“According to a magazine, Susie is a ‘Leftover’ – a post Bridget-Jones 30 something who has neither her dream man, job, nor home. She doesn’t even own six matching dinner plates. According to her friend Rebecca, Susie needs to get over her ex, Jake, start online dating – or at least stop being so rude to every guy who tries to chat her up. But Susie’s got a plan. If she can just make it the 307 days till her promotion and bonus, she can finally quit and pursue her dream career in food, then surely everything else will fall into place.”
Susie is a girl after my own heart. She has a theory that every type of emotional turmoil can be cured by the application of just the right type of pasta.
She spends her days writing advertising copy for a company that doesn’t appreciate her. She’s counting the days until her promised promotion is here. With the bonus money she makes, she is leaving that job and going into food full time. In the meantime she is muddling through and obsessively watching her ex’s new girlfriend’s Instagram feed.
This is chick lit at its finest. The cover is even pink. I love books that combine food and a hint of romance.
The ending is one that any blogger will find themselves laughing out loud over (because it is so delightfully improbable but fun to imagine.)
There are also recipes for lots of types of pasta to full any need in your life.
When Kelly Madigan is offered a job abroad right after reading a letter from her late mother urging her to take more risks, she sees it as a sign. Kelly’s new ghostwriting assignment means moving to London to work for Natasha Spencer--movie star, lifestyle guru, and wife of a promising English politician. As it turns out, Natasha is also selfish, mercurial, and unwilling to let any actual food past her perfect lips.
Still, in between testing dozens of kale burgers and developing the perfect chocolate mousse, Kelly is having adventures. Some are glamorous; others, like her attraction to her boss’s neglected husband, are veering out of control. Kelly knows there’s no foolproof recipe for a happy life. But how will she know if she’s gone too far in reaching for what she wants?
So I couldn’t sleep one night and finished what I was reading. I looked for something to download from the library -because I don’t have a bunch of unread books just sitting on my iPad?? Anyway, I wanted something new and this fit the bill. Good for Foodies Read and light. I ended up staying up most of the night to read it.
Kelly’s life is undergoing some major changes. Her mother just died. She left Kelly a letter with her wishes for her. One of the main ones was to move out of the Midwest and take some chances with her life. When the opportunity comes to move to London for a year to ghost write a cookbook for a movie star she jumps at the chance even though it means breaking up with her long term boyfriend (also on her mother’s list of things for her to do).
When she gets to England she discovers that superstar Natasha doesn’t really want anything to do with the cookbook. She wants Kelly to come up with recipes from her vague descriptions of meals she remembers but doesn’t really even want to taste the food. The only person who does like the food is Natasha’s husband Hugh. This leads to flirting and then major attraction. He insists that he and Natasha have a marriage in name only but should Kelly believe him?
I really enjoyed this book. There are recipes in the back for some of the food discussed. I wish there had been a recipe for the kale burgers that she struggles to make for most of the book only to have them dismissed by Natasha every time. “Not green enough,” etc.
I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.
"Brilliant idea! Excellent! Muslim dating? Well, I had no idea you were allowed to date.' Then he leaned towards me and looked at me sympathetically. 'Are your parents quite disappointed?'
Unlucky in love once again after her possible-marriage-partner-to-be proves a little too close to his parents, Sofia Khan is ready to renounce men for good. Or at least she was, until her boss persuades her to write a tell-all expose about the Muslim dating scene.
As her woes become her work, Sofia must lean on the support of her brilliant friends, baffled colleagues and baffling parents as she goes in search of stories for her book. In amongst the marriage-crazy relatives, racist tube passengers and decidedly odd online daters, could there be a lingering possibility that she might just be falling in love . . . ?
Sofia Khan’s almost-fiance has told her that he expects them to live with his parents in side by side houses connected through a hole in the wall. She breaks off the relationship.
Now she is forced to face her extended family again who can’t figure out what her problem is. She’s so old! She’s (gasp) 30! How will she ever find a husband at her advanced age?
Her mother says it is because she insists on wearing a hijab. Everyone else just thinks she is too picky.
When she makes a comment in a staff meeting about her dating life, her superiors decide that she should write a book about Muslim dating. She signs up for Muslim online dating sites to try to gain stories for the book. That’s in between dealing with crisis after crisis with her sister’s wedding and hiding her father’s cigarettes from her mother and trying to convince her friend not to marry a man who is already married.
I loved this book. It was a perfect light read. I actually stayed up way too late reading it while trying to convince myself that even though I was only 56% done I could finish it fairly soon. The husband had to gently remind me that I had to go to work in the morning and I really should get some sleep.
Sofia had a great voice. She’s a modern Londoner who takes her faith seriously which makes her a bit of an outsider to her coworkers and to her family. She deals with racism on the streets of London. She isn’t sure exactly what she wants to do when she grows up but she knows it isn’t being a live in slave to a demanding mother-in-law. She isn’t particularly interested in learning to cook anyway.
