Both sides of the story

It's no secret that I am a fan of memoirs. Truth is often crazier than fiction. Recently I've been on an Ann Patchett kick reading which started by reading This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. That book featured a few essays on her friendship with Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face. After I finished Grealy's memoir about her childhood with cancer I picked up Patchett's memoir, Truth and Beauty, about her twenty-year friendship with Grealy (the two met in college).

This isn't the first time I've found myself going back and forth between both sides of a person's life. A few years ago I read Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. His father, David Sheff, also wrote a memoir about Nic's teenage drug use in Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction. A few years after that Nic Sheff added to the story with We All Fall Down: Living With Addiction, his memoir about relapses and rehab. The combination of those three books really painted a picture of what addiction and recovery was like on a family.

Have you read a combination of memoirs that offered both sides of the story? Please share your recommendations! I'm looking to read even more!

Question of the Week: What cookbook can't you cook without?

There are a slew of new cookbooks coming out this fall and I am wild with excitement to check them out and try something new. Nothing smells like autumn to me like a loaf of bread baking in the oven and a pot of chili simmering on the stove. I don't know about you but my cooking takes a nosedive in the summer and I live off of bread salads and BLTs and grilled salmon until the temperature outside is far cooler than the temperature inside. The shift from summer to fall always inspires me to slip on an apron and flip through cookbooks until I find the perfect dish to try. My husband's cooking bible is The Joy of Cooking but I tend to lean toward new classics like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Kate McMillan's Soup of the Day. 

What cookbook or cookbooks can't you cook without?

Question of the week: What are some of your favorite audiobooks for car trip listening?

 Do you have a car trip vacation in your future? Do you have a long daily commute to work? Believe it or not, I actually look forward to my car time because sitting behind the wheel gives me permission to transport myself into another world - steampunk Victorian England, a Regency Period servant's quarters, pre-Civil War era Charleston, or just someone else's current reality.  A car trip suddenly becomes a treat rather than a trial (as long as I remember to keep my eyes on the road...).  Of course, a great narrator is a must for creating that experience and I have become quite a connoisseur of excellent readers.  Here are a few of my favorite recent car "reads." What are you listening to?