Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir (edició 2017)

This book is exactly what I was hoping for: a heartfelt, sumptuously written account of one woman's life.
There was more about motherhood than I cared to read, but I enjoyed how she made her father appear so vividly on the page.
The musings on life and death are poignant yet realistic and even quite funny at times. The author played with time by shuffling events around to suit her narrative, making it a memoir and thus an example of how time and memory interact.
My favorite were her thoughts on creativity and the writing life which were sprinkled throughout.
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Honestly, I wasn't too much into this at the beginning. But it was so good by the end. It was heartbreaking and I was crying at the end because it his so hard. Beautifully written and powerful. ( )

Lacks the charm of her other memoir. Even though I wasn't in love with her other memoir, 'The Language of Baklava', this still sounded quite charming. In the previous book it seemed like she merely skimmed over other parts of her life and so I had hoped this would fill the other parts she didn't talk about.
 
Instead, the book is more like snapshots of her life and pieces that were just not all that interesting. She talks a bit about her grandmother, her marriages, the adoption of her daughter, etc. Her other family (including her parents and especially her father, who featured prominently in 'Baklava') do pop up but this is a different type of memoir that was less of a continuation and more of a different story.
 
It was terrible. It lacks the charm of her original book and has less of her dad (who appears to be quite the character).
 
Honestly I'm shocked at the all the positive reviews. I don't know if the reviewers knew what to expect or if I went in with the wrong expectations. It might stand on its own if you hadn't read the previous book but this just wasn't interesting. Borrow from the library if you're really curious. ( )

Loved this book -many parts of it read like poetry to me. (I marked a lot of passages!)
Years ago I attended an author presentation by Diana Abu-Jaber and found her delightful so I think I felt a special connection to her story.
I've had Crescent in my "to read" bookcase forever - I think now is the time! ( )

This was my first Net Galley ARC. Thank you! I saw a meme the other day on FB that talked about how sometimes when you finished a book you wished that the author was your good friend and you could call him or her up anytime and talk about anything. This is that book. I go back a ways with Abu-Jaber. She spent part of her childhood an hour away in Syracuse, NY and her first memoir, The Language of Baklava: A Memoir, set there in part, was a community-wide read in my hometown, culminating with a reading from her at our local community college. I went on from there to read some of her fiction, including Crescent, which was outstanding, and Origin, set back in Syracuse, a place that was both familiar and mysterious with her treatment.

Her writing resonates with me in a way few other authors have managed. Her ethnic experience can't be that different from millions of other Americans, in fact I imagine it must be similar in some ways to the experience of my aunt by marriage's Greek family that settled in Syracuse. But she describes something exotic, something the rest of us will envy. She writes about her journey from ambivalence toward parenthood through a positively gripping 48 hours waiting to learn if her wish will be granted, to the first wondrous days of becoming a family.

I miss my own mother; more pointedly than on any given day. I want to ask her more detailed questions about their emotional journey to becoming parents. I have the facts...but not the feelings. I curse my horrible memory; I want to hear the family stories one more time, to know I must commit them to memory. I'm jealous that the death of her father was a process, a slow unraveling, not a sudden tearing apart.

Most of all, I am enthralled by the life that her prose gives to feelings, thoughts, even the smallest details of every day life. They come alive; I think I can feel what she feels, see what she sees. I've spent barely an hour or two in Winter Park, FL, yet when she is there, I am there. It is exactly the place. I suggest you take the trip with her as well...you won't regret it. ( )