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Weekly Words about Books APRIL 14, 2013
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A Beauty of a Book Now in Paperback
| Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Some of you may know Walter from other books he's written, including The Financial Lives of the the Poets, and Citizen Vince, for which he won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery in 2006. But with Beautiful Ruins I think Walter has truly hit his stride as a writer. This is the tale of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and is rekindled in Hollywood 50 years later.
The first part of the story begins in 1962, when a young movie starlet flees  the set of the movie Cleopatra and seeks refuge in a seedy hotel in an Italian village run by an innkeeper who quickly becomes infatuated with his glamorous guest. She claims to be dying but is actually pregnant, thanks to a liaison with Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton.
And the story continues today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot, searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. Throughout, Walter moves back and forth between the two settings with ease, engaging the reader and infusing the plot with humor and romance.
By the way, an interesting note about the title of the book - it was taken from a description of Burton in his 50s.
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Down the Hatch With Two New Titles
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| Michael Pollan is one of the food movement's best-known and popular spokespeople. Through books like The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Pollan has taken food writing to a new level, linking good food with good health - both for ourselves and our planet. And he does so with solid research and a flair for storytelling that makes all his books eminently readable.
In his newest book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, Pollan chronicles the enduring power of the four classical elements - fire, water, air, and earth - to transform the stuff of nature into  delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary pros, he attempts to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue pit master tutors him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez-Panisse-trained cook schools him in the art of braising; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius "fermentos" (a tribe that includes brewers, cheese makers, and all kinds of picklers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most amazing alchemies of all.
In Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach (Stiff, Packing For Mars) takes readers on a tour of the human body's gastrointestinal tract. With her trademark sense of humor and scientific curiosity, she investigates the beginning, and end, of our food, addressing such questions as why crunchy food is  so appealing, how much we can eat before our stomachs burst, and whether constipation killed Elvis.
There is no one better than Roach at translating the scientifically gruesome or disgusting into laugh-out-loud prose. In Gulp, she remains ever curious and unafraid to appear foolish as she makes human digestion easy to, well, digest.
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A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
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My name is Hut Landon. I'm a former bookstore owner who now runs the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA) in San Francisco.
My goal with this newsletter is to keep readers up to date about new books hitting the shelves, share what booksellers are recommending in their stores, and pass on occasional news about the book world.
I'm not into long, wordy reviews or literary criticism; I'd like HUT'S PLACE to be a quick, fun read for book buyers.If you have any friends who you think might like receiving this column each week, simply click on "Forward this email" below and enter their email address. There is also a box in which to add a short message.
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WHERE TO FIND A BOOKSTORE
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Many of you already have a favorite local bookstore, but for those of you without such a relationship, this link will take you to a list of Northern California indie bookstores by region.
If you live or work elsewhere, you can click here to find the nearest indie bookstore by simply entering your postal code.
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