November 30 - Life in a French Country House: Entertaining for All Seasons, by Cordelia de Castellane (2021)
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This book contains tips and inspiration for elegant entertaining at home. It’s arranged by season, and teaches us to entertain beautifully in the French manner. Besides recipes, she shares tips on table setting, flower arranging, and interior design. There’s a section on Easter, a section on fall decor, and two sections on Christmas food and entertaining. Throughout the book there are tantalizing photographs of a French country house and the countryside, which will help cheer me up on gray rainy days as I’m reading this coffee table book/cookbook. 

We’ll have another lovely book recommendation for you in tomorrow morning’s podcast as we begin our December, winter, holiday and Christmas book suggestions! 

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November 29 - White Truffles in Winter, by N. M. Kelby (2011)
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This novel imagines the world of the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier, who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy (London) and the Ritz (Paris) His wife, Delphine, was a poet who refused to leave her home in Monte Carlo, and he went on to have an affair with one of the most famous women in the world at the time, the actress Sarah Bernhardt. On her deathbed, his wife asked him to create and name a dish after her like he did for Queen Victoria and others. The food descriptions are fantastic, but some readers have complained that the characters weren’t well developed and the book jumps around in time and the timeline is hard to follow.. Food is mentioned on almost every page. 

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November 28 – The Women in Black, by Madeline St. John (2020)
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Here’s a cute and light story about the ladies that work in the “Ladies Cocktail Frocks” department at the FG Goode department store. They’re all expected to wear black dresses to work. Set in Sydney in the 1950s. They’re girding themselves for the Christmas rush. A Slovenian immigrant named Magda rules the “Model gowns” section, and takes a young woman, Lisa, under her wing. Lisa was raised very conservatively. 

The other shop assistants don’t like Magda, jealous because she’s very good at selling expensive gowns to the wealthy Sydney socialites. Women are expected to work a couple of years, then marry and stay home with children. It starts off slow but you warm to the characters and it’s a light, slim read, perfect way to relax after a busy Thanksgiving weekend as we now begin getting ready for Christmas (as do the ladies in the book). 

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November 27 – How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days, by Kari Leibowitz, PhD (2024)
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I’m someone who loves winter, but dreads the long gray days we have here in Seattle in February and March. I’ve always set aside tasks to accomplish and creative things to look forward to in winter - why spend a beautiful summer day cleaning out closets? I do mine in January. I do little craft projects in winter, experiment in the kitchen, and spend way more time reading books (an activity I thoroughly love) But many of my friends retreat into doldrums, become less social, or struggle with winter blues. I find this book very fascinating, written by a psychologist who spent a winter in Norway studying how people there embrace winter and find joy in the season. The author encourages us to change our mindset about winter so we can appreciate it and enjoy it. The first part of the book is ‘Appreciate Winter,” and the second part is my favorite - “Make it Special.” Chapters include “In the Mood,” “Lights, Nights and Rites.” The last chapter encourages us to “Get Outside.” My boyfriend and I host a yearly New Year’s Day walk - rain, snow or shine - where we all bundle up, go for a four mile walk through the woods and on a trail that leads past horse farms, mansions and mountain views, then come back to a giant backyard bonfire and a feast of soup and bread, bourbon hot toddys and hot cocoa. This book is giving me more ideas to host pleasant and festive activities all winter long, not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

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November 26 – Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
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With Thanksgiving comes a long weekend where we might be able to sneak in extra reading time. Perhaps you’re returning home on a long plane or car ride; or snuggled safely in bed after eating a post-Thanksgiving breakfast with leftovers. It’s a great time to re-read Little Women, and if you read my pick from a few days ago, “March,” it may be interesting to revisit the work it’s based on. 

Little Women (and the sequel, Good Wives) is a long read, so I personally only re-read it about every three years. I skip some of the more religious “Pilgrim’s Progress” chapters, and I still get lost luxuriating in the descriptions of food, clothing and life in the mid to late 1800s. I was able to visit Concord a few years ago and stopped by Orchard House, but couldn’t wait in line to take the tour when I had two bored teenage nephews with me. I visited Louisa May Alcott’s grave, so near Emerson’s on Author’s Hill in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and I was moved to tears that I’d been able to visit the home and resting place of one of my favorite classic authors. 

We have our Amazon affiliate link for “Little Women” in our podcast show notes, if you’re interested in shopping for this book. If you enjoy lovely book suggestions like this, be sure to subscribe and to follow us @lovelylivinguniversity on your favorite social platform. We’ll have another lovely book recommendation for you in tomorrow morning’s podcast! 

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November 25 - Dinner with Edward: A Story of an Unexpected Friendship, by Isabel Vincent (2016)
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“When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life.

As Edward and Isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepares, he shares so much more than his recipes for apple galette or the perfect martini, or even his tips for deboning poultry. Edward is teaching Isabel the luxury of slowing down and taking the time to think through everything she does, to deconstruct her own life, cutting it back to the bone and examining the guts, no matter how messy that proves to be.”

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November 24 - How to Age Disgracefully, by Clare Pooley (2024)
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When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.

The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.

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November 23 – The Echo of Twilight, by Judith Kinghorn (2017)
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Historical fiction described as “Downton Abbey mixed with Upstairs Downstairs meets Jane Eyre.” Set in 1914 during WWI, a lady’s maid named Pearl works for Lady Ottoline Campbell at her estate in Scotland. The two have an unusually friendly relationship. The men they love are called to the front, and Lady Campbell becomes depressed. Pearl needs to confide her secret to Lady Campbell. There are enough mysteries and things to work out in this book to keep my attention on a quiet autumn evening at home. 

If you enjoy lovely book suggestions like this, be sure to subscribe and to follow us @lovelylivinguniversity on your favorite social platform. We’ll have another lovely book recommendation for you in tomorrow morning’s podcast! 

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November 22 - Company: The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others, by Amy Thielen (2023)
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This is a cookbook, yes, but also a guide to hosting parties more effortlessly, more often, and more casually. I know that not everyone listening to this podcast enjoys hosting, or has the ability to. That’s totally ok. People who love hosting need other people to come to their parties, and that could be your role! 

Meanwhile, in “Company,” the 125 recipes inside are arranged into menus, helping you throw dinner parties, holiday feasts, and parties for up to 20 people. The chapters are arranged thusly: “Saturday Night - Parties of Six to Eight;” “Holiday: Tables of Eight to Twelve,” “Perennial Parties: Groups of Six to Ten;” and “Casual Walkabouts: Buffets for 15 to 20 or More.” The end of the book includes a section on cleaning up. 

If you enjoy lovely book suggestions like this, be sure to subscribe and to follow us @lovelylivinguniversity on your favorite social platform. We’ll have another lovely book recommendation for you in tomorrow morning’s podcast! 

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November 21 – My Mrs. Brown, by William Norwich (2017)
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“Sometimes a dress isn’t just a dress.” A quiet, simple woman of a certain age has a secret, and travels from her small town to New York City to purchase a simple, elegant, perhaps “boring” black Oscar de la Renta dress at the Madison Avenue flagship store. She needs the courage to make the journey, and to find her voice. 

It reminds me of “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” which came out in 1958. The book is described as a fairy tale, and takes the fashion industry a bit to task along the way. Several reviewers on goodreads mentioned crying when they finished the book. 

If you enjoy lovely book suggestions like this, be sure to subscribe and to follow us @lovelylivinguniversity on your favorite social platform. We’ll have another lovely book recommendation for you in tomorrow morning’s podcast! 

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