots coach and his star quarterback.

One of the most prolific writers on the subject was Michael Holley, a former Boston Globe sports writer turned NBC broadcaster whose books include 2016’s Belichick and Brady (Hachette, 394 pages), 2011’s War Room (It Books, 352 pages) and 2004’s Patriot Reign (It Books, 256 pages). So inquiring minds might wonder what Holley is writing about now.

Turns out he, too, has defected to another camp: shockingly, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Holley collaborated with former Steelers coach Bill Cowher to produce Cowher’s memoir, Heart and Steel, published in June (Atria, 288 pages). For those with short memories, Cowher coached the Steelers for 15 seasons before Mike Tomlin took over in 2007. The book is not just about his football career but also about the challenges of suddenly becoming a single father of three daughters after losing his wife and father within a period of three months. Highly recommended for the bye week for anyone who possesses a Steelers’ terrible towel.

But fear not, Patriots fans. The cottage industry continues with Seth Wickersham’s It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots’ Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness (Liveright, 528 pages). You just have to wait a few weeks. Set for release Oct. 12, Wickersham’s book will test whether the public will still buy books with both Brady and Belichick on the cover. The publisher promises a “full, behind-the-scenes story of the Patriots” by the ESPN senior writer, with insight on Belichick’s “tactical ingenuity” and Brady’s “unique mentality.”

For those who’d rather look ahead than look back, check out Lars Anderson’s Chasing the Bear, How Bear Bryant and Nick Saban Made Alabama the Greatest College Football Program of All Time (Grand Central Publishing, 304 pages). The Pats’ new quarterback, Mac Jones, hails from Alabama.

Finally, for those of you who’d rather have a root canal than watch football, there’s ammunition for your case in Against Football (Melville House paperback, 208 pages), Steve Almond’s 2014 “reluctant manifesto” against the sport. Almond is a Massachusetts writer who not only hates football but hates the Patriots, just so you know. He’s most famous lately for a New York Times podcast, “Dear Sugars,” hosted with Wild author Cheryl Strayed.

Book Events

Author events

• KERRI ARSENAULT Author and journalist presents her investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Thurs., Sept. 9, 6 p.m. The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Tickets start at $60 for a small table with two copies of the book included Visit themusichall.org.

• R.W.W. GREENE Author presents Twenty Five to Life. Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com), Fri., Sept. 10, 5:30 to 7 p.m.

• MARGARET PORTER Author presents The Limits of Limelight. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., Sept. 14, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• AMY TIMBERLAKE Newbery Honor winning author presents her second Skunk and Badger book, Egg Marks the Spot. Virtual event via Zoom, hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., Sept. 21, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• JEFF BENEDICT Author presents The Dynasty. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., Sept. 22, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• DAVID SEDARIS Humor writer presents. Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com), Sun., Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

Book sales

• MULTI-BOOK AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 18, noon to 4 p.m.

• MULTI-BOOK CHILDREN’S AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 25, noon to 4 p.m.

• FRIENDS OF BROOKLINE PUBLIC LIBRARY TWO-DAY BOOK SALE Featuring hardbound and paperback books of all fiction and nonfiction genres, plus CDs, DVDs and audio books, for sale. 4 Main St., Brookline. Saturday, Sept. 25, and Sunday, Sept. 26, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visit brooklinenh.us/brookline-public-library/pages/friends-of-the-brookline-public-library.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Featured photo: The Secret History of Food.

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Essays by Helen Ellis (Doubleday, 176 pages)

Resist the temptation to dismiss Helen Ellis because of her previous titles, Southern Lady Code and American Housewife, which sound like something Paula Deen might have written.

Ellis was, in fact, raised in Alabama, but shrugged that life off early in her 20s to move to New York City in hopes of becoming a writer. Before that dream was realized, however, she made a name for herself as — no joke — a high-stakes poker player. When the writing career came, it was jump-started by an anonymous Twitter account she called “American Housewife” with the handle @WhatIDoAllDay. Her timeline was richly sardonic, the MiracleGro for popularity on that platform, and a brand was born.

