notanotherbookreview

 Around 1973 or 74, my boyfriend and I wandered into a funky restaurant in Berkeley. I remember a hand-lettered sign, Chez Panisse, and a casual open space with arty touches. It had one choice on the menu but it was French.  I don't remember what we ate, only that it was tasty. There was a woman, who asked us how we liked the food, who said it came from her garden. It was a wait for food but we came back for the freshness, the food and her attitude, as though it was all a lark. Fast forward to 2017, where you have to look no further than Whole Foods to realize how Alice Waters changed the way we buy, cook and eat food. In her new autobiography, COMING TO MY SENSES: The Making of a Counterculture cook (Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random, Sept), Waters explains how her early life and the 1960s counterculture were essential ingredients to her evolution. At 27, Waters, a home cook without formal chef training, opened a restaurant based on a love of French cooking and an instin...

This "book will consist solely of blank pages in white and black and shades of gray..." begins an untitled page after the table of contents in Peter Cherches' AUTOBIOGRAPHY WITHOUT WORDS. Conceptual put-on or truth about a life? That's the knowing metaphysical sleight of hand of this book, along with slapstick and shtick. It is as though Borges worked with Monsieur Hulot, while smoking George Burns' cigar. Cherches, called by Publishers Weekly "one of the innovators of the short short story," in just a few lines to a few pages entertains with stories from his life. Here are childhood perceptions, food and smells, as well as adult travels to India and Mars. In Cherches' progressive life, the real and surreal meld together, in a consciousness that sees around corners.  There's a thin line between memoir and fiction and this book plays with it. In Part I, Cherches, the adult,  sees a group of kids, who look exactly like his childhood f...

An autobiography is different from a memoir, though the forms seem to have merged lately.  I think of a memoir as a public diary edited yet intimate. The thoughts of the writer about their experience are primary, while an autobiography seeks to know the person through their deeds. Reading about them, you learn how a life was lived, consciously and unconsciously. You gain insight into the roles of background and opportunity in shaping character and destiny.    There are not many large full autobiographies and this one supplies the pleasure of the unexpected. It breaks the stereotypes about Black potential and advancement.    Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pionee, the autobiography of Clifton R. Wharton Jr.,is about a Black man whose good fortune helped him to forge breakthroughs in four separate careers. It's an exceptional story, the release below explains more. Media interviews with Dr. Wharton: Some new ones. Here's SUNY's Rockefeller...