I’ve been in some sort of funk the last couple of weeks. I mostly blame it on the weather — we had a few nice days, and then Mother Nature decided to smack everyone in the face with a sleeting/raining/snow storm on April 19 that caused my car to get stuck. In April! I was not at all pleased. But even with that, it’s just been an out-of-sorts week or two, so earlier this week I was looking for a book to pull me out of the funk.

I had a lot of options, but I ended up grabbing a copy of Erin Blakemore’s The Heroine’s Bookshelf, which I’ve had on my shelves for awhile now. A book about literary heroines seemed like the kind of book that could potentially cheer me up.

In The Heroine’s Bookshelf, Blakemore takes a look at some of the most well-loved female protagonists in literature as well as the authors who created them to explore some of the qualities we associate with today’s heroines:

• Self — Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Faith — Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Happiness — Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Dignity — Celie in The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Family Ties — Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• Indulgence — Claudine in Colette’s Claudine novels
• Fight — Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Compassion — Scout Finsh in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Simplicity — Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Steadfastness — Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Ambition — Jo March in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Magic — Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I’m not sure the book pulled me out my my funk, but it was a comforting read in that it reminded me of why I turn to books in times when the world seems off-kilter. As Blakemore writes in the introduction,

Call me a coward if you will, but when the line between duty and sanity blurs, you can usually fine me curled up with a battered book, reading as if my mental health depended on it. And it does, for inside the books I love I find food, respite, escape, and perspective. …

I’m here to posit that it’s exactly in these moments of struggle and stress that we need books the most. There’s something in the pause to read that’s soothing in and of itself. A moment with a book is basic self-care, the kind of skill you pass along to your children as you would a security blanket or a churchgoing habit.

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Earlier this week, 60 Minutes presented an extended expose accusing Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, of falsifying main anecdotes in his a memoir as well as mismanaging funds of the nonprofit, Central Asia Institute (CAI), he founded build schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Journalist Jon Krakauer has also written a digital expose — “Three Cups of Deceit” — exposing the problems in the book and with CAI.

While I haven’t read either of Mortenson’s books, I’ve been following the discussions about this scandal because issues of truth in nonfiction are interesting to me. One particular article by Laura Miller in Salon — Why “Three Cups of Tea’s” lies don’t really matter — rubbed me the wrong way. While I agree with her central argument about the importance of the financial side of this story, Miller is too quick to dismiss the serious issues of Mortenson potentially fabricating parts of his story and discredits other hard-working and honest nonfiction writers in the process.

Miller’s central argument about the Mortenson scandal is this:

It’s unfortunate that the Mortenson affair is being presented as a publishing scandal rather than a philanthropic one, because the case against the author (the lying) is less compelling than the case against the nonprofit director (the cheating).

Certainly, the financial mismanagement of Mortenson’s charity, CAI, is a huge issue. The fact that money that is supposed to be going to schools might be being used to fund an author’s travel and speaking tours is a serious problem, and one that should be fully investigated. However, that doesn’t mean the potential lies in Mortenson’s story should be ignored, or that they don’t warrant a discussion about issues of truth in memoir.

Miller really loses me when she shifts to an analysis of Three Cups of Tea and a misguided argument about truthfulness in nonfiction. She says (emphasis mine):

Three Cups of Tea belongs to that category of inspirational nonfiction in which feel-good parables take precedence over strict truthfulness. Its object is to present a reassuring picture of the world as a place where all people are fundamentally the same underneath their cultural differences, where ordinary, well-meaning Americans can “make a difference” in the lives of poor Central Asians and fend off terrorism at the same time. Heartwarming anecdotes come with the territory and as with the happily-ever-after endings of romantic comedies, everyone tacitly agrees not to examine them too closely.

As someone who works for a living as a journalist and as an avid lover of nonfiction, I find this assertion insulting to the many nonfiction writers that write “inspirational nonfiction” while still maintaining important values of accuracy and honesty while weaving a good story.

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I want to read some fiction about food.

This yearning came up when Andi (Estella’s Revenge) and I started contemplating the next book for BookClubSandwich, our online book club for foodies and wannabes. So far, all of the books we’ve read for BookClubSandwich have been nonfiction, and we wanted to branch out a bit. (Well, I guess technically Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is a novel, but it’s embedded so much into the tradition of muckraking journalism that I think of it as pretty close to nonfiction.)

However, when I floated the suggestion for foodie fiction to Andi on Twitter, I couldn’t come up with any books to suggest. I felt lame. But that’s where I’m hoping you’ll come in.

Others might disagree, but I don’t think a book that’s foodie fiction necessarily has to have recipes or even be about cooking. However, food does have to play an important role in the story — it needs to mean something to the characters or have a role in moving the plot along. For our next pick, I want a book with lush, delectable writing, stirring characters, and a story that’s made for sinking your teeth into.

There are some books that would be awesome, but are off the table for BookClubSandwich this time around:

• Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is probably what sent me off on this foodie fiction quest, but Andi’s already reading it.
• Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector, which I read earlier this year, had at least one relationship centered around food that would have been cool to discuss. also had a lot of food in
• Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman uses food as a symbol for rejecting gender roles and was a big discussion point for our book club.

Those are the kinds of books I want to be reading, I just can’t think of more examples because my brain is so stuck on nonfiction. Help a girl out!

Any recommendations for books about food that you’ve loved? What qualities do you think good foodie fiction has — are recipes a requirement or just cool? Any sources you go to when you’re looking for foodie books?

Photo Credit: Zitona via Flickr

A Note from Kim: The original title of this post called the book Breakfast at Tiffany, a mistake I’ve been making for about a week. My apologies for the mix up!

Title: Summer at Tiffany
Author: Marjorie Hart
Genre: Memoir
Year: 2007/2010
Acquired: From the Book Blogger Convention last year (geeze!).
Rating:

Long Review: In the summer of 1945, Marjorie Hart and her friend Marty, two sorority girls from the University of Iowa, decide to go to New York to find work for the summer as shopgirls. They are turned away from all the top department stores they visit, yet through a little bit of luck and a lot of pluck, they are hired at Tiffany & Co. — the first women ever hired to work on the sales floor. Summer at Tiffany is the story of that surprising summer.

I’m really glad that I read this memoir during the Read-a-Thon a few weeks ago, since I think at another time I may not have enjoyed it as much as I did. The description — sororities and fashion and celebrities — isn’t normally my thing, and yet I found this memoir both entertaining and charming. It was like a breath of fresh air in the middle of my reading marathon.

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