Her fourth book is a collection of essays called Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, mostly composed of foul-mouthed reflections on aging, periodically interrupted by foul-mouthed reflections on cancer and other indignities of life. It begins benignly enough, with Ellis reporting that she is heading for Panama City, Florida, “aka ‘The Redneck Riviera,’” with four friends for a jaunt she calls the “grown-ass ladies’ trip,” the highlight of which is a night out to see a TV psychic, Theresa Caputo, star of a show called Long Island Medium.

After the national anthem, which everyone sang while facing an American flag projected onto the screen, the TV psychic explained that she goes “where the Spirit leads” and that occasionally she gets hot, because perimenopause. This caused Ellis to whoop and clap. “God bless this woman for yelling ‘menopause’ in a crowded theater.” she writes. “I wasn’t sure if I believed in her power, but I believed we could be friends, so she had me now, and I was rooting for her.”

And Ellis is off, with her particular brand of humor, which is a combination of Nora Ephron without the divorce and Erma Bombeck without the kids. Married for 25 years and happily childless, Ellis identified ironically as a housewife until just a few years ago, when she started owning the title “writer” after years of being famous as a pearl-wearing poker player. That distinction is one that makes her a “character,” which she explains is different from a naturally funny person. “A character wants to be the life of the party. Or the life of a seven-hour flight delay. Or the life of a Piggly Wiggly checkout line.”

For the perplexed, Piggly Wiggly is a chain of supermarkets mostly in the South. That, and the pearl-wearing, however, is about Southern as Ellis gets. There’s some of the late Texas humorist Molly Ivins in her, but she would be right at home in the cast of Sex and the City, and her humor is as racy in places as that of Carrie Bradshaw. There is, for example, the chapter in which she admits that she and her husband speculate about the sex lives of their friends. For example, she will say, after long-married friends leave, “There’s no way they’re still having sex,” to which her husband will respond, “Shh, they’re still in our hallway.”

She writes of salivating over a velour housecoat in the Vermont Country Store catalog, and the potential effect it would have on her husband’s libido. She says he would rather come home and catch her in a pyramid scheme than in that robe.

Ellis nails the one-liners in this short string of folksy anecdotes, as when she describes garage-sale regulars as “people who want to profit from your poor life decisions.” She used to wear all black to her poker games because “I myself am a pop of color,” which is shown to be true in stories about accompanying friends to have a baby or to get Botox in possibly illegal circumstances. She and her husband don’t drive (“yes, we will wing it in a zombie apocalypse” but having never owned cars, they “are not confident drivers’’), and as such have collected many comical stories involving public transportation, such as taking long bus rides to casinos. She distrusts technology (“The cloud is tech talk for something Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg invented to store your political preferences, porn searches and high school reunion pictures”) and invents descriptions of her friends when storing their contact information in her phone; rather than John or Mary, for example, they are the “the grifter,” “the puzzler,” “the saint” or “the zookeeper.”

In short, she’s your zaniest friend, on steroids and on her third drink, still possessed of the presence of mind to write everything down.

The collection, however, doesn’t rise to Sedarisian heights, however, because it’s too frothy. David Sedaris is one of the greatest humorists working today because there is a point to everything he writes, no matter how hilarious. There’s not much of a point behind these stories than to make us laugh, or to mildly rage. Ellis’s mother used to tell her, “Helen Michelle, you’re not for everyone,” although she’s probably for everyone who spends more than seven hours a week on Twitter. Hers is a particular brand of humor, for the perpetually caustic with short attention spans. The title notwithstanding, the book packs light and wants a bit more baggage. C+

---

Book Notes

Can a funny title alone sell a book?

Probably not if the content is wretched, but some publishers seem to be lapping up bad puns these days. Witness the success of the Chet and Bernie mystery series by Spencer Quinn, which features narration by a dog and titles like Scents and Sensibility and (reviewed here recently) Tender is the Bite.

The mystery genre seems especially prone to punnage, given that there is also an “undercover dish mystery series” by Julia Buckley that includes the titles The Big Chili, Pudding Up With Murder and Cheddar Off Dead.

Then there’s the Avery Aames mystery series built entirely around cheese that includes the groan-inducing titles To Brie or Not To Brie, As Gouda as Dead, The Long Quiche Goodbye and Days of Wine and Roquefort. (Aames also has a novel entitled Cheddar Off Dead, and Connecticut author Korina Moss has a Cheese Shop mystery coming out with that title in the spring of 2021, indicating that publishers like bad puns so much they’re willing to reuse them.)

