On NPR’s All Things Considered, novelist Elizabeth Berg recommended the cookbook Beat This! by Ann Hodgman, along with its companion, Beat That!, propelling the books to #124 and #128 on Amazon. However, they’re 1999 titles that are currently out of stock; no word yet from the publisher on whether or not they will reprint, but we’ll let you know what we hear. At least 127 libraries have Beat This! and 272 libraries have Beat That!, according to World Cat.
Berg said she has probably recommended Beat This! more often than any other book, calling it ”a humor book and a self-help book and a security blanket and a kind of bible.” The bulk of the recipes are for ”familiar and beloved foods,” but Hodgman “makes them better,” she explains. Plus Hodgman has wit, according to Berg: when it comes to her buttercrunch, Hodgman says, “Master this recipe, and you control the world.”
Berg even manages to get in some further book recommendations when she offers the following recipe: 1. Buy Beat This! 2. Go to page 64, and make that roast chicken. 3. While it’s in the oven, lie on the sofa and read Susan Fletcher’s exquisite novel Oystercatchers. Or Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Or any short story by Alice Munro. Or Rita Dove’s poetry. Or E.B. White’s essays.
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| Retail Price: |
$16.00 |
| Paperback: |
208 pages |
| Publisher: |
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (1999-10-07) |
| ISBN / EAN: |
0395971772 / 9780395971772 |
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 |
| Retail Price: |
$15.00 |
| Paperback: |
208 pages |
| Publisher: |
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (1999-10-07) |
| ISBN / EAN: |
0395971780 / 9780395971789 |
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