Book Recommendations

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and we have some more book recommendations for you.

Yes, we do.

Every year at this time, Martha and I dig through the piles of books that we’ve bought or received, and we pick one or two that we think you might want to buy for yourself or for a friend or a family member.

And the one at the top of my list, actually it’s three books. They’re by Trenton Lee Stewart, and they’re called The Mysterious Benedict Society.

And as you might guess, these are books that my son has been enjoying. Either he reads them to himself or we read them at bedtime.

And it’s about a bunch of kids who take a test to prove that they’re worthy to go on an adventure to solve a big mystery.

And obviously the four kids, the four protagonists pass the test. They go on to solve the mystery. They fight the bad guys and they solve the mysteries.

And there’s a ton of puzzles.

And I asked my son, Guthrie, who is now nine, why he enjoyed these books.

And what he said to me was really striking.

He said, you know when you’re baking and the recipe says to use a certain amount of one thing, but you use a different amount and somehow it mixes well and tastes good with another ingredient and tastes better than it would usually be?

It’s like that.

And what he meant was it’s free of cliches and these writing tropes.

Like he’s nine and he’s already tired of little white boy has adventures, right?

He’s already tired of like, oh, I found something in grandma’s attic and it made me curious and I had to find out.

He’s magic.

Yeah, he’s tired of like, oh, just a magician appears and takes me to faraway lands.

He wants a little more than that.

And the Mysterious Benedict Society books have given him that.

There’s three of them.

They’re all by Trent and Lee Stewart.

You can find them online anywhere books are sold.

Great fun stuff.

Great for bedtime reading.

Cool.

Well, the book I want to recommend is an amazing book that I keep giving again and again this year as a birthday present.

And everybody’s been really happy with it.

And the book is called Vittles.

Vittles.

Yes.

Now, that’s not spelled like what you might think, right?

Because it’s V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S, vittles, which means food, right?

And the reason that vittles is spelled the way it is is that it came to us through Old French, and it didn’t have a C in it at the time.

But later, grammarians who were influenced by Latin added the C because the Latin word Victus means food.

Okay, so this book is called Vittles, V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S.

It’s by Ronnie Lundy, and I would read anything that Ronnie Lundy has ever written.

Anytime I see her byline, I read it because she’s such a wonderful writer.

And this book is basically a love letter to the food and the culture and the history of Appalachia.

And there are wonderful recipes in this book, like buttermilk cabbage soup with black walnut pesto, tomato gravy, buttermilk cucumber salad, and kill lettuce, which is salad greens dressed in hot bacon dressing.

Oh, I’ve had that.

Have you?

It’s good stuff, right?

Sweet and savory banana pudding, gorgeous photos, but it’s just a wonderful book that talks not only about the food itself, but the folklore and the history of Appalachia.

So check out Vittles.

And the author is Ronnie?

Ronnie Lundy.

Ronnie Lundy.

Look for her book and your books are sold, right?

Right.

If you’ve got a book to recommend to us or our listeners, we’d love to hear about it, 877-929-9673, or send your book recommendations to words@waywordradio.org.

Thank you.