Perhaps most impressive is the “Bought the Farm” mystery series by Ellen Riggs, if not for its punnage, just for the sheer volume of words.

Riggs’ titles include the forthcoming How to Get A Neigh With Murder (for now, only available on Kindle pre-order), and the previously published Dogcatcher in the Rye, Dark Side of the Moo, Till the Cat Lady Sings, Twas the Bite Before Christmas and Swine and Punishment.

For a more erudite look at puns and why we love them, check out John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises (Avery paperback, 240 pages).

Pollack, a journalist and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, knows something of which he writes, having won the O’Henry World Pun-Off competition in 1995. Yes, that’s a real thing. This year’s contest is scheduled for Oct. 23. Check it out at punoff.com.

Featured photo: Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light.

We Want What We Want, by Alix Ohlin (Knopf, 256 pages)

The short-story collection We Want What We Want by Alix Ohlin is billed as women’s fiction, so it’s strange to see it named one of the best books of the summer by Esquire, a magazine aimed at men.

That’s a testament to the Vancouver writer and college professor who has been published in The New Yorker and anthologized in Best American Short Stories. Or maybe it was just wrong to call this women’s lit in the first place.

Regardless, it’s a taut and memorable collection that brings to mind the quote “I would have written a shorter letter if I’d had more time.” (That’s often attributed to Mark Twain, although the sentiment was also expressed by Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther and Cicero.) Ohlin’s stories are polished; her characters, succinct; and her narration, both comfortable and provocative. You will know the people who populate this book even if they do things that surprise and sometimes shock you.

Consider the story “Risk Management,” crafted around two women who work in a dental office. At first, it seems to be about a character named Little, who comes across as someone kind of like Angela on the TV show The Office, a woman who works with “blistering efficiency” despite her perfectly sculpted gel nails. “The filing, the phones, the calming of patients made hostile by tooth pain; there was nothing she couldn’t handle.”

When the narrator, Valerie, almost by accident, gets invited to Little’s apartment for dinner, however, she sees a different side of her coworker, and the evening conjures secrets and an unexpected intimacy. The story is not flashy or explosive but in Ohlin’s hands utterly engrossing.

Likewise, the story “Casino” suggests at the beginning that it’s about a fractured relationship between two sisters, one of whom is oblivious to the other’s resentment of her sister’s perfectly coiffed life, with a Lincoln Navigator and a five-bedroom McMansion. “Even her complaints are part boast,” Sherri thinks about her sister, Tricia. “She has to mention her busy husband and the two hundred thousand he rakes in a year. Her children’s after-school activities for the gifted are just so freaking expensive and time-consuming.” Tricia only deigns to visit Sherri in January “after she’s suffered through another Christmas that failed to live up to her Martha Stewart-generated expectations.”

But there is a deeper conflict in the story, which Ohlin slowly reveals as the sisters go out for a night at a recently opened casino, and by the end, the story is not so much about this fractious relationship but another one that Sherri has, and Tricia turns out to be her ally.

“The Point of No Return” has the feel of a short novella, spanning decades of friendship between two women, Bridget and Angela, who met in their 20s at the restaurant where they were waitresses. “Angela was from Vancouver, and some dewy freshness that Bridget associated with the West Coast seemed to cling to her always, even when she was sleep deprived or drunk.” Bridget was dismayed when Angela announced she was getting married. “She was used to a constant exchange of friends and lovers, and the idea that one of these relationships should be considered permanent struck her as considerate. It went against the way they all were trying to live: skipping lightly on this earth, skirting the folly of human certainty.”

Early in their relationship, Angela is the rescuer of the somewhat immature Bridget, but these roles reverse later in their lives, and Bridget eventually finds herself standing alone, outside the strange circle that Angela’s life has become, and even her own family.

Ohlin’s gift is to present these strange characters in a way that seems cozily familiar to the reader and then to summarize their existential dilemmas in a jewel of a paragraph like this: “Sometimes she saw her life as a tender thing that was separate from herself, a tiny animal she had happened upon by chance one day and decided to raise. It was terrifying to think how small it was, how wild, how easily she could fit it in the palm of her hand.”