This is Ayshia Malik’s first book. I’m looking forward to seeing what she writes next.
In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond.
Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys and exotic birds. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace and favor lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary.
Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. Her causes were the struggle for Indian Independence, the fate of the lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War – and, above all, the fight for female suffrage.
Ranjit Singh was the last ruling emperor of the Punjab.
After his death, the British used the confusion surrounding his heirs’ succession to move into the area. Most of the adult heirs died suspiciously. When it was over, the ruler of this prosperous area was an 1o year old boy, Duleep. His mother was very politically astute so the British had her exiled from the country and then forced the child-king to sign over his lands and the symbol of his rule, the Kor-i-Noor diamond.
Duleep Singh was then raised by British people until Queen Victoria decided that he was really cute and wanted him to go to England. She lavished attention on him and considered herself to be his best friend. He was not reunited with his mother until he was an adult.
Eventually Duleep married a woman from Egypt and had six children. The children were known as Princes and Princesses. Princess Sophia was his youngest surviving child from this marriage. Arrangements were made with the India office to provide for the family because they did not want them going back to India and stirring up trouble.
Sophia grew up in luxury until her father’s debts became too much. He then tried to return to India with the family but was taken off the ship at the Suez Canal. The family was sent back to England but Duleep Singh did not go with them. Instead he publicly disowned them and started another family while trying to get back to India. He never did.
Sophia and her sisters were able to get to India as adults. The experience of meeting people fighting for Indian independence awoke the political consciousness of Sophia. She returned to England and threw herself into the fight of Women’s Suffrage in the 1910s.
I love this picture. Sophia lived across the street from the gates of Hampton Court Palace in a grace-and-favor house. That meant that she was allowed to live there as a favor from the monarch. She protested in front of the tourists coming to Hampton Court and sold suffragette newspapers to them. Despite being involved in many of the major protests of the era and even attacking politicians, she was never sent to prison like her fellow suffragettes. She even refused to pay any taxes in an attempt to get arrested. The spectacle of putting a Princess in prison was too much for law enforcement.
World War I curtailed the suffragette movement. She became a nurse for Indian soldiers brought back to England for rest.
While I was reading this book, the Indian solicitor-general came out and said that India should not try to get the Kor-i-Noor diamond back and said it was “neither stolen nor forcibly taken”. It was a present. Yeah, because a 10 year old with no friendly adult counsel can make those kinds of gifts.
The Kor-i-noor is the diamond in the center of the front cross on this crown. This is what reading nonfiction gets you. It gets you yelling at the news in an very angry, yet informed, way.
The part of the book I found the most touching was a memory of the daughter of the elderly Princess’ housekeeper.
“We’d be walking, and she’d be telling me about the world and elections and how important they were. And then she would kneel down in front of me, looking me right in the eye and say ‘I want a solemn promise from you’ even though I don’t think I knew what a solemn promise was at that stage. She would say ‘You are never, ever not to vote. You must promise me. When you are allowed to vote you are never, ever to fail to do so. You don’t realise how far we’ve come. Promise me.’ For the next three years, Sophia made Drovna promise again and again.”
Drovna has kept her promise to the woman who fought hard to win the right for English women to vote.
Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain.Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed.
Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn’t altogether recognize any more.
Bill Bryson is really grumpy in this book. I’m a big Bryson fan. I think I’ve read everything he’s written. He’s never veered far from curmudgeonly but he’s downright peevish in this book. He’s telling people to fuck off repeatedly. Fair warning if that kind of thing bothers you.
To start this journey he drew a line on a map connecting the farthest points he could find on a map of the United Kingdom.
He started his trip from Bognor Regis in the south and meandered his way north in the general direction of this line. This made me spend some quality time with Google maps. I thought I had in my head a general idea of where he was going. Then suddenly he was in Wales. I didn’t know which one of us was not understanding geography. I did find that I didn’t have a very good grasp on English geography – although I was spot on about Wales. I would have sworn the Lake District was northeast of London along with Stratford-upon- Avon and the Cotswolds. Turns out none of these things are true.
He alternates taking lovely walks with complaining about British customer service and the tendency of British people to litter. He does have a strange nostalgia for museums full of taxidermy which I personally hate. He can’t stand shops selling pieces of wood with pithy sayings on them. He seems to get a bit tipsy more than is probably healthy or wise.
There was more in this book about his life outside of writing than there has been in other books. He talks about doing speeches to politicians and filming TV shows.
I was disappointed that he didn’t narrate the audiobook. That’s one of the joys of listening to his books on audio. The narrator did a good job but it took me several hours to get over the fact that he wasn’t Bill Bryson and to stop hearing a phantom version of Bill Bryson’s voice in my head reading along with the narrator.
Bottom line – Listen to this one if you are a fan but don’t let this be a first or third Bryson book.
Leftovers by Stella Newman 
