Something to Eat and Something to Read

Our book this episode is the joy bomb that is Victoria Hannan’s I Love the Whole World!

This novel stars Leslie McDonald, 43, newly divorced and feeling diminished by the experience and her ex-husband, physiotherapist Dennis (who left her for his Alexander Technique teacher).

Her art history degree, and her love of art has been put in a box, forgotten for the past twenty years, and her relationship with her adult daughter, Moose, is prickly. Then Leslie starts entering competitions and wins an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas. Her best friend pulls out at the last minute, and Leslie goes anyway. It’s the year 2000, and she discovers, as the book’s title suggests, that she actually loves the whole world.

It is thoughtful, guileless, funny, generous and earnest. We both loved it.

Books and things we mentioned in this episode

* Germaine is reading Proof of Progress by Elizabeth Castellano and listening to The Agatha Cure by Cathy Rentzenbrink. And she’s dreaming of cooking this buttery apple cake from Elizabeth Hewson.

* Sophie’s been reading The Vegetarian by Han Kang and listening to The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett. And she’s been making custard tarts.

* Other books that popped up in our conversation: Nigella Lawson’s iconic How to Eat, and Chocolat by Joanne Harris.

* Author Victoria Hannan about her book on the podcast Book Matters.

* The book Yesteryear also popped up a few times, and in case you haven’t listened to our episide on this one, here’s a link to listen.

* Melissa Broder’s Milkfed also got a mention.

* As did our Feast on Your Life by Tamar Adler episode

Artist Michael Heizer’s famous Double Negative sculpture in Nevada

Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada

Something to Eat and Something to Read is a podcast for people who love reading and eating and reading about eating (and cooking), hosted by Sophie Hansen, a food writer and farmer from Orange in central-west New South Wales and Germaine Leece, a bibliotherapist and psychotherapist based in Sydney.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we are recording today – Sophie on Wiradjuri Country in central-west New South Wales and Germaine on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people listening.

How would you cope if time fell apart for you but kept ticking on for the rest of the world? This is what happens to Tara, the protagonist of this episode’s ‘book guest’. The Calculation of Volume, Part 1, by Solvej Balle.

Tara Selter is an antiquarian book dealer who keeps waking up on November 18. She realises that she is trapped in a time loop and seems to be reliving this one day indefinitely while the rest of the world, including her husband, friends and family, all move on to November 19 completely unaware. While everyone and everything (except the food she consumes) resets to their exact state each morning, Tara ages and her memories accumulate.

This first volume was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year, and the judges said, “It takes a familiar narrative trope – protagonist inexplicably stuck in the same day – and transforms it into a profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist.”

It gave us plenty to talk about in this episode, and as always, you don’t have to have read the book to (we hope) resonate with the threads we pull from it. And there are no spoilers.

Links and show notes are coming to subscribers shortly.

Something to Eat and Something to Read is a podcast for people who love reading and eating and reading about eating (and cooking), hosted by Sophie Hansen, a food writer and farmer from Orange in central-west New South Wales and Germaine Leece, a bibliotherapist and psychotherapist based in Sydney.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we are recording today – Sophie on Wiradjuri Country in central-west New South Wales and Germaine on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people listening.

Hello and welcome back to Something to Eat and Something to Read, a podcast for people who love food and cooking and reading, hosted by Germaine Leece, a bibliotherapist and psychotherapist based in Sydney and Sophie Hansen, a food writer and farmer from Orange in central-west New South Wales

This episode’s book ‘guest’ is the hugely successful Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. And the conversation we have around it is a juicy one, spanning everything from returnism, the ‘performance’ of eating, cooking and parenting, friction-maxing, trad wife culture, cooking as care vs cooking as control and how this book ‘misses the most important point of all’.

What did you think of this page-turner?

Show notes are coming to our subscribers shortly.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we are recording today – Sophie on Wiradjuri Country in central west New South Wales and Germaine on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people listening.

Today’s book ‘guest’ is Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day by Tamar Adler and how reading it has nudged us both to think more about noticing the small pleasures we can so easily miss every day and what it means to actually pay attention to your own life.

Show notes are coming soon, featuring lists of all the books and topics we discuss.

In the meantime, thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of Something to Eat and Something to Read, where we think about pleasure and reading and throw away the idea of “challenging” reads. We discuss the ways that being more conscious of what we are reading and the journey this takes us on will lead to a depth of experience that is much more pleasurable than staying on the surface of a story. Most importantly, we can get this depth of experience from ANY novel we read, including Sophie’s beloved Jilly Cooper and Germaine’s beloved Patricia Cornwell.

The book we’re reading for our next episode is Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life.

Show notes are coming soon, featuring lists of all the books and topics we discuss. We will also follow this up with a letter to our subscribers that further explores the richness of reading what we love.

In the meantime, thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Hello! We’re back for another year of reading and cooking and are kicking off with a big, juicy summer round-up. In this episode, we share 16 books we read and all the things we cooked, watched, listened to and loved most over summer.

Germaine’s summer read was The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers, a story about the secret life we live alongside our public lives and what happens in long-term marriages when you love but are not in love. Sophie devoured Heart the Lover by Lily King, a beautiful story of first love, growing up and losing people. We also discuss The Transformations by Andrew Pippos, When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, Hamnet the film, and so much more.

We talk about summer cooking – peaches wrapped in prosciutto, chilli and fruit, Sophie’s halva with cold peaches, and Germaine’s beetroot and pickled cherry salad.

We share thoughts on A Brain that Breathes by Jodi Wilson and heartily agree with and are trying to stick to her advice to start each day by reading instead of scrolling.

Plus films including My Brother’s Band and Somebody to Love, exhibitions, podcasts about slowing down in the kitchen, and recommendations for good psychological thrillers.

The book we’re reading for our next episode is Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life.

Show notes are coming soon, featuring lists of all the books and topics we discuss.

In the meantime, thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Reading and cooking are doorways into Christmas for many of us.

And because this year we need it, and perhaps you might too, we have made ourselves an Advent calendar of 25 things to read, cook, eat, listen to and do throughout the month. All things that might help slow us down, help us feel the festive feels, fill our tables with good things to share, and have a happy, calm month.

Show notes with links, recipes, and the full list of things are heading to our subscribers’ inboxes.

In the meantime, thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Hello! And welcome back to Something to Eat and Something to Read, a podcast for people who love reading and eating and talking and thinking about both. This episode’s book guest is TART - Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef by Slutty Chef a 20-something chef based in London who became famous via her Instagram page @sluttychef and a few posts calling out the misogyny in the high-end (or all) world of food.

The book is sort of a memoir, but also, the author says, an amalgamation of fact and fiction. As she told UK Cosmo, “Some parts are incredibly true and accurate, and others have been juiced up.”

Show notes are coming soon, featuring lists of all the books and topics we discuss.

In the meantime, thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

We have talked about dinner parties in literature before, but none have been quite so much of a struggle to sit through as this one! Happiness and Love by debut author Zoe Debno is a treat for the senses … in quite a different way. And via this book, and the conversation it sparked, we experience how appetites can be lost and food can be nauseating depending on the company we keep.

This is about becoming curious about our reactions to a book, how food creates atmosphere and adds to character and how wealth, class and education can be a cover for the emptiest of internal lives. As ‘the actress’ says in Happiness and Love;

“You act like all you want to do is have serious conversations about art and about literature, and that only a select group of people who have studied enough, who have the credentials you think are important, are smart enough to engage with you, but what is even inside of a book but people’s thoughts and feelings. Everyone can understand thoughts and feelings. Everyone can read a book and understand it.”

Bibliotherapy in action! We hope you enjoy this conversation as we join our narrator on the “white linen sofa” for a long night ahead.

Show notes are coming soon, featuring lists of all the books and topics we discuss.

In the meantime, thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

What books will you never let go of? What recipes will you cook forever? In this episode, we talk about letting go, holding on and the recipes and books that we turn to when we need to fall in love with cooking or reading again. We share the books that ‘wallpaper’ our minds and the things we’re cooking, reading and loving this month.

Show notes are coming shortly, with lists of all the books and things we talk about, plus Sophie’s heart-shaped sponge recipe.

Thank you for listening, and thank you to our wonderful producer, Kristy Reading, for putting this and every episode together so beautifully.

Germaine and Sophie x

We acknowledge that the land on which we work and live is the traditional land of the Wiradjuri Nation (Sophie) and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation (Germaine). We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people.