There are 13 stories in this collection, which ultimately is more poignant than funny, although Ohlin displays a sharp wit, even in a story knit around a funeral, “FMK,” in which two characters try to lure a rebellious child inside for the service, and one suggests that there would be snacks afterward, possibly brownies, and the other unleashes on her with fury. “‘Jake has food sensitivities,’ she hissed, as if I was supposed to know.”

On a primal level, Ohlin’s stories appeal because she knows what her readers want: characters who need kicking get kicked, characters who need killin’ get killed, characters who need loving get loved. But she also has a Hollywood screenwriter’s knack for crafting sentences that drag you into the next, such as “When I was twelve years old, my father hired a private detective to follow my mother around” and “We’d been to this funeral home twice before — at least, I think we had?” — sentences that dare you to stop reading.

And although Ohlin is an alumna of The New Yorker, this collection doesn’t have the haughty feel of some of the magazine’s short fiction, which sometimes seems calibrated to mock the reader. It is accessible while deeply thoughtful, a nice bridge from the frothy reads of summer to whatever sober titles arrive in the back-to-everything rust of fall. A

---

Book Notes

We interrupt this summer to bring you foreign policy, as served up in Afghanistan, which is the sort of place that most people pay little attention to unless it’s front and center in the news. As such, much of the commentary on social media regarding America’s withdrawal is informed by Wikipedia, if even that.

So here are some titles that you might want to check out if you would like a more nuanced education on what’s happening in Kabul:

Sarah Chayes examined corruption in multiple nations in Thieves of State (W.W. Norton paperback, 272 pages) but focuses on Afghanistan in a book praised by Sebastian Junger, among others. Chayes, who has worked as a journalist and military adviser, argues that government corruption is responsible for the rise of the Taliban and other insurgent forces.

The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg (Crown paperback, 384 pages) helps to explain why the Taliban’s takeover is so troubling for women’s advocates and why many parents there choose to disguise their daughters as sons until puberty makes that impossible.

Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living (Picador paperback, 320 pages) is about “America, the Taliban and the war through Afghan eyes” and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Prize. The New York Times review when it was published in 2014 called it “essential reading for anyone concerned about how America got Afghanistan so wrong.” Probably time for a sequel, but some people are still saying it’s the best book about Afghanistan in the past two decades.

Blood Washing Blood(Dundurn, 408 pages) is a new book by a former officer in Canada’s Army that is getting good reviews for its history of conflict in Afghanistan over the past century.

And finally, if you’ve never read anything by Khaled Hosseini, the Afghan-American novelist best known for The Kite Runner (Riverhead paperback, 400 pages) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead paperback, 432 pages), get thee to an independent bookseller website and order one of his haunting novels. His most recent book, Sea Prayer (Riverhead, 48 pages), isn’t a novel, but a poetic letter from father to son that was inspired by the 3-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in 2015. There are no first-world problems in this author’s body of work.

---

Books

Author events

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• SHARON RASK HUNTINGTON Author presents Mirabelle’s Metamorphosis. Joint event with MainStreet BookEnds of Warner and the Pillsbury Free Library. Thurs., Aug. 26, 10:30 a.m. Jim Mitchell Community Park, East Main Street, Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• L.R. BERGER New Hampshire poet to hold release party of latest book Indebted to Wind. Sat., Aug. 28, 4 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• KERRI ARSENAULT Author and journalist presents her investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Thurs., Sept. 9, 6 p.m. The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Tickets start at $60 for a small table with two copies of the book included Visit themusichall.org.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups begin at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. See Facebook or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: We Want What We Want.

Tender is the Bite, by Spencer Quinn (Forge, 263 pages)

I would say that I am late to the Chet & Bernie series, only I am late in the way you are late to a dentist’s appointment or a barely tolerated neighbor’s cocktail party. That is to say, I’m late primarily because I didn’t want to go.

Sure, the titles are great — Dog on It, The Sound and the Furry, Scents and Sensibility, Heart of Barkness, to name a few — and Stephen King couldn’t be more ebullient, calling Chet & Bernie “the most original mystery series currently available” and saying that author Spencer Quinn “speaks two languages — dog and suspense — fluently.”

