Written with the good cheer and great charm of Laurie Colwin and Ruth Reichl, an aspiring chef's moving account of finding her way--in the kitchen ...
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reviews
Dec 19, 2011
Melissa
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Season to Taste is a semi-interesting memoir about one young woman's journey to come to terms with the impairment of her sense of smell. The book is at its best when describing food with luscious adjectives, but too often it gets bogged down with the author's inability to structure her thoughts.
Season to Taste constantly jumps back and forth between Molly Birnbaum's everyday struggles with regaining her sense of smell and the science behind how the brain processes scent. I found th More...
Season to Taste constantly jumps back and forth between Molly Birnbaum's everyday struggles with regaining her sense of smell and the science behind how the brain processes scent. I found th More...
Sep 04, 2011
Kathleen
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I think I heard Molly Birnbaum on the Leonard Lopate show on NPR. Didn't pay much attention to it, but remembered the title. Molly was hit by a car while jogging. Multiple injuries including destroying her sense of smell. She was planning to attend the Culinary Institute of America, but had to delay/cancel her entrance (she never attends). She is a graduate of Brown University, majoring in art history, but discovers her interest in cooking/baking. After college, she works (starting at the
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Aug 08, 2011
Denise
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Season To Taste is Molly Birnbaum's memoir about losing her sense of smell in a traumatic car accident. At first look losing your sense of smell may not seem like a truly horrible loss, but more of your brain, memory, and taste are controlled by scents then you realize. At the time of the accident Molly was immersed in the restaurant world, getting ready to enter culinary school, and thrilled to have finally found her place. Without a sense of smell food became a bland, largely tasteless obstacl
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Jul 26, 2011
Leeswammes
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Molly Birnbaum was looking forward to start studying cooking at a prestigeous cooking school when she was in a car accident and lost her sense of smell.
Really worried, she realized that chances were slim that she would be able to fulfil her dream to become a cook. She wrote to doctors and scientists that study olfactory science to get some idea of the possibility of ever recovering her smell.
In the book, she alternates descriptions of her daily life with her findings. First, More...
Really worried, she realized that chances were slim that she would be able to fulfil her dream to become a cook. She wrote to doctors and scientists that study olfactory science to get some idea of the possibility of ever recovering her smell.
In the book, she alternates descriptions of her daily life with her findings. First, More...
Jun 24, 2011
E
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Combining foodie memoir and accessible science writing, it was pretty much guaranteed that I'd love this book. Molly Birnbaum dreams of going to culinary school and becoming a chef. But, a traffic accident wrecks her knee, breaks her pelvis, and completely destroys her sense of smell. Taking her sense of taste along with it, and plunging her into a deep (and totally understandable) depression.
Her story combines learning to adjust to her new normal, some very fine food writing (though t More...
Her story combines learning to adjust to her new normal, some very fine food writing (though t More...
Dec 12, 2011
John
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The author writes well, but I can't say as I particularly "liked" this book at any point. I'm happy for her that she regained her sense of smell, when doctors did their best to discourage her hopes, but that happens roughly halfway through the book, so her sense of smell was only missing for perhaps 30% at most. I had expected that the book would be more along the lines of how she's had to adjust her life (until the present). Instead, the story is filled out with aspects of her persona
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Sep 19, 2011
Cynthia
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Interesting read about a young woman who wanted to become a chef but was in an auto accident and lost her sense of smell as a result of hitting the back of her head. She did eventually regain her sense of smell, initially in fits and starts. She provides a lot of information about how we sense smells and how it is actually what allows us to taste beyond the basics of salty, sweet, etc provided by our taste buds. Lots of accessible science about neurons and the brain. I didn't realize that there
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Nov 03, 2011
Rebecca
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Just months before Molly Birnbaum was to enter the Culinary Institute of America to fulfill her dream to become a chef, she met with a violent accident. Although she escaped with her life, in addition to other physical wounds she had lost her sense of smell. Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way (Ecco, July 2011) is Molly’s story of finding her place in the kitchen again. But Season to Taste is far more than a personal memoir: it’s also a journalistic study of what smell
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Dec 13, 2011
Jessica
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Molly Birnbaum was working in a restaurant and planning to go to culinary school when she was hit by a car while out running. She broke her pelvis, severely damaged her knee, and fractured her skull. It took awhile, but she healed from the physical trauma, but due to the skull fracture she lost her sense of smell. This is crucial for a chef and when Molly realized it might be gone forever she spiraled into a depression. Being a chef was her dream and now what? Eventually she starts to revam
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Jul 10, 2011
Jennie
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I started this book thinking it would be more about an established chef losing their sense of smell, which I thought sounded challenging and possibly career ending. Instead, the pages contained the story of Molly a young girl getting her start in the restaurant world. Even though this book is non-fiction, the story had the makings of a great fictional tale of loss and struggle.
