Recipe Books' Rejuvenation

It's obvious to any collector such as myself - recipe books have changed, and you would be in denial if you didn't think it was for the better. Traditional recipe books in England were undoubtedly for women looking after their families. They were basic, with block paragraphs of traditional English meals and traditional methods. Pictures were rare, if present at all, and the font size suitable only for those with a magnifying glass.The past couple of years in particular, however, have seen  a huge change in the way recipe books appear. They have become vibrant and colourful, with images playing a huge part in their popularity. People no longer simply pick up a recipe book to use it; they pick it up simply to read it. 

Even the great Mary Berry has modernised her books to be just as much about how it looks as about the recipes, with her latest Mary Berry's Absolute Favourites containing beautiful imagery to accompany her delicious recipes. The BBC television series The Great British Bake-Off, which Berry is a judge on alongside Paul Hollywood, has sparked numerous recipe books designed to make baking more fun and adventurous. Runner-up contestant Ruby Tandoh's Crumb is my ultimate favourite from the selection. She talks about the traditional aspects of baking, giving her own unique advice on the methods and techniques, injecting into the book her own vitality and passion for baking. Tandoh also rejuvenates some traditional recipes with current trends, such as the use of semolina in baking. Her delicious lemon semolina cake recipe is a serious rival to Mary Berry's lime polenta cake.

Christine Taylor's Choccywoccydoodah: Chocolate, Cake & Curses is another modern recipe book,  decorated elaborately with Brightonian fairytales and stories in between recipes. It includes an introduction of how the shop, Choccywoccydoodah, and later the cafe were founded and expanded. They are not the only shop to release a recipe book, though. Hotel Chocolat brought out Hotel Chocolat: A New Way of Cooking with Chocolate, which even includes a recipe of chocolate with salmon; The Hummingbird Bakery regularly release books with recipes of their famous products; and restaurants Wagamama and Yo! Sushi have also released books featuring recipes of the dishes they serve. This is the start of an era when recipe books are becoming pieces of literature as well as cooking guides.

 Instagram and the hashtag #instafood or #instaporn probably has a lot to do with this change, with users constantly looking at new and refreshing ways to make pictures of food look attractive for more likes. One person in particular is Ella Woodward, author of the recipe book Deliciously Ella and the blog of the same name. Woodward uses instagram to promote her healthy lifestyle as well as her blog posts. The images accompanying her recipes are bright and beautiful, making healthy eating seem just as tempting as a big slice of cake. Her beautiful instagram shots carry on through to her recipe book, which also talks about how a diagnosis of Postural Tachycardia Syndrome led her to start being more concerned about what she ate. Her journey is inspirational, and to help others enjoy the same lifestyle she has taken on, she provides a guide on getting started, with all her kitchen and therefore recipe essentials. Throughout the book, she discusses the benefits of certain ingredients, justifying their use and how they are great alternatives to salty or sugary products. This is a book even my chocolate-obsessed self is loving.

Ella Woodward is just one of a few who have started a trend in healthy eating and therefore healthy cooking. Following the release of her book in January, we have also seen the release of Get the Glow by Madeleine Shaw, who also happens to be a friend of Woodward, and Eat. Nourish. Glow. by Amelia Freer. More interestingly, however, we have seen Italian food become more fresh and nourishing in Gino D'Acampo's Veg Italia. There's still cream, pasta and pizza dough, but D'Acampo has banished meat from the traditional Italian recipes; lasagne made with aubergines, cannelloni filled with courgettes and ricotta, meatballs minus the meat made with lentils and mushrooms, a sweet potato mash with garlic butter and mascarpone. It is refreshing to see the nation's favourite Italian dishes transformed and vegetables given a new lease of life.

Italian cuisine is only the start of foreign cuisine's growing popularity in England. My most recent visit to Waterstones saw a whole display of new recipe books from various countries, my favourite of which being The New Nordic by Simon Bajada. Bajada has included some amazing Scandinavian recipes, as well as beautiful photographs of the landscape, restaurants and cuisine. He says Nordic cuisine is ever evolving and is becoming ever more popular in Michelin starred restaurants in the UK. The ingredients they use reflect the landscape they are used upon. This is a great coffee table book.