That said, the narrator is a dog. And I have an irrational hatred of pen names. (Mr. Quinn, if your books are really that good, wouldn’t you want the world to know that it was Peter Abrahams who wrote them?) And have I mentioned the narrator is a dog?

That said, people lap this stuff up. Since the first book in the series was published in 2008, the author has turned out 10 more and they’re all highly rated on Amazon. So, maybe I was … wrong? You can’t like something if you’ve never tried it.

On to Tender is the Bite, the 11th book in the series that is about the adventures of Bernie Little, a divorced dad who runs a not-especially-profitable detective agency (but still drives a Porsche) and is accompanied everywhere by the lovable Chet, who narrates the story.

Chet admits that he’s not the smartest human in the room, “in fact, not human. I bring other things to the table.” Those would include his senses of smell and hearing, which are much sharper than those of his human, which he is constantly pointing out. For example, when Chet and Bernie are waiting outside someone’s door, Bernie starts to knock for the second time even though his dog has already discerned that a small and possibly barefoot woman was already on the way to open it. “I glanced at Bernie’s ears: not tiny for a human, not at all — and very nice looking in my opinion — but was that all they were for? Just stuck on his head for beauty?”

And with that, they’re off, Bernie trying to solve a case, a modern-day Sherlock with a furry John Watson taking notes, making wry observations, showing his teeth when required, not getting human jokes. Yes, Chet/Quinn/Abrahams is genuinely funny, and yes, it is, as King observed, a fresh way of delivering an old genre. Or was, 13 years ago. Now, however, it seems sort of formulaic, the sort of book that the author can write while he’s cutting the grass and talking on the phone. Open document; insert plot; rewrite the jokes.

In this particular document, Bernie is determined to track down a young woman who had been following his Porsche until he turned the tables and followed her. He learns only that her name is Mavis, before she suddenly turns fearful and bolts, but not before Bernie writes down her license plate number, allowing him to use his network of confidantes (probably illegally) to obtain information to track her down.

From there Chet and Bernie are sucked into a vortex of intrigue that involves two frightened women, a ferret named Griffie, potentially evil Ukrainians and American politicians battling it out for an election that is still a year away. (Quinn shows a deft touch by setting up the political battle with Bernie’s neighbors each putting up opposing yard signs and then offering him one. The nastiness seems vaguely familiar.)

When the humor is good, it is very good indeed, and Chet sometimes seems like a canine David Sedaris, as when he’s musing about a heaven “of the dogs, by the dogs, for the dogs” or making a smart reference to Schrödinger’s cat. But as the mystery unravels it feels more like a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book with expletives than Sherlock Holmes, and Chet’s fawning about how beautiful and smart and wonderful Bernie is — while completely in line with what probably goes on in a dog’s brain — grows wearisome, as does his frequent use of the word “perp.”

The appeal of the series is not a mystery. As the saying goes, if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’re going to like. There’s zero chance you will like this series if you’re not as obsessed with dogs as Chet is with Bernie. But the fact that you like dogs, or mysteries, or dogs and mysteries, doesn’t mean you will like Bernie and Chet.

For those who do, however, it’s a glorious year. There’s another book coming in October, one for the holidays. It’s a Wonderful Woof, of course. C

---

Book Notes

It’s something of a shock to come across books that are purportedly bestsellers a week or two before they’ve been released, but that’s because of advance sales, which aren’t hard to rack up if you’re Barack Obama or Sean Hannity.

So how are Rodney Habib and Karen Shaw Becker on Amazon’s bestseller list two months before The Forever Dog(Harper Wave, 464 pages) is released? It’s not just because of a compelling cover, which features a dog wearing a Superman-like cape, or even the subject matter, which is how to get the longest possible lifespan for your dog.

Habib is a telegenic “pet influencer” which is to say he has a vast social media following on the subject of pet health, with 3 million followers alone on Facebook, where this week he warns of the dangers of rawhide while recommending dogs have strawberries for snacks. His website gives no academic credentials, but his co-author is a veterinarian. Both are heavily pushing presales on their respective websites; hence, a bestseller is born from two people most people have never heard of, two months in advance.

Only vaguely related to dogs is a new memoir in paperback that’s getting buzz: I Named My Dog Pushkin (And Other Immigrant Tales) by Margarita Gokun Silver (Thread, 266 pages). It’s a comic memoir, “notes from a Soviet girl on becoming an American woman,” and you gotta love any author who dedicates her book to her thesaurus, as Silver did.

