I hadn't even planned on reading this book when I bought it at a tag sale for 25 cents. I enjoyed it. The author writes about her mom's favorite recipes (yuck).
From back cover: "food could be a way of making sense of the world...If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were."

Some of the recipes look really good too.

This book is up for trade or will be placed in a bookbox.

This book is on its way to Maine!! Enjoy the book and may it have a wonderful journey.

Just received it today...what a lovely gift, Thank You - janaqq! Will come back to journal again soon.

This was such a treat for me to read! If you're a "foodie", or have ever read Gourmet magazine, or ever read a New York Times restaurant review by Ruth Reichl, then you're in for treat as well. The book focus on her memoirs as a child and continue up until her marriage to her first husband. It's also a travelogue of places she's visited. We're introduced to people who've influenced her culinary skills and she gives us a recipe, sometimes two, in every chapter. The recipes are great and because of that, I have to go get my own personal copy of this book!

Janaqq - Thanks so much for sharing this with me! I will share this with Davitraka and hopefully some other BCers who'd like to join a bookray.

Join This BookRay at any time


Tender at the Bone - Bookray Members

Grorser    NB, Canada
Nechameh   CT
caligula03    CA
16stepper    AZ
roadrunner   TX
Davitraka   FL
ramson   LA
Witchie   Portugal
Ri   ON, Canada
HikingReader   WI
Lpree   MD
AnnaLibrarian WA  
merlynreid      UK   (on hold)
hendertuckian  NV 

How Does a Bookray work?

A book passes from BCer to BCer based on the list of members who've signed up.

To join this bookray please send a PM (private message) to me and I will add you to the list. New members will be added to the end of the list in the order in which I receive the messages. Please be aware that this is an international bookray and you may have to ship overseas. The list of members will be listed here at the book's home page.

As a member, you will receive the book from the person listed before you. When you receive the book please make a journal entry stating that you’ve received it. Please read it as soon as you can (don't rush, just be reasonable about the length of time). After you read the book, please journal again with your comments. You will then need to PM (private message) the next person on the list for their mailing address. Mailing the book by media mail is the least expensive way in the US. Check to see if air mail is cheaper to send overseas, sometimes it is!

If you are unable to reach the person after you on the list, in a reasonable amount of time, then PM the next person on the list. If any questions come up, please send me a PM. Thank you all for participating in this bookray. ~ Happy Reading ~

Arrived in the mail yesterday - really looking forward to it. Thanks! We'll get to it quickly and pass it along to the next person on the bookray. Love the bookmark, by the way.

Really enjoyed this book - food is such a big part of our lives - and it's always a little bit reassuring to see others who enjoy it too. Sometimes one is made to feel a little odd because of an enjoyment of food. Well, she certainly makes it seem perfectly normal that a child should grow up with a wonderful sense of food and its import.

And she shares a secret that she claims every cook knows - desserts are a cheap trick - everybody loves them and thinks they are much harder to make than they really are. And she's right.

It's off to Nechameh. Enjoy! And try the recipes. They are good.

I received the book last week - sorry for not reporting sooner. I'm about to get started on it now.

Well, I didn't get very far in this book. It just didn't appeal to me right now. So on Friday (Halloween) I sent it off to Caligula03. I hope you enjoy it!

The book arrived safe and sound. I'll read it as soon as I can. Please don't stress over my estimated read-by date. I'm currently averaging 30 books a month and I have less than 30 books on my ring/ray TBR pile.

I found the authors travels more interesting than her descriptions of eating or cooking. Much of her cooking tales personally turned my stomach. I suppose I'm glad that I'm not familar with her New York Times reviews. The recipes included in the book were either bizarre sounding or rather simplistic. Save for the soufflet recipe, I'm really not tempted to try any of them.

It took until page 54 for me to really get into the book. I had five abortive attempts at starting the book before I finally got to a point where I was interested enough to keep reading. It was at the point that she went to the boarding school that I wanted to continue. Again it was for the traveling and not the food.

To top things off I had the joy of reading this book while traveling for the holidays. My mother-in-law and mother both did things that reminded me of Ruth's mother. In the case of latter, it was to see if years old preserves that no longer had the consitency of preserves were still etible. For the former, it was to cook a meat dish that smelled okay but was gray in color. She also then made a strange vegetable dish that had all sorts of things mixed together that just don't seem like they should go together. Both dishes actually tasted fine but they sure looked strange! Perhaps if I hadn't been reading Tender at the Bone at the time I wouldn't have been so put off by them. In the case of the preserves, my mother in law came to her senses before actually eating any.

This arrived today. I heard this author on NPR when this book first came out, and it was a fascinating interview. Can't wait to read the book! Adding to my stack of rays.

What a delightful book! This was everything I had hoped it would be, and more. The writing is as sumptuous as the food she describes. This is, hands down, the best memoir I believe I've ever read. Will send on to the next person as soon as I've got an address. Thank you for sharing this, janaqq and cafemundo.

I received this yesterday. I'm in the middle of a ring book with another to follow but I will get to this asap.

I enjoyed reading this book and was hungry constantly from all of the food talk. Her mother and the mold reminded me soooo much of my mother. I can't tell you how many times she tried to make us eat cheese with mold on the outside. She'd scrap it off and tell us "It won't hurt you. How do you think they make penicillin?". However, my mother is an amazing cook and has, to my knowledge, never poisoned anyone. The recipes all seemed a bit dated and I never really did warm up to Ruth but I still enjoyed the book. And I loved reading about the Bay Area, having grown up in the East Bay. Thanks everyone for sharing! This is off to Davitraka today via Media Mail.

Just got it in the mail a couple days ago. About 50 pages in, and definitely enjoying it.

It was a very interesting book. Reichl has a very engaging style.
Some characters fell out of the narrative rather abruptly, and I wanted more details on some of her jobs (before falling into cooking/critiquing cooking) but even these were hardly jarring. I especially wanted more information on her parents and their relationship.

Overall, she's had an incredibly interesting life, filled with real "characters" (Get it? Hah, it's a pun. Yes, that is grounds for immediate decapitation.). I appreciated the read. Mostly, I regret forgetting to copy out some of the more interesting recipes before I mailed it out. Though the focus seemed to be less on food and more on just "Hey, life is interesting."


Mailed out today to the next in line.

Received in the mail over the weekend. I have 1.5 rings to read ahead of this one so I probably wont't get to start it til about Thursday of this week. Will try to get it back in the mail next weekend.

6/01/04 I really enjoyed this book. I am sending it on its way to Ri as witchie asked to be skipped.

This lovely book arrived today in the mail! Hooray! I have another bookring book ahead of it right now, but hope to get to this one very soon!

Update 7/15: I am almost done with this one. Sorry for the delay - I am on staff at a peace camp and have VERY little freetime to read. Hopefully this one will be sent out by the end of the week.

Final update 7/27: I finished the book and took it to the post office today. Sorry for the extended delay! I really enjoyed the book. My only complaint was that itmade me think about food all the time! I found myself unable to fall asleep at night after reading it because my thoughts drifted to all the various foods I would eat the following day! I think I gained several pounds from reading this book!

I received this book yesterday before I could get to my computer. I opened it and read the first chapter and I am already in love! I have had to restrain myself from reading this everytime I glance at it in the library, and now it is finally time to indulge!

Thanks also for the chocolate cake recipe, I will have to try it out. My wedding cake was some sort of lemon confection, and boy do I wish I had the recipe. After moving three time in the year after our wedding, the anniversary layer of the cake was freezer burnt, squished into a assymetrical lump, and (I think) left way too long in the hot trunk of my sister's car on the trip back from the wedding!

Oh boy, I loved this book!

I have read short pieces by Reichl published in Saveur magazine, but this longer work was a real treat. I am sorry it took me a bit longer to report back, but my husband hijacked the book and had to try out the Swallow pork stew recipe. (By the way it was really good!)

I loved hearing about Ruth's time in boarding school, her time in my former neighborhood! (the Lower East Side), where she described the neighborhood and its wealth of characters so perfectly, and of course, I loved her "hippie" phase in Berkeley (I too have struggled with a vegan Thanksgiving dinner!). Great writing and wonderful memories to retell.

The only problem I had was that was never really ready to move on to new people and places. I could have stayed longer at camp and heard more about the tart, I could have learned more about her mother and father. I wanted details on what happened with the restaurant that her former co-workers were going to start and what ever happened to Pat and Serafina and the wine broker, and well...you get the point.

Thanks so much for offering this in a ring and it will be heading out shortly to the next in line!

This arrived in today's mail. I have some other rings ahead of it, but will read it as soon as I can. I have another book by this author, but have been holding off until I can read this one. So I'm certainly looking forward to reading this!

I finished this yesterday - what a great story! I agree that it was more about her interesting life than about the food itself, but the food was obviously a theme in the book. I can't see me making any of the recipes, but I certainly look forward to reading her other book, which is sitting somewhere in my TBR pile.

Thanks very much for sharing this! I will mail it out as soon as I have an address.