Another favourite is Raymond Blanc's Kew on a Plate which follows on from the television series in which Blanc along with Kate Humble spends a year at Kew Gardens in London focusing on growing produce. This is another recipe book that mixes healthy heating and foreign cuisine. The book, like the series, gives information and tips for growing fruit and vegetables, with Blanc introducing French recipes using the produce. This is a beautiful mix of English and French heritage, with Raymond Blanc himself being a keen gardener, having his own vegetable gardens and orchards at his Michelin-starred restaurant Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons. Meat is still used in many of the recipes but makes them no less healthy and balanced, with a delicious recipe for balsamic glazed-garlic, summer tomatoes and roast chicken legs.

These are just a few examples of the various types of recipe books that now sit in our English bookshops, influencing the way we eat. From vibrant vegetables to breathtaking baking, recipe books have most certainly been rejuvenated into attractive and colourful additions to coffee tables, rather than gathering dust on a kitchen shelf. The beautiful photographs and imaginative cooks' notes in between recipes prove presentation of food is just as important outside of restaurants. They have made me start to love cooking; instead of pouring boiling water over instant noodles, I am now making salmon en croute and beef wellington from scratch. From the girl who sets pancakes on fire to the girl who yearns to make her own ravioli; perhaps for that perfect shot with the caption #instaporn.

'Go Set a Watchman' - Harper Lee

The release of Go Set a Watchman has caused one hell of a stir in the literary world. The controversy surrounding its release is  never ending and hard to accept. A second novel by Harper Lee, after the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, has been hotly anticipated for decades, but slowly people started to believe that Lee's first novel would stand alone. The announcement in February of this year that a second manuscript had been found, one written before To Kill a Mockingbird, caused a tidal wave of excitement globally. Fans of Harper Lee, including myself, were marvelling at how this manuscript had finally been discovered and we could again enjoy the immense talent of a woman not afraid to talk politics and morals.

However, people began to question how the discovery came about. It is said to be the novel Lee first sent to publishers, but was rejected with demands for changes to be made. From this rejection came To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel narrated by a six year old girl, Scout, living in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. She tells the story of her father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer defending Tom Robinson, a black man who has been falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white girl. Despite evidence to the contrary, Robinson is convicted of the rape by twelve white men who fail to see past the colour of his skin. Atticus still reveals the truth, of how Mayella's father, Bob, found out that she had made sexual advances towards Robinson and beat her out of anger and disgrace. Furious at their father for revealing this truth, Bob attacks Scout and her older brother Jem, only for them to be saved by a town recluse Boo Radley, who has been attempting to befriend Scout throughout the novel.

To Kill a Mockingbird changed Lee's life, though arguably not for the better. Born Nelle Harper Lee in 1926, she grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, a place that bears a strong resemblance to the Maycomb she writes about. Atticus Finch is believed to be based on her own father, lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee, and the surname Fitch is her mother Frances' maiden name, though there is no character directly based on her mother in the book. Lee attempted to follow in her father's footsteps, like her sister Miss Alice, and attended law school. However, before completing the course, she went to live in New York where she was given an incredible opportunity by friends Michael and Joy Brown. They funded her whilst she achieved her dream of writing a novel. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 with huge success, going on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. There were claims years later by fellow author and supposed friend Truman Capote that he was the real author of Mockingbird, but the discovery of the latest manuscript seems to put these claims to rest.

The success of To Kill a Mockingbird was an incredible achievement for Lee, but it also led her into the public eye, something that she was not entirely comfortable with. It has been suggested that fame is what prevented Lee from writing another novel after Mockingbird, in case it changed the way that she wrote or the truth that she spoke. She turned into a recluse, refusing to give interviews, instead leaving statements to her sister and lawyer, Miss Alice. This is where the mystery over the manuscript begins to set it. Following the death of Miss Alice last year at the age of 103, Tonja Carter took over as Lee's lawyer. Carter is the one who claims to have discovered the manuscript and sent it for publication, saying that Harper Lee had given her approval. There are some, however, who doubt this. At the age of 89, Lee is partially blind as well as partially deaf, and according to a few of those in Monroeville, not of sound mind. A recent article in The Sunday Times Magazine by Tanya Gold reports that Lee is thought by the town to be "the puppet of an interloper called Tonja Carter". To add to the controversy, it is alleged that the manuscript was actually discovered three years ago, before the death of Miss Alice, who would probably have never allowed the manuscript to be published.

