Book Beginning: Pacific Northwest Cheese by Tami Parr

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

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MY BOOK BEGINNING

If you've visited a farmers market lately you have probably come across more than one local cheesemaker selling their wares.

From the author's introduction to Pacific Northwest Cheese: A History by Tami Parr.

Beginning as early as the fifteenth century a succession of European explorers sailed up and down the west coast of North America, searching for a variety of things including the elusive Northwest Passage, a sea route connecting Europe and Asia.

From Chapter 1, "Furs, Cattle, and Empire: English Cheese in the Pacific Northwest."

Tami Parr dug deep in the history of the Pacific Northwest to research her engaging history of regional cheesemaking, from pioneers making fresh cheese while en route on the Oregon Trail, to the renaissance of small-scale cheesemaking in the 60s and 70s, to today's artisanal cheesemaking scene.

As the author of Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest and the creator of the Pacific Northwest cheese project, Parr knows of what she writes and she writes it well. She incorporates the stories of local cheesemakers and industry innovations that bring to life evolution of the cheese business in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

This is a fun and informative history that will please Pacific Northwesterners and foodies farther afield.

Review: What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies

 


Francis Cornish was an eccentric Canadian art collector who, in The Rebel Angels, died and left his enormous, disorganized, uncatalogued, and partially pilfered art collection to be sorted through by three co-executors of his estate. What's Bred in the Bone is the second book in Robertson Davies’ “Cornish Trilogy,” which concludes with The Lyre of Orpheus.

This second volume tells the remarkable, and stand-alone, story of Cornish’s life. Born to affluence in a backwoods Canadian town, Cornish was the poor little rich kid bullied by his roughneck schoolmates, all but abandoned by his politically influential parents who spent their time in Ottowa, and raised by an eccentric bunch of relatives and family retainers. While studying art and philosophy in pre-war Oxford, Cornish was recruited to act as an unpaid British spy and sent to Bavaria to report on Nazi concentration camps with the cover of working as an apprentice for a master art restorer.

As if all this wasn’t plot enough, the art restoration project turns out to be an elaborate swindle to undermine the Nazis and save European art treasures. Cornish is in it up to his eyeballs, wrestling with his conscious as an artist as well as the international art community.

Davies wraps the compelling story in bigger ideas about human nature, art, religion, and family. It’s a book to recommend to anyone looking for a ripping yarn, but also one to stand up to multiple readings.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Robertson Davies book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

I read What's Bred in the Bone as one of my books for two of the TBR challenges I am doing this year: The MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).