December Review Round-Up

Here at David R. Godine, Publisher, we strive to produce high quality books above all else. So, when our books and authors are praised, we hope you'll forgive us for acting like proud parents. Please join us in celebrating the recent success of a few of our talented authors.

The “orderly chaos” of Rosemary Verey was reviewed by The Bowed Bookshelf. Here is an excerpt from that review:

Verey’s gardens remind me a little of jazz musicians. A great and successful jazz musician (Branford Marsalis?) once said that great art is not completely improvised: it is creating something new within the constraints of an accepted form. I like the idea of constraints, because we all have them, and some do better than others when operating inside of them. And this is so for Verey. The gardens she created will always be lovely, but they won’t have her individual spark of genius without her.

Read the full article here.

For the aspiring “Anglophile American” gardener, Publishers Weekly's review of Rosemary Verey is one not to miss…

In this well-crafted, very personal biography, one of her apprentices, attorney and gardener Robinson, paints a loving but clear-eyed portrait of this great designer. Those who only know this doyenne of British gardening through the genteel, authoritative voice of her books will meet a more complicated character in these pages. Beneath her calm upper-class exterior was a very ambitious woman, motivated by financial pressures, troubled by family relationships, and pinched by vanity.

Continue reading the article here.

Barbara Paul Robinson was also featured on NPR's Here and Now. Here is a quick snippet from her interview with Robin Young:

Robinson says Verey could have been an anonymous country lady – with a handsome house, a nice family who was devoted to her church and hunted, too. But this gardening chapter came late in her life and it became her career.

Give your eyes a reprieve from reading and take a listen to the full interview here. Buy a copy of Rosemary Verey on our website today!

In honor of the Christmas season, Susan H. Gordon from Biographile reviewed Elizabeth David’s Christmas. Here is an excerpt:

David brandishes an idiosyncratic mix of formality and do-what-you-like on both sides of the kitchen door. After decades of preparing her recipes for eight books and articles in publications like Vogue magazine and The Sunday Times, she doesn’t hide how weary she’s become of cooking, but she shares her stories and recipes for even the richest dishes anyway, and with a warmly authoritative precision: Her recipe for a Christmas pudding is accompanied by an admission of not having made one in years -- and a perfect set of instructions for making one. Once seated, her description of each meal reverts to a candidly delighted description of each dish, regardless how plain or splendid.

Read the full article here. If you have any late holiday parties to prepare for (or if you'd like to be way ahead of the game for next Christmas), you can pick up a copy of Elizabeth David's Christmas on our website.

Finally, December also included some buzz for one of our upcoming titles, Linda Bamber’s Taking What I Like. Ben Fountain, lawyer-turned-author and nominee for the National Book Award, mentioned the book in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered when asked to share which books he’s looking forward to in 2013. Here is an excerpt:

In another, a man is serving time in prison for murder, and he plays Hamlet in a prison production of the play. And - I mean, I've never read anything quite like these stories. They have attitude, they shake things up. They're playful and inventive and funny, and Bamber gets the entire world into each one of her stories. They have the effect, the same effect as when you see a great production of a Shakespeare play. It makes the work come alive.

Continue reading the article, or listen to the interview, here, and watch out for Taking What I Like this spring!