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Rating: 
Summary: Odd mix of memoir and musings
Review: I read this book for my book club. As a book club book it was pretty successful. We didn't talk all that much about the book itself but the book prompting some wonderful discussion about food and memories and the like. For the reader without a discussion to look forward to, I'd be reluctant to recommend the book. Something is missing for me about this read. I've given it three stars because the actual writing (particularly some of the food descriptions) is quite strong. But the content is lacking. I'm all for memoirs of interesting people but I really learned far more about Moore's relatively ordinary life than I ever wanted to know. Then, just to confuse things, are some pretty random essays about food totally outside of the context of the memoir. It just doesn't work for what I want out of a read in this type of a book.
Rating:
Summary: Odd mix of memoir and musings
Review: I read this book for my book club. As a book club book it was pretty successful. We didn't talk all that much about the book itself but the book prompting some wonderful discussion about food and memories and the like. For the reader without a discussion to look forward to, I'd be reluctant to recommend the book. Something is missing for me about this read. I've given it three stars because the actual writing (particularly some of the food descriptions) is quite strong. But the content is lacking. I'm all for memoirs of interesting people but I really learned far more about Moore's relatively ordinary life than I ever wanted to know. Then, just to confuse things, are some pretty random essays about food totally outside of the context of the memoir. It just doesn't work for what I want out of a read in this type of a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Delicious!
Review: Moore tells her story her way, in her own time. I sometimes had unanswered questions, but they were answered by and by. Great read!
Rating:
Summary: Delicious!
Review: Talk about a futile admonishment! How can we help but eat our hearts out? The prose in this collection of essays is so ripe, so pure, it glistens like perfect fruit-almost too good to consume. Powerfully rendered, different essays will serve as emotional lightning rods for different readers. Documenting Judith Moore's relationship with the creative side of nourishment, these essays span nearly half a century. Beginning in the early nineteen forties, when Moore is three and has a passion for both her father and mud pies, they continue right up to recent past, when the fear she felt as the mother of a toddler who refused to eat is transformed into the gift of a story to comfort that child, now a parent herself. Without the emotional content of Moore's life, the essays that are merely about food ("Spuds" for example), seem academic and lifeless. The best of the twenty-five are stories that document change--Moore's life often serving as a baromenter of the social atmosphere in America. One or two are outright horror stories--the grandmother who pickles pigs snouts, lips and ears in Mason jars is fascinatingly repellant. Several essays are intensely lyrical as they depict new-found love and the food that is created to celebrate those feelings. (The cooking involved in "Adultery" is downright voluptuous.) Always, Moore is a reporter both passionate and logical, infusing the bittersweet passage of time with humor and forgiveness.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely satisfying; could use a little better editing.
Review: This is the sort of book you want to curl up with in front of a fire, no one around to disturb you. The plot flows (for the most part) smoothly from one self-contained chapter to another. Moore's tantalizing descriptions of people, places, and, most importantly, foods, provide brilliant and amusing reflections on life. My only complaint is about the editing, which I found wanting in some respects. On the whole, this was one of the best and most fulfilling books I've read in a long time.
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