Despite the conflict over its release, Go Set a Watchman was released on the 14th July. The question is no longer about its discovery, but wondering whether it will live up to the hype of Lee's first success. The day of its release saw hundreds of people queuing up at bookshops throughout the night across the globe, with 7,000 copies alone being delivered for sale at the local bookshops in Lee's hometown. The media began printing its reviews of the much anticipated book, the novel Lee herself calls the "parent' of Mockingbird, and the critics have not been kind. If I am being honest, they have been most unfair. Go Set a Watchman is the novel that was never meant to be released. Harper Lee's editor managed to help Harper Lee transform this original reject into the masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird, with the original becoming nothing but a draft. However, the critics are treating Go Set a Watchman as a brand new work by Lee, and are crushing it with two-star reviews and tales of disappointment. I wholeheartedly disagree.

Go Set a Watchman is set after Mockingbird, when Jean Louise is twenty-six-years-old and is no longer known by her childhood, and infamous, name Scout, and her brother Jem has died from a heart attack. Now living in New York City, she returns to Maycomb to visit her father, Atticus and her oldest childhood friend and potential suitor Henry. However, rather than her standard visit home, she finds herself forced to grow up as she discovers her father  and Henry are part of a Citizen's Council with the intent of keeping negroes unequal and inferior. Her world comes crashing down as her father, the man she held in such high regard as being as close to perfect as a man could be suddenly becomes human, and her eyes are opened to the real world. Jean Louise has always been colour blind to a person's race, believing in inequality for all, something she believed Atticus had taught her. She finds herself failing to understand her father's reasons, and questioning whether Henry is really the man for her.

The critics are claiming Harper Lee has destroyed the Atticus Finch we first met in To Kill a Mockingbird, but I argue the opposite. He is no bigot; he is a reasonable man who understands the world far better than his daughter, and he has his reasons for being involved in such a council. It is an incredibly insightful novel, and confirms Lee as an Alabama woman ahead of her time. It includes anecdotes from Jean Louise's childhood, reminding the reader why they loved her, and it is easy to see why Lee's editor chose to use Scout's voice for To Kill a Mockingbird. The story and the dialogue remain to be strong and I found it an incredible easy book to read, if not at times an emotional one. Go Set a Watchman is the reality behind To Kill a Mockingbird, the honesty Harper Lee first wanted to express about Alabama but was denied the chance. It is the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts.

'The Bone Clocks' - David Mitchell

David Mitchell has lived an enviable life. Born in Merseyside, raised in Worcestershire, and graduating from the University of Kent, Mitchell had already started moving from place to place. He went on to live in Sicily, Italy before moving to Hiroshima, Japan where he apparently found his niche as a writer. He has since written six successful novels and has been listed by TIME magazine in 2007 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The latest of these novels to appear in paperback is The Bone Clocks. Long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2014, it has already made its mark, adding to Mitchell's reputation as a respectable and admirable author.

The plot is rather like Mitchell's life in that it goes from place to place, following the life of Holly Sykes. Starting in 1984 when Holly is only fifteen years old, it begins from her point of view as she storms out of her home to live with her boyfriend, only to find out that he is cheating on her. Refusing to admit that her mother was right, she decides to stay away from home for at least a few days, with devastating consequences. Her little brother Jacko goes missing, with everyone believing he went in search of his sister, including Holly who blames herself for his disappearance. However, there is more that lies beneath the surface; Holly begins to have visions of another world in which a promise to an old woman could come back to haunt her and there are hints that Jacko could be involved.

 The story then skips seven years ahead to what appears to be a whole new story. We meet Hugo Lamb, an intelligent but pretentious student at the University of Cambridge. He is devious and repugnant, deceiving even his friends whilst thinking only of himself. During a skiing holiday to the French Alps, he meets Holly Sykes, and he falls in love, something he has never felt before. It would seem it starts to change him for the better, until he is given a life-changing decision that is impossible to refuse, a decision possibly linked to the other world Holly herself has glimpsed. Following this, there is yet another jump in time to 2004, in which Ed Brubeck becomes the focus of Mitchell's writing. Ed has a little girl with Holly but is struggling to accept his responsibility as a father, being a self-confessed "war-zone junkie" since his role as a war reporter.He finds himself having to choose between returning to Baghdad where his life will be in constant danger or staying with his family. We can only assume his decision before the narrative switches AGAIN to Crispin Hershey, an author who at first appears more detestable than Hugo Lamb but who becomes one of Holly's closest friends, meeting her in Australia before travelling to Shanghai and Iceland with her to book events as she herself as become a famous author.

The next switch in narrative is where the story truly continues from where Holly's narrative left off. We finally learn about the other world and the war that is occurring between the Horologists and the Anchorites. This is in 2025, when the final battle takes place, in which Holly joins the Horologists on their quest against the evil Anchorites. I will not reveal the outcome of this battle, partly because I still do not know the whole of it despite finishing the book, and the final section of the book comes full circle back to Holly. She is now an old woman living in Ireland in 2043, in a world that has become damaged by global warming and the lack of oil. It feels as though David Mitchell is using the end of this book as a lecture to those who take unlimited electricity, food, water and internet for granted. It is a lecture to those who are not attempting to cut back on their luxuries to save the planet, and it is a warning of what could happen if we choose not to; a possibility of the world our grandchildren will live in. 

For me, The Bone Clocks is too many different things. Mitchell could have written at least five books from all the stories that are happening throughout each section. Unfortunately, most of them seem to play no major part in the actual story The Bone Clocks is about. The Horologists and the Anchorites barely appear at all until you are two-thirds through the book, and it is all thrown at you at once. This particular part reminds me of Intruders, a BBC drama last year starring John Simm, a programme I found genuinely interesting, and if Mitchell had stuck to the war between the two kinds I would be praising this book for its imaginative plot and viewing it almost as an adult version of Harry Potter. Instead, I am dismissing it as an excuse for Mitchell to show off his vast knowledge on a variety of subjects, and to perhaps share his views on conservationism. There lies politics amongst the fantasy Mitchell is writing, and it seems to ruin what could have been an addictive novel. Too much of the book seems pointless and most of it could have been cut entirely. It is incredibly disappointing. There were so many times that Mitchell enticed me in, only to change the subject in the next section.

For those looking to read The Bone Clocks simply because it is a bestseller at the moment or in the Waterstones Book Club, think twice. Reading this novel requires patience, and I was glad when I reached the last page, a rarity for me as I usually miss the characters and the story. However, rather than being intrigued by the unanswered questions, I was annoyed and felt as though my time had been wasted. Do not waste yours.

'The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair' - Joël Dicker

The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair has been a huge success. Originally in French, it has been translated into over thirty different languages, one of which is thankfully English. La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert won the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Academie Francaise 2012, an incredible achievement for 29 year-old Joël Dicker. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, his native tongue is French, but the inspiration for his novel is New Hampshire, a place he spent most summer holidays as a child. It is said that, when looking to write a book, you should always write about what you know, and it is clear when reading Dicker's book why he chose to write about New Hampshire rather than Geneva; his passion for and knowledge of his holiday home is obvious throughout, as well as clearly being a place of natural beauty. It could also be said that the main character in the book might be a little of writing about what you know, but that may well be just coincidence.

Young author Marcus Goldman struggles with writer's block following the huge success of his first published novel. In an effort to conquer it, he turns to Harry Quebert, his former college professor and close friend, for inspiration. Whilst staying at Quebert's home in Somerset, New Hampshire, Goldman discovers a love affair Quebert had when he was 33-years-old with a 15-year-old girl, Nola Kellergan. Harry reveals that the girl went missing that summer of 1975, and has not been found since; that is until a few weeks later. At the same time Goldman is facing a lawsuit by his publisher if he does not have a second novel finished by the deadline, Quebert is arrested after Nola's body is found buried in his back garden with a copy of the manuscript of his most successful novel. The solution for both of these comes to Goldman; write a novel about the case whilst solving it and proving Harry's innocence.

This novel could technically be called crime, but there's something about the way it's written that makes it feel wrong to call it that. It's so far from the dark streets of Oslo portrayed by Jo Nesbo or a deep psychological thriller such as Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Its setting is beautiful, despite its subject matter being the death of a fifteen-year-old girl. It seems more like an episode of Murder, She Wrote, with the writer detective, the quaint little seaside town and a mystery to be solved with the help of the local detective. Maybe this is a little of what made me love this book so much, and wonder if I will read a better one this year. Usually it takes me the first chapter to really get into a book, or at least the first few pages, but this book really did have me from the start; I'm not sure how or why, but it did. And I just love a good murder mystery!

Like with any good murder mystery, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair keeps you guessing, with red herrings making the puzzle even more difficult to place together, but it's enjoyable. Dicker clearly has a real skill for weaving this puzzle, giving you the pieces bit by bit. The ending could be said to be a little rushed, with a lot of information being thrown at you at once, but it's information that you lap up greedily as Dicker has kept you in suspense for so long. The twists he throws in are mostly unexpected, with the last one being the biggest (I think) and the most unexpected of all - and it's not even about the murderer! Dicker wrote about a young author with a best selling novel and in doing so became a young author with a best selling novel. Some people have it all, and in this case, I couldn't be happier for him - as long as he writes another novel like this and doesn't suffer from the writer's disease!