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48th out of 270 books
—
120 voters
The Cookbook Collector
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillme...more
Hardcover, 394 pages
Published
July 6th 2010
by The Dial Press
(first published June 30th 2010)
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I was looking forward to listening to Allegra Goodman’s newest effort even though I was not a big fan of her last book “Intuition.” While I think the Jane Austen comparison is a bit over the top, I usually enjoy Allegra’s writing and I find her Jewish characters somewhat authentic or at the very least three-dimensional, which is unusual. My sister’s scathing review of this book did dampen my enthusiasm but I gamely put on my headphones and started listening, telling myself that I’m often less di...more
Allegra Goodman is a wonderful writer but I wish publishing marketers would stop hailing her as a contemporary Jane Austen; it does them both a disservice. You could argue that marriage is at the center of The Cookbook Collector and that moral questions drive the plot, but it is a stretch to find many more parallels to the unique world of Jane Austen.What Goodman does provide is a mostly rewarding portrait of her heroines and their contrasting world views. Jess is the intuitive idealist and her...more
4 likes · like · see review
I've finished only the first few chapters, and as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I am amazed at the author's insightful description of a tech startup - though that is only one of the angles in the book. Enjoyable read so far, especially on a wet December afternoon!
4 likes · like · see review
Sometimes a book starts out so brilliantly that reading it is a fantastic voyage, only to be brought up short by a less-than-stellar conclusion. Goodman has managed to turn that paradigm inside out, composing a novel so startlingly quiet at the beginning and so stunningly well turned out at the finish, that the conclusion doesn't seem at all posited by the beginning. Jess and Emily are a pair of semi-orphaned sisters whose mother died when they were small, and whose father has remarried and had...more
Oct 17, 2010
Meredith (Austenesque Reviews)
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
jane-austen,
austen-inspired
As an Austenesque Addict that enjoys devouring every Austen-related novel that she can find, I have to admit that The Cookbook Collector is not a book I would normally read. It is only because the author was proclaimed to be “a modern day Jane Austen” and her latest novel, a modern day Sense and Sensibility, that this contemporary fiction novel found a place in my to-be-read pile.
Similar to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, this novel opens by introducing two very diverse sisters. Emily Bach...more
Similar to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, this novel opens by introducing two very diverse sisters. Emily Bach...more
Genuine, quirky and endearingly flawed
As a Janeite, it is impossible ignore the siren call when an author announces to the book buying world that her new novel The Cookbook Collector is “a Sense and Sensibility for the digital age.” Whoa! My first reaction was “this is literary suicide.” Why would anyone want to equate themselves to a beacon of world literature such as JANE AUSTEN?
It is impossible to know her personal motivations, but after a bit of online research, I can’t entirely blame Allegr...more
As a Janeite, it is impossible ignore the siren call when an author announces to the book buying world that her new novel The Cookbook Collector is “a Sense and Sensibility for the digital age.” Whoa! My first reaction was “this is literary suicide.” Why would anyone want to equate themselves to a beacon of world literature such as JANE AUSTEN?
It is impossible to know her personal motivations, but after a bit of online research, I can’t entirely blame Allegr...more
10 likes · like · see review
Having never read an Allegra Goodman novel, I was pleasantly surprised. This novel got excellent reviews and they were well earned! I love this book.
The book is set on both the west and east coast and to someone from the south, these may as well be foreign countries! I especially loved the Berkeley setting and Yorick's (the bookstore which plays a pivotal role in the story). The sisters, Jess and Emily, are wonderful characters and are so disparate in their views of their deceased mother. Little...more
The book is set on both the west and east coast and to someone from the south, these may as well be foreign countries! I especially loved the Berkeley setting and Yorick's (the bookstore which plays a pivotal role in the story). The sisters, Jess and Emily, are wonderful characters and are so disparate in their views of their deceased mother. Little...more
4 likes · like · see review
May 24, 2011
Linda
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
ridge-street-book-club,
sister-books
I enjoyed “The Cookbook Collector” but it was a bit too convoluted for me to keep all the subplots separate and meaningful from saving the trees to missing family history to ideas and implementations for new start up companies. The refrain that this story of two sisters who was like Jane Austin’s works was a stretch for me. You could find that similarity in many books that add a bit of romance with the life stories of two sisters living very different lives but tied together by the love for one...more
2 likes · like · see review
Sometimes the good thing about partaking in a reading challenge is that it makes you push your boundaries and read a book you normally wouldn't - I read the Cookbook Collector for just that reason. I'd seen it previously in stores, but it just never gained by attention enough that I read it. However, I'm glad that I did. Its a marvelous story about learning who you are and finding your place in teh world, about living each day as it comes and not putting off today what can be done tomorrow. I hi...more
3 likes · like · see review
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Jan 07, 2013
Susan
added it
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year...more
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year...more
Dec 30, 2012
Michelle
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2012,
contemporary-fiction
I loved Allegra Goodman’s Intuition so was excited to read this. Though I found Intuition a notch above, this was a fast-paced and satisfying read.
It’s about two sisters, Jess and Emily, at the pinnacle of the internet boom. As is the case for any book involving sisters, these two are opposites with Jess’s free spirit contrasting against Emily’s stern business sense. I found the sisters believable and engaging, so was a little annoyed that there were probably about ten other viewpoints told in t...more
It’s about two sisters, Jess and Emily, at the pinnacle of the internet boom. As is the case for any book involving sisters, these two are opposites with Jess’s free spirit contrasting against Emily’s stern business sense. I found the sisters believable and engaging, so was a little annoyed that there were probably about ten other viewpoints told in t...more
Let me tell you what this book is not about: a cookbook collector. It's not even really about food. I think my rating would have been higher if I would have been better prepared for the lack of relevance of the title.
Sisters (that should have been the title of this book), Jess and Emily Bach are sisters who are extremely different: Emily is the highly successful CEO of a technology company while Jess is pursuing a PhD at Berkeley and moonlighting as an environmental activist. This is a compariso...more
Sisters (that should have been the title of this book), Jess and Emily Bach are sisters who are extremely different: Emily is the highly successful CEO of a technology company while Jess is pursuing a PhD at Berkeley and moonlighting as an environmental activist. This is a compariso...more
http://www.allegragoodman.com/index2.htm
The Cookbook Collector Praise | Back Story
Synopsis
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight year old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, and twenty-three year old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic
Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley. Romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily's boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantast...more
The Cookbook Collector Praise | Back Story
Synopