Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family (Beeler)

Rating:
Summary: Stuffed is DELICIOUS
Review: I have consumed "Stuffed" so greedily that I read the entire thing in one day-it was a binge of wonderful reading. Every single page was filled with the kind of language I love best: people, nuance, food, relationships, history, and a sense of place.

It's like sitting with someone in my own family and looking at scrapbooks and photo albums. I keep hearing, "Tell us again! Tell us again!" as I turn the pages.

I love this book. I read passage after passage out loud to my husband-there are so many little nuggets of information and entertainment. Patricia Volk is a wonder. Oh, what a sweet book, and what inspiring writing.

Rating:
Summary: Wit, wisdom, familial weirdness, and a great, great read.
Review: The earlier reviewers have one thing about right--this book is a lot more than a semi-food-based memoir about growing up Jewish in Manhattan in the middle of the last century. It's really about nearly everybody's family: the terrific characters, the loonies, the distinguished, the pathetic--you name it, they're in the book. Volk's style is an amazing balancing act, dancing between opposites. Sometimes when you're expecting a laugh you get a tear, or vice versa, or both at once: her farewell to her dying beloved father is so absurd and so moving that you'll never forget it. (Or his ashes, which of course get caught in an ocean gust and blow all over his children.) For my part I was often laughing at the parade of eccentricities when I remembered again how every family I know is like that: outsized in a way, outlandish in a way. Among Volk's other virtues, I don't know another writer who has so subtly and ruthlessly and hysterically exposed the small casual meannesses we tend to visit on the people we love. And still the book is full of love, running over with it.

Rating:
Summary: What a Waste of My Money!
Review: This is the first time I have ever regretted spending money on a book. Someone in my book club chose this book so I tried to read it for the upcoming review. I can't imagine why anyone would enjoy this book except the author because it would be of interest to no one else except her! This is also the first time I ever reviewed a book online; but I am hoping that I might let people know that not everyone thought this book was wonderful!