When I put together my 2021 Reading Challenge, I didn’t plan out exactly which books I wanted to read for each category. I had some ideas: I have a lengthy list of books I’ve been given that I haven’t gotten around to yet, for example, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll easily find entries for the “I’ve been meaning to read” categories. But there was one that I probably should have thought about more carefully: “A book in a different-to-me genre”.
Well. When I showed my husband my list he just laughed and said “Good luck with that.” I read pretty widely, and although there are genres I don’t read as much in, there are very few genres that I won’t read.
(Also, just so that we are clear, I don’t consider format or length to be genre descriptions. “Graphic novel” is not a genre, it’s a format. “Short story” is not a genre, it’s length. I also don’t have any restrictions on those, but they are not what we are talking about here.)
The closest we thought of for “genres I don’t read often” (which is the closest I’m going to get) are celebrity memoirs, misery memoirs, and horror. (Although horror is less accurate; I’ve read my fair share of Stephen King and definitely went through an R. L. Stine / Christopher Pike phase as a child/teenager. I may not have read any Clive Barker, but I’m not unversed in horror.)
And then a friend asked whether cookbooks counted. And I thought “oh, thank goodness, a different genre.” It’s not that I’ve never read cookbooks before, but I’ve gotten a couple of cookbooks in the last few years that have had more narrative sections than you might expect. I got two for Christmas, in fact: The Book Lover’s Cookbook, which is filled with recipes linked to or referenced in works of fiction – along with relevant excerpts – and the National Trust Book of Scones.
The National Trust Book of Scones has 50 scone recipes in it. There are sweet scones, with sultanas or cranberries. There are traditional plain scones and cheese scones. There are other savoury scones, with blue cheese or different herbs. There’s even a scone that uses leftover Christmas pudding. (Or, you know, an extra one, if you’re my mother.) And while the recipes are great, and I want to make almost all of them, they’re not the reason that I’m counting this as one of my challenge books.
On every facing page, there is a writeup of a different National Trust property, with stories that the author (collector?) either experienced herself or was told of during her scones quest. The properties are scattered all over the country, and it’s only about 10% of the total properties the Trust has. There are stories about the houses, stories about the previous owners, stories about the volunteers, and stories about Sarah Clelland herself.
One of my goals for 2020 was to get my UK driving license, in part so that we could start taking the children to National Trust houses. I didn’t, obviously. But this cookbook is the next best thing, and has massively increased my list of places we’ll visit once we can again.
Bibliophilia 