On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta / Jen Lin-Liu

Who hasn’t heard the story of Marco Polo bringing pasta to Italy from China? Well, apparently it’s a myth, thought up by a pasta company in early twentieth century America to popularize pasta in American kitchens. If not personally delivered by Marco Polo, pasta was nonetheless likely brought to Italy by merchants on the Silk Road, an important trading route that stretched from China to the Mediterranean.

The author sets out to travel the entire length of the route from the heartland of the Chinese noodle to the Italian province where ragu is expertly paired with a noodle like tagliatelle or pappardelle (and never spaghetti!). She investigates the noodly aspects of the current cuisine of each country she visits along the way, some of which do not seem to have maintained even a vestige of the versatile noodle.

From western China, across a couple of the former Soviet republics ending in -stan, Iran, Turkey, and finally Italy, Lin-Liu traces the historic route that pasta reportedly traversed. Her culinary experiences are not all mouth-wateringly good—some of the rice-based plovs or pilafs she has to endure in the middle of her trip make her wonder if it's all worth the effort. And where are those noodles? Sometimes they’re thin on the ground. Turkey’s extraordinary cuisine is the first sign that things are getting better, and then Italy proves itself to be the veritable foodies’ paradise we all knew it was, as evidenced by her many wonderful culinary adventures there.

The author includes a bit of history, some cultural observations, personal musings, etc., but this book is primarily about food. By the end of it, I was planning a foodie trip to some of the places she detailed.

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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