Samin Nosrat says the key to good food is to trust your instincts
The Thread's Must-Read
“Mothers and Other Strangers” by Gina Sorell“Arcadia” by Lauren Groff
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I inadvertently kicked off my summer reading list with two novels about creepy cults and now I'm in a lazy, hazy, chill state of mind.
Lauren Groff's “Arcadia” has been lurking on my Kindle ever since I devoured her hit novel, “Fates & Furies,” last year, but I was waiting for one of those moments when time stretches out and reading feels unhurried and luxurious.
I found that moment on a recent hiking trip in the U.K., and the experience of immersing myself in Groff's rural New York commune is now inextricably linked in my memory with the wild Welsh hills and valleys I was explored on that adventure.
Groff's story unfolds amid the magical forests and bountiful fields of a 1965 hippie community where possessions are shared, free love abounds, the cult leader is a traveling troubador and “it takes a village to raise a child."
As with Groff's “Fates,” the writing is sublime and sensual. She creates a secretive and shimmering paradise that is inevitably tainted by the real world.
But Gina Sorell's cult in “Mothers and Other Strangers” is a darker more ominous one. The Seekers are led by a charismatic Frenchman with an eye for rich women — and their daughters.
We meet Elspeth, who has been estranged from her mother since she was a teen. When she gets word that her mother has died alone and impoverished, Elsie unravels the mystery of her mother's youth in South Africa, her travels with The Seekers and her passionate alliance with Phillippe, the cult leader.
This debut novel also has one of the best opening sentences I've read in a long time: “My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen and knowing she was already pregnant with a dead man's child, she accepted.”
-K.M.
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An illustrated guide to master the elements of cooking — without recipes "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" by Samin Nosrat
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In her new cookbook, Samin Nosrat says the key to good food is learning to balance those elements when cooking — and to trust your instincts.
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David Sedaris on the life-altering and mundane pages of his old diaries "Theft by Finding" by David Sedaris
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