She was only weeks away from starting at a culinary school and was learning the ropes of a rest More...
She was only weeks away from starting at a culinary school and was learning the ropes of a rest More...
Sep 08, 2011
Alisa
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Deeply fascinating book. Most people never realize how critically important their sense of smell is to their emotional and physical well-being. This loss (according to various studies) has a worse effect on a person that becoming blind or deaf does.
I know someone who was born completely lacking the sense of smell. I've been curious for a long time exactly what she "tastes" when she eats, but she's unable to describe it, other than say that she doesn't feel she's missing m More...
I know someone who was born completely lacking the sense of smell. I've been curious for a long time exactly what she "tastes" when she eats, but she's unable to describe it, other than say that she doesn't feel she's missing m More...
Aug 26, 2011
Amanda
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The reason why I picked up this book was personal - while Birnbaum's car accident caused her loss of smell, for me an accident during dental surgery brought about my loss of feeling, including taste, on exactly the left half of my tongue. Seeing things from Birnbaum's perspective made me think about my own loss and if I could exchange it for a different sense loss would I want to?
Sometimes I would get annoyed while reading because Birnbaum described how bland food tasted, that she c More...
Sometimes I would get annoyed while reading because Birnbaum described how bland food tasted, that she c More...
May 21, 2011
Julie
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Having been admitted to the Amazon Vine Program I was eager to find a book to try that I would not normally come across. This one, in which Molly Birnbaum relates her loss of smell due to a head injury and intersperses her story with delving into the science of smell, filled the bill. What makes Birnbaum's loss of smell, and subsequent almost complete loss of the ability to taste, all the more painful is that she was set to go to the Culinary Institute of America to begin training as a chef. Wat
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Aug 17, 2011
Ellen
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Season to Taste is a journey through the sense of smell. That sounds a little boring though, something this book definitely is not. The olfactory system is complex and scientists themselves don't yet know as much about it as they do other senses. Birnbaum lost her sense of smell due to head trauma, the result of being hit by a car. At the time she was preparing to go to culinary school and train to be a chef. With no smell, there is no taste. This loss was life-changing for her.
When More...
When More...
Nov 21, 2011
Marisa
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I was fascinated by the concept of this book, and there were moments that really drew me in. The first part of the book (when Birnbaum developed her love of cooking, immediately post-losing smell) was engaging, and I loved the cases she presented from her visits to the taste & smell clinic. However, she lost me a little with her writing style, which felt like an extended blog and didn't translate well to a full-length book. I also would have preferred to go more in-depth on some of the research
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Sep 19, 2011
Lynn
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If you have ever wondered about your sense of smell - or the olfactory sense in general, then this would be the one to choose. Much more fact filled than I had anticipated but the writing is very nice and the facts are accessible without being too dry or over-whelming. This is one woman's story of what happened to her life when she suddenly lost not only her sense of smell but her life's ambition of becoming a chef and, in so many ways, her sense of who she is, as well. Some scrumptious food
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Nov 12, 2011
Catherine
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A few months before her scheduled start date at the Culinary Institute of America, Molly Birnbaum was hit by a car. She sustained a head injury that left her without a sense of smell and, thus, no sense of taste. As a coping mechanism, Molly devoted herself to researching asnomia, its various causes, and the likelihood of regaining her sense of smell. She enrolled in journalism school, consulted and interviewed many scientists (including Oliver Sacks), and attended a two-week perfumery class. Th
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Aug 21, 2011
Holly
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I loved this book. I found it absolutely fascinating. Billed as the memoir of an aspiring chef, it's the story of how the author lost her sense of smell (due to a car accident) and the aftermath it poses to the rest of her senses as well as her sense of self. It's really a foodie memoir combined with scientific research to give the reader a broad yet detailed idea of the intricate relationship between the sense of smell and taste, memory, and emotions. The book covers a lot of ground and yet
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Jul 25, 2011
Sarah
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When I was pregnant, one night I returned home from work to discover that our house smelled of garlic. I was surprised that my husband had been home long enough to get dinner started, and asked him what he was cooking. He looked at me quizzically -- he'd just gotten home and hadn't so much as thought yet about what we were having for dinner. Nor had we made anything with garlic within the last week....and in any case, he couldn't smell a thing. After a good long while, we determined that I w
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Jul 28, 2011
Kathi
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After hearing/reading about this book from a handful of my most trusted sources, I jumped into it with high expectations. I enjoyed reading it, but I don't think it quite lived up to my hopes.
