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LA BONNE TABLE

Name: LA BONNE TABLE
Author: Ludwig Bemelmans
ISBN: 0879238089

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1964

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Although everything served up here has something to do with eating, this is not a cookbook and it consists of assorted autobiographical pieces about restaurateurs, head waiters or chefs or piccolos or maitres d'hotel, about hotels or innkeeping in general or guests in particular. For Bemelmans, the art of dining well was a passionate preoccupation and these fastidious cruditos are drawn from his books and from articles in magazines. There is no need for cohesion although, in the main, the book follows the chronology of Bemelmans' life and there are many tall tales as well as small anecdotes about places and people which are entertaining to read and reread. The sketches are taken from the backs menus, from unpublished drawings, and the material selected provides the kind of moveable feast he would have wanted an autobiography to be. Michelin would give it three stars and five forks.

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1964

ISBN: 0879238089

Page Count: 46

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1964

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
MADELINE'S SEASONS
developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LOVE FROM MADELINE
by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STREET WHERE THE HEART LIES
illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.