Another new paperback worth a look, especially in light of the new United Nations climate report, is Warmth, Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin, 272 pages) by Daniel Sherrell.

Sherrell, recipient of a Fulbright grant in creative nonfiction, gives thoughtful voice to a generation convinced that their future is that of climate refugees because of what he simply calls “the Problem.” Whether you consider Sherrell a kindred soul or an overwrought Cassandra, Warmth appears to be an elegant meditation on living with climate-fueled sense of doom.

---

Books

Author events

• JEFF SHARLET Author and journalist will present his books, as part of the Tory Hill Author Series, including his newest, This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sat., Aug. 21, 7 p.m., to be held virtually via Zoom. Tickets are $5. Visit toryhillauthorseries.com/jeff-sharlet.

• AMY MAKECHNIE Author presents her second middle-grade novel Ten Thousand Tries. Sat., Aug. 21, 2 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• SHARON RASK HUNTINGTON Author presents Mirabelle’s Metamorphosis. Joint event with MainStreet BookEnds of Warner and the Pillsbury Free Library. Thurs., Aug. 26, 10:30 a.m. Jim Mitchell Community Park, East Main Street, Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• L.R. BERGER New Hampshire poet to hold release party of latest book Indebted to Wind. Sat., Aug. 28, 4 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• KERRI ARSENAULT Author and journalist presents her investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Thurs., Sept. 9, 6 p.m. The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Tickets start at $60 for a small table with two copies of the book included Visit themusichall.org.

Poetry

• POETRY IN THE MEADOW Featuring readings with poets Chad deNiord, Kylie Gellatly and Samantha DeFlitch. Sun., Aug. 22, 4:30 p.m. The Word Barn Meadow, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter. $5 suggested donation. Visit thewordbarn.com.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: Tender is the Bite.

The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides (Celedon Books, 333 pages)

Alex Michaelides’ first book, The Silent Patient, was a runaway best seller. That’s a situation that an author both loves and fears. Loves because, well, best seller! Fears because now that he’s hit the highest spot how does he maintain that kind of momentum?

The Maidens is an OK book. It is definitely not a great or even a compelling book. I’ve tried to not compare the writing to The Silent Patient, but it is near impossible. Essentially, the author’s fears came true. Readers like me are comparing it to his first book and are finding that this one comes up short.

In this suspense novel, Mariana is a grieving fairly recent widow and group therapist who gets contacted by her niece Zoe from Cambridge University. A murder of one of Zoe’s friends has prompted her to reach out to have Mariana come to Cambridge and assist if possible in finding the perpetrator. The story then follows the traditional cat and mouse game that seems to be played in all murder mysteries.

Except that this storyline has an intelligent woman who suspects a professor of committing a murder and yet she agrees to meet privately with him several times. Not such an intelligent thing to do. Apparently this guy has put her under the same spell that he casts on his female students (and which causes a devoted entourage of women to wear long white dresses as they flock around him at a funeral).

It’s difficult to get behind both Mariana and Zoe as protagonists. They simply make too many illogical decisions. History of both of them having mental illness including depression is mentioned often and (I think) the reason for that is to cast doubt on both women’s actions and deductions.

Sigh. Can men in particular please write away from that tired trope? Mental illness especially in women does not mean that you throw all caution aside. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden you throw all sensibility to the wind.

There is also an attempt to make the story something more than it is by invoking the aura of Greek mythology and secret societies. None of it ever seems to click. It never really makes any sense.

I love good pacing and I have to say that the pacing in The Maidens is off. Lots of time spent describing something of no importance and not enough time explaining why someone would take a particular action. And don’t get me started on the dialogue and situation descriptions — clunky and contrived to get a point across.

Professor Fosca suggested they have coffee and dessert in the sitting room, and Mariana reluctantly followed him into the next room. He gestured at the large dark sofa by the fireplace. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Mariana felt unwilling to sit next to him and be that close to him — it made her feel unsafe, somehow. And a thought occurred to her — if she felt uneasy being alone with him, how might an eighteen-year-old girl feel?

She shook her head. “I’m tired. I think I’ll skip dessert.”