It was unsurprising to me that the book evolved from Molly Birnbaum's blog; her writing style kept me interested in short bursts, but I found it difficult to read too much in one sitting without putting it down for a while. At times, the narrative seemed a bit tedious; it seemed like there w More...
It was unsurprising to me that the book evolved from Molly Birnbaum's blog; her writing style kept me interested in short bursts, but I found it difficult to read too much in one sitting without putting it down for a while. At times, the narrative seemed a bit tedious; it seemed like there w More...
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Sep 09, 2011
Maureen
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This books starts slowly, but I grew more interested and involved as it progressed. It's challenging in this currently literary climate to write any sort of "illness" narrative, as it has been done so often. As a reader, I love memoir but I'm a bit wearied and skeptical about books such as these, as my impulse is to say well, how serious is a loss of smell (or food allergies, as another recent memoir covers) when there are also so many true struggle and survival narratives, is this top
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Oct 07, 2011
Pam
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As someone who likes chef memoirs and scientific nonfiction books, when I heard Molly Birnbaum talk on NPR I immediately wanted to read this book. The author does a very good job presenting the research on smell while using her personal story to keep the book moving along. It is a fast reading story although a few times I found the research section a bit slow. As the author points out smell is an underappreciated sense always being valved below sight and hearing. She does an excellent job ex
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Jul 23, 2011
Maryellen
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As someone who's own sense of smell is highly diminished, I was eager to read this book. I loved the premise of an inspiring chef whose dream of going to culinary school is dashed by a car accident that robs her sense of smell. The author did extensive research into the medical, historical and scientific nature of smell, and I came away with a list of other reads noted by the author to help with my own research. Although the author may not become the master chef she may have envisioned, it is
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Feb 01, 2012
Sara
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While this was a sweet, well-thought memoir, it was redundant to me, as I'd already read most of the sources she mentioned in the more informative, reporter-like parts of the book: Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses, the works of Oliver Sacks, the New Yorker profile of Grant Achatz, and others. Thus, the information about scent and sensibility wasn't anything new to me, but for someone who's interested in the hows and whys of smell, this is an informative, basic place to begin. The s
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Sep 27, 2011
Carin
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I was intrigued with the premise of this memoir from the moment I heard about it - Molly Birnbaum, a chef-in-training about to start classes at the Culinary Institute of America was hit by a car and lost her sense of smell. How can you cook if you can't smell?
I think in my head I was expecting this to be more like a nonfiction Left Neglected, talking about an obscure brain injury from the insider's view. What was unexpected was how much research Ms. Birnbaum did and how that was spr More...
I think in my head I was expecting this to be more like a nonfiction Left Neglected, talking about an obscure brain injury from the insider's view. What was unexpected was how much research Ms. Birnbaum did and how that was spr More...
Sep 24, 2011
Larissa
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I'm about half way through Season to Taste and the book is about to be due at the library. Rather than finish it, I think I'm just going to give up on this one. As someone who loves to cook but had a limited sense of smell, I thought I'd get a lot out of Birnbaum's memoir. She was an aspiring chef, but completely lost her sense of smell when she was hit by a car while jogging. Birnbaum does a great job of really zeroing in on the sense of loss and isolation that came to her after losing her smel
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Nov 14, 2011
Amy
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I so loved this book that I'm talking it up and recommending it to everyone from Vic to the TCReads committee, customers, too. Birnbaum lets us in on her self-education of the young science of smell. She meets with leading scientists and even enrolls in a school of smell in the heart of perfume land in France. Her personal interest engages the reader, too, as she works to regain her lost sense of smell and capture her love of cooking again.
Oct 18, 2011
Erica
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Interesting combination of a first-person account of the author's journey—from pursuing her dream to become a chef to losing her sense of smell and its effect on her ability to taste and cook—along with her explorations into the sense of smell itself—from investigating the science involved, talking to perfumers and flavor chemists, and even people such as Oliver Sacks and Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's).
Oct 01, 2011
Nette
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What I learned from this book: I have no patience for people who rhapsodize endlessly about the taste and smell of food. The fact that (for a while) this woman couldn't distinguish marjoram from cinnamon didn't move me in the least: it's the very definition of First World Problem. You know what, lady? Just be glad you HAVE a constant supply of wholesome food.
It was nicely written, though.
It was nicely written, though.
Jan 03, 2012
Laurie
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I enjoyed reading so much about the science of smell, but the author jumped around a lot in time telling her story. I swear on one page she might jump from a week after her accident to 11 months after then back to 2 months after. That was disorienting, and I think I would have appreciated the author's story more if she'd told parts of her story in something closer to chronological order.
