Archive | Nonfiction RSS feed for this section

Bake Offs: Tasty Books and Prize Winning Recipes for You to Try at Home

28 Nov

My son and I love to bake together; the weekend I wrote this post we made cookies for a class party.  But one thing we love almost as much as baking itself is to watch baking competitions together on TV.  Here are a few suggestions that you might enjoy if you too love the sweet taste of victory.

Great British Baking Show
GreatBritishBakingShow
I was curious to first checkout the Great British Baking Show because I was a fan of one of the hosts, Sue Perkins from the funny historical foodie show Supersizers Go…  I found this show just as delightful with contestants who are sweetly kind to one another rather than being cut throat like many reality competitions. They compete in three rounds: the first, a signature bake puts their unique spin on a classic, the second round where they must recreate one of the judge’s tricky bakes with minimal instructions, and a final show stopper round where the baked good frequently almost look too beautiful to eat. Even when disaster occurs and a contestant has a dreaded “soggy bottom” on one of their tarts the judges always have at least a kind word or two for the bakers. You’ll be rooting for your favorite baker and wishing you could taste the delicious looking treats they prepare.  Besides two of the seasons, Hoopla also has available Master Classes with Judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood who show you how to make their special treats.

Plus you can get the behind the scenes scoop with The Story Of The Great British Bake Off by Anita Singh.  You can borrow seasons 1-5 on DVD and try out the recipes yourselves with The Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking and The Great British Bake Off: Perfect Cakes and Bakes to Make at Home by Linda Collister from BCCLS libraries.  Learn more about judge, Paul Hollywood, in his memoir/cookbook A Baker’s Life: From Childhood Bakes to Five-Star Excellence.

The Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off Series

bestofpillsburydesserts

Image from Hoopla

The Great British Baking Show is titled The Great British Bake Off in the UK, but changed its name because of Pillsbury’s copyright on the phrase in the US .  The Bake Off sponsored by Pillsbury is one of the most legendary in this country.  You can borrow a variety of cook books from Hoopla divided into different dishes including one on desserts which covers yummy goodies from over 50 years of competition from 1957’s now classic French Silk Chocolate Pie to more modern winners.  The book also looks back at the history of the competition and how desserts have evolved.  Each recipe includes the contestant’s name, home town, and year they competed.  You can also borrow bake off books on casseroles and specifically on making my family’s favorites: cookies and bars.

The Bake-Off
by Beth Kendrick
bake off
The Bake-Off by Beth Kendrick use a national bake-off as the setting that brings together two very different estranged sisters. Their grandmother thinks a top-secret family pie recipe will not just have them winning the competition but also find common ground. Of course, neither one is a baker, and if you’ve ever tried to bake one you might be questioning the phrase “easy as pie.”

If you are a fan of foodie fiction you can also check out All’s Fair in Love and Cupcakes by Betsy St. Amant where aspiring baker Kat’s best friend Lucas Brannen signs her up for TV baking competition called Cupcake Combat; it seems like Kat may achieve her dreams, but Lucas is afraid he might lose Kat to the big city.

Written by:
Aimee Harris
Head of Reference

Tags: , , , ,

How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley

7 Nov

Fascism
As the child of Holocaust survivors, Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley grew up with an interest in how functioning democracies could turn toward fascism. While many students have held on to the post-World War II consensus that fascism was defeated and relegated to the history books, Stanley wrote How Fascism Works in response to the rise of fascist movements around the globe over the past several years. Using a blend of history, economics, psychology, and sociology, Stanley explains in a clear and concise terms how fascism is able to take hold of a society and why people living in democracies should be concerned about it. This is an important piece of scholarship for anyone with an interest in how we got to the point where we currently are in world history.

Stanley begins by acknowledging that “fascism” is an often over and imprecisely used term, but that there are tactics that are similar between fascist states such as the use of propaganda, the creation of a mythical past, extreme nationalism, and calls for “law and order.” From the Armenian Genocide to the rise of authoritarian figures like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Viktor Orban in Hungary, fascist regimes use economic crises to foment hatred by the majority against the minority. Fascism works when different racial, religious, and social groups are unable to build solidarity with each other and are instead divided and isolated from each other. That is why Labor unions, where workers of different backgrounds are most like to come together to support common goals, are often the most fiercely attacked under fascist regimes.

Stanley’s book may seem bleak, but understanding the conditions under which fascism arises can also feel empowering by providing the reader with the tools necessary to navigate the global politics of today. What I enjoyed most about Stanley’s book is how his writing remains accessible when explaining a topic that is incredibly complex and volatile. Stanley is also hesitant to make any conclusions about whether contemporary societies should be considered fascist or not. Rather, his strength lies in explaining fascist tactics that are being used in even the healthiest of democracies. By adding this level of nuance, Stanley creates a work that is more compelling and expansive than it would have been if he had only analyzed the fascist states of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy that most American students are familiar with.

Written by
Karl Schwartz
Young Adult Librarian

Tags: ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →