Book Discussion, Saturday, October 3, 2015, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Belle Cora by Phillip Margulies

From a review by Clea Simon in The San Francisco Chronicle:

"Confession may be good for the soul, but it can be dull to read. Ever since the first antiheroes (and antiheroines) shared their stories under the guise of cautionary tales, the best authors have known this to be true—and have given their repentant retellings more emphasis than the contrition that follows. Longtime nonfiction author Phillip Margulies follows this format with "Belle Cora," a rollicking first novel that tracks an American Moll Flanders on her roller-coaster ride from respectability into quite profitable sin and back again. As her fortunes rise and fall, her life, which spans 1828 to 1919, also serves as an enjoyable allegory for the settling of the American West, with plenty of sex and violence along the way."

Meet the Author

Phillip Margulies

The only biographical information available anywhere on the internet reads:  Phillip Margulies is the author of several books on science, politics, and history for young adults. He has won two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. However, I was also able to find an article where he was interviewed about his favorite place to write. [Spoiler: It's Starbucks.]

The Story Behind the Story

There really was a Belle Cora. Her name was Arabella Ryan. She is most famous as having been the paramour and last-minute wife of Charles Cora, a gambler who was hanged by the Vigilance Committee in San Francisco in 1856. This article tells the story.

Execution of James P. Casey and Charles Cora by the Vigilance Committee, May 22, 1856.

Book Discussion Meeting, Saturday, September 12, 2015, 2 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr

You are cordially invited to join us for a long-ago series of dinner parties in the Provence region of France with some of the culinary giants of the 20th century and several of their friends.

Meet the Author

Luke Barr

The only biographical information available on Luke Barr is that on the back cover of the book: "Luke Barr is an editor at Travel & Leisure. A grandnephew of M.F.K. Fisher, he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Switzerland. He lives in Brooklyin with his wife, architect Yumi Moriwaki, and their two daughters."

Meet the Chefs and Gastronomes

M.F.K. Fisher

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, Luke Barr's great-aunt, was born in 1908 and died in 1992. She is best known for her writings about food as one of the "arts of life." Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937, and it's cover bore a photograph of her taken by Man Ray.

Last House

This is the Glen Ellen house that M.F.K Fisher lived in from 1970 till her death in 1992.

Julia Child

Julia Child is best known in the US as television's "French Chef." The Readers Roundtable read and discussed her pothumously published memoir, My Life in France in May of 2009. Julia Child was born in 1912 and died in 2004. She wrote almost 20 books and was associated with 13 television series. During World War II, she served in the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, where she met and married her husband Paul.

La Pitchoune

This is the house where Julia and Paul Child stayed when they were in France, now the site of a cooking school. This picture was "borrowed" from the album of an American couple who had stayed there recently.

Simone "Simca" Beck

Simone Beck was Julia Child's collaborator on her two Mastering the Art of French Cooking books, also the owner of the property on which La Pitchoune sat. She was born in 1904 and died in 1991.

James Beard

A giant of American cooking and the first to champion it as a worthy cuisine, James Beard was a friend of M.F.K. Fisher and Julia Child. He was born in 1903 and died in 1985. He hosted the first ever cooking show on US television.

 

Richard Olney

Richard Olney was born in Iowa in 1927 and died in France in 1999. He was trained as a painter but taught himself French cooking and is better known as a writer about everyday French cuisine. He was the enfant terrible in residence at Provence in 1970








Friends and Family

Norah Barr

Norah Barr was the sister of M.F.K. Fisher and grandmother of Luke Barr. She had joined M.F.K. on the 1970 trip to France that is central to the book. This picture was taken in 2010 by Yumi Moriwaki, Luke Barr's wife. She was born in 1917 and died in 2014 in Santa Rosa.

Eda Lord

Novelist and old boarding-school friend of M.F.K. Fisher, she was also a friend of Richard Olney and invited him to visit her and meet M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, and James Beard. No identifiable photograph of her exists on the internet, but copies of her book, Extenuating Circumstances, are available online ranging from about $12 (used) to $203 (new). You can find an actual review on the Kirkus website.

Sybille Bedford

Writer Sybille Bedford was born in 1911 in Germany and died in 2006 in London. Most of her writing was autobiographical or semi-autobiographical. She was a long-time partner of Eda Lord and known for her acerbic wit and strong opinions. If you are interested, her bio/obituary can be found in the New York Review of Books.