“Don’t go, not yet. Let me make some coffee.”

Before she could object, Fosca left the room, disappearing into the kitchen.

Spoiler alert, even though Mariana feels uncomfortable, even though she’s a therapist who works with dangerous people, and even though she suspects Fosca of murder, she stays for dessert with him, alone.

Michaelides tries so valiantly to make Mariana come across as strong and intuitive and it doesn’t work. We are left shaking our heads and wondering where her common sense is.

Look, I hate giving a book a bad grade. I know it takes guts and pure determination to write a book. It takes even more to write a second book after you’ve hit the jackpot with your first, but this book is just meh. Not inventive, no real character development and situations that feel forced. It feels rushed (“The numbers are great on your first book, let’s take advantage of that and pump out another while your name is still fresh”).

Should you read it? If you’re on vacation and it’s the only book available, sure, you should read it, but (and I’m going to be brutally honest here) there are so many other really good books out there to read before you pick this one up.

By all means read The Silent Patient, which is a fantastic book and worthy of all its praise, but this one? I’m just not putting it on my “books you must read” list. If you’re interested in following how writers write over the course of different books, then go ahead and read it, but if you’re looking for an exciting page-turner then move along, there’s nothing to see here.

C

— Wendy E. N. Thomas

---

Book Notes

Serious question: Do we care what Bill Gates reads anymore?

Because, ugly divorce and apology tour aside, he still thinks we do, sending out his usual reading suggestions even though the whole books-with-Bill-by-the-fireside thing has lost its appeal in light of Gates’ association with Jeffrey Epstein, now earnestly regretted on CNN.

In his blog this month, Gates reveals that Vaclav Smil, a Canadian economic policy analyst, is his favorite author, although he suggests Smil is too brilliant for most of us with average IQs. (His writing is “too detailed or obscure for a general audience,” Gates says.)

But Smil’s latest book, now out in paperback, is apparently more understandable and Gates recommends it for “anyone who loves learning.” Numbers Don’t Lie (Penguin, 368 pages) is billed as “71 stories to help us understand the modern world” and it’s composed of short takes on eclectic topics, such as what happens when we have fewer children, why chicken rules and how sweating improved hunting. (Don’t ask; I haven’t read it yet.)

As to whether we care what Gates reads anymore, the answer, apparently, is yes. The Kindle version of the book is No. 1 in public policy as of this writing.

Meanwhile, if you’d rather read a book about a billionaire rather than one recommended by one, check out Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Bloomberg editor Brad Stone (Simon & Schuster, 496 pages).

Of much more interest to the average American reader, however, there’s a new book out by Stephen King. Billy Summers (Scribner, 528 pages) is about an American war veteran turned killer-for-hire, but like all good antiheroes, he only kills bad guys. It’s being called his best book in years, which could be a compliment, or not.

— Jennifer Graham

---

Books

Author events

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• MICHAEL “SY” SISEMORE Author presents In the Real World I Hike: Transformation of Purpose and Self in 5 Million Easy Steps. Sat., Aug. 14, 2 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• PETER FRIEDRICHS Author presents And the Stars Kept Watch. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Aug. 17, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JEFF SHARLET Author and journalist will present his books, as part of the Tory Hill Author Series, including his newest, This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sat., Aug. 21, 7 p.m., to be held virtually via Zoom. Tickets are $5. Visit toryhillauthorseries.com/jeff-sharlet.

• AMY MAKECHNIE Author presents her second middle-grade novel Ten Thousand Tries. Sat., Aug. 21, 2 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• SHARON RASK HUNTINGTON Author presents Mirabelle’s Metamorphosis. Joint event with MainStreet BookEnds of Warner and the Pillsbury Free Library. Thurs., Aug. 26, 10:30 a.m. Jim Mitchell Community Park, East Main Street, Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• L.R. BERGER New Hampshire poet to hold release party of latest book Indebted to Wind. Sat., Aug. 28, 4 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

Poetry

• POETRY IN THE MEADOW Featuring readings with poets Chad deNiord, Kylie Gellatly and Samantha DeFlitch. Sun., Aug. 22, 4:30 p.m. The Word Barn Meadow, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter. $5 suggested donation. Visit thewordbarn.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

Featured photo: The Maidens.