Portobello Book Blog

Hello everyone – hope you all had a lovely day yesterday and have plenty leftovers to enjoy today! Did you get any books for Christmas? I got three which I am very pleased about. I had fancied Stanley Tucci’s book Taste having heard lots of people talking about it so I was pleased my friend got me that. My mum got me The Last Night In London by Karen White. I’ve read a few of her books written in collaboration with other writers and was intrigued to see that Precious Dubose, a character from All The Ways We Said Goodbye, features in this one. Lastly, my family got me a beautiful poetry book, A Nature Poem for Every Winter Evening. I’ll need to catch up with December of course, but then plan to read the appropriate one for each day in January and February.

From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen.

Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.

Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Written with Stanley’s signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.

London, 1939. Beautiful and ambitious Eva Harlow and her American best friend, Precious Dubose, are trying to make their way as fashion models. When Eva falls in love with Graham St. John, an aristocrat and Royal Air Force pilot, she can’t believe her luck—she’s getting everything she ever wanted. Then the Blitz devastates her world, and Eva finds herself slipping into a web of intrigue, spies, and secrets. As Eva struggles to protect her friendship with Precious and everything she holds dear, all it takes is one unwary moment to change their lives forever…

London, 2019. American journalist Maddie Warner, whose life has been marked by the tragic loss of her mother, travels to London to interview Precious about her life in pre-WWII London. Maddie has been careful to close herself off to others, but in Precious she recognizes someone whose grief rivals her own—but unlike Maddie, Precious hasn’t allowed it to crush her.  Maddie finds herself drawn to both Precious and to Colin, her enigmatic surrogate nephew.  As Maddie gets closer to her, she begins to unravel Precious’s haunting past—a story of friendship, betrayal, and the unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

Poems to celebrate the winter season. A wonderful bedside companion for a frosty winter’s evening, with poems to immerse yourself in the season. From William Shakespeare to John Keats to Katherine Mansfield, the finest poets that ever put pen to paper describe this beautiful and sometimes terrible season. With one entry for every day through winter, from 1st December until 28th or 29th February, this is the ideal book to take you through the darker months and find joy and comfort in nature. In December ‘Gaunt in gloom’ begins James Joyce’s ‘Nightpiece’. In January, there’s a ‘certain slant of light for Emily Dickinson, while ‘the dull dead wind is out of tune’ for Oscar Wilde. And in February, the last month of meteorological winter, William Morris muses ‘From this chill thaw to dream of blossomed May’. This beautiful and collectable anthology of poems derives from the popular A Poem for Every Night of the Year and also features wintry poems by Alice Oswald, Edward Lear, Emily Brontë, William Wordsworth, Ted Hughes and many more.

I also got a Five Year Line-a-Day Diary, a diary for my blogging commitments and the Hebridean Pocket Diary I get from my family each year which has beautiful illustrations by Mairi Hedderwick. So I should be organised if nothing else! Do let me know if you found any good books under your Christmas tree.