Joe and Libby, booksellers at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, CO, share why they love and recommend Heidi Durrow’s debut novel The Girl Who Fell from the Sky in this wonderful video post from their store’s blog. We are so happy to see (and hear!) how much they enjoyed it. Libby compares it to Julia Alvarez’s How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye and calls it a story of “perseverance, triumph and survival.”
Thank you Joe, Libby, and Maria’s Bookshop for sharing!
For this month’s Algonquin Test-Kitchen, Brittany – armed with a handy blow torch – took on Bill Smith’s Crème Brulée, from Seasoned in the South. These little potted custards, featuring lots of heavy cream, are the perfect ending to a dinner party, or a nice treat to pull out with a bottle of wine at your next book group!
The Recipe:
Serves 6
3 cups of heavy cream
1.5 cups of half and half
1 split vanilla bean
9 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Arrange the ramekins in a 9 x13 baking dish or roasting pan and set aside.
Scald the cream and half-and-half together with the vanilla bean. Whisk together the egg yolks and the sugar. When the cream begins to steam on the surface, whisk it gradually into the eggs (Note: It’s important to stir frequently, as the mixture will begin to form a skin as it heats.).
Strain the mixture and divide it among six 6-ounce ramekins, saving the vanilla bean for another use or two, and pour enough hot water in to the baking pan to come halfway up their sides. Bake in the bain-marie uncovered. They should become firm but still jiggly. In my small ramekins this can happen in 20 minutes, but custards are weird and will sometimes take much longer (Note: In my oven, which tends to run a little hot, this took about 30 minutes.). When they are set, transfer the custards to a cooling rack for 30 minutes. Then refrigerate them, uncovered, for at least one hour.
At serving time, dust the top with a thin later of white sugar and brown in the broiler until the sugar has caramelized. Or do like I do, and bring a blowtorch to the table and do it on sight. Watch your fingers.
These are best eaten right away, but the caramel will hold its crunch for a few hours if you need to prepare them in advance.
The New York Times’ Paper Cuts blog features a New Jersey-themed playlist by Lauren Grodstein, New Jersey native, and author of A Friend of the Family.
Lauren describes the role of New Jersey in her novel on the Papercuts Blog:
“A Friend of the Family” is set in the New Jersey suburbs, a place the characters think of, aspirationally, as the West West Side of Manhattan. I was writing from my own experience growing up in Bergen County, where it was a truth universally acknowledged that everything — the hairdressers, the prep schools, even the pickles — was better on the New York side of the Hudson.”
A country song about New Jersey, Hoboken’s favorite indie band, and of course – a little Bruce! Lauren’s play list has a little of everything, kind of like New Jersey.
Head on over to PaperCuts, the New York Times blog by the editors of their Book Review, to see the entire play list.
Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell From The Sky is featured this week on NPR’s What We’re Reading.
See, there’s this librarian. And a bird-watching boy. And a strange man with a harmonica and a roof-top pigeon keeper. There’s a glamorous aunt and her philanthropic boyfriend. There’s a desperate little family and a desperate little act. There’s also a survivor. Her name is Rachel. Rachel is growing up in the 1980s, haunted by her heritage (a black father and a Danish mother), as well as secrets she’s folded into her own history. The narrative weaves these lives and mysteries together effortlessly. Durrow tells this story in surround-sound, allowing the reader to step up and peek through the eyes of each character.
Shannon Rhoades, supervising senior editor at NPR’s “Morning Edition,” says:
“The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is the most recent recipient of the Bellwether Prize. Founded (and funded) by author Barbara Kingsolver, the award promotes ’socially responsible literature.’ While that sounds slightly medicinal, this book is anything but. Rachel’s voice resonated in my reading mind in much the same way as did that of the young protagonist of The House on Mango Street. There’s an achingly honest quality to it; both wise and naive, it makes you want to step between the pages to lend comfort.”
We’re so glad the good people at NPR love this book! We love it too! We’re so sure that you’re going to love it that we’d like to share a little sample with you. Don’t shove, there’s plenty for everyone.
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, now focuses all of his time on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has started a website, www.TheGatesNotes.com, to talk about what his foundation has been up to, and also to put down his thoughts. Recently, he mentioned the Algonquin title Work Hard, Be Nice in a post about KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) which he calls “one of the most promising examples of innovative thinking in American education.” (Read his whole article here.)
This isn’t the first time Bill Gates has talked about KIPP and Mathews’ book. He also talked about them at length during his 2009 TED speech – even giving everyone in the audience a copy of the book. (Watch his speech here.)
In the book, Jay Mathews writes about KIPP founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin–the two twenty-somethings who created the extremely successful fifth-grade experience which grew into KIPP. Today there are 66 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia. KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America’s best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct. Chants, songs, and slogans such as “Work hard, be nice” energize the program.
Bill Gates wrote on his blog: “KIPP clearly has a huge affect on kids. Some people say they get the kids who are better to start with in terms of knowledge, motivation, or parents but this has been examined quite closely and if it is true it is a very modest difference relative to the surrounding schools. The KIPP kids are well below average coming in compared to the state averages almost everywhere. One example of KIPP’s success: while only 20 percent of low-income students in the U.S. attend college, the rate for former KIPP students is 80 percent.”
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