Books and Cooks Ithaca
Previous Discussions

PEOPLE
Books and Cooks participants, email addresses and homepages where available.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS and RATING SYSTEM
Check out some of the books we've discussed in the past, as well as our rating system and ratings for those books.

RECIPROCITY
There are lots of other book groups out there. On this page find some links to bookgroups we've had e-contact with.

BOOK LINKS
Check out this pile of book-related links.

RECIPES
Recipes of various items that have been served at meetings

New at the Books and Cooks website: Member-generated reading guides! Starting with A Widow for One Year, Books and Cooks is publishing informal reading guides to the books we discuss. Click on the titles below to get to the reading guides and other information about the books. Be warned that the reading guides may contain spoilers. These questions are suggested by Books and Cooks members as discussion questions for our meetings. Enjoy!

Here you'll find a list of books that we've read and discussed so far; click on the title to find out our rating for the book and other information. Our ratings are given in units of teacups. The rating system is as follows:

5 cups of tea -- Great! everyone should read this book!

   4 cups of tea -- I really liked it, definitely worth reading.

        3 cups of tea -- An ok read, but it didn't really stick with me.

            2 cups of tea -- I didn't like this, not recommended.

                  1 cup of tea -- Awful, a complete waste of time.

Clicking on the titles below will take you to a page with meeting times, information and reviews about the book, and various other tidbits that we've found.

• Mansfield Park by Jane Austin -- May 2001
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf -- April 2001
• Fifth Business by Robertson Davies -- March 2001
• Silk by Alessandro Baricco -- February 2001
• The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton -- January 2001
• Einstein's Dreams by Alan P. Lightman -- December 2000
• Barrel Fever by David Sedaris -- November 2000
• To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis -- October 2000
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson -- September 2000
• Chocolat by Joanne Harris -- August 2000
• The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams -- July 2000
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey -- June 2000
• No selection, watched the movie Say Anything and postponed Henry Adams to July -- May 2000
• Midwives by Chris Bohjalian -- April 2000.
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn -- March 2000
• The Mixquihuala Letters by Ana Castillo -- February 2000
• An Army of Angels: A Novel of Joan of Arc by Pamela Marcantel -- January 2000 
• A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe -- December 1999 
• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler -- November 1999
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire -- October 1999 
• Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison -- September 1999 
• The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago -- August 1999 
• Censored 1999 edited by Peter Phillips -- July 1999  
• A Widow for One Year by John Irving -- June 1999.
• Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver -- May 1999
• Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber -- April 1999
• Mazel by Rebecca Goldstein -- April 1999
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- March 1999
• Various short pieces selected by Books and Cooks members -- February 1999
• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie -- January 1999
• Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer -- December 1998
• The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells -- November 1998
• Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson -- October 1998
• Beloved by Toni Morrison -- September 1998
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and King Lear by William Shakespeare -- August 1998
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov -- July 1998
• The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood -- June 1998

Below is a list of books (not complete) that have been suggested as Books and Cooks selections by members. We haven't discussed these at B&C meetings, but some of these books have been discussed at the Biblia Files. Books marked with an * were heavily voted-for books at a meeting.

Rails Under My Back by Jeffrey Renard Allen
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Media Monopoly by Ben Haig Bagdikian
A Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks
* England, England by Julian Barnes
Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd
Six of One by Rita Mae Brown
The Sun, the Moon and the Stars by Steven Brust
* The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Cloven Viscount and The Non-existent Knight by Italo Calvino
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute
Foe by J.M. Coetzee
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary by Pamela Dean
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
The Living by Annie Dillard
The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander
Tracks by Louise Erdrich
The California Book of the Dead by Tim Farrington
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Breaking and Entering by Connie Fletcher
The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry
Dreaming in Cuban by Christine Garcia
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur S. Golden
In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall
My Son's Story by Nadine Gordimer
Unravelling by Elizabeth Graver
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
The Saskiad by Brian Hall
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
Floating in My Mother's Palm: A Novel by Ursula Hegi
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijeulos
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo
When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle
Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean
Palace Walk by Naguib Mafouz[sp?]
Wedding Song by Naguib Mahfouz[sp?]
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz
Paradise by Toni Morrison
Eating Chinese Food Naked by Mei Ng
1984 by George Orwell
Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Why I am Not a Christian (and Other Essays) by Bertrand Russell
Was by Geoff Ryman
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers
Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Code Book by Simon Singh
The Essence of the Thing by Madeleine St. John
Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer
Symbolism by Alfred North Whitehead
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto
The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukav

This Page Last Revised: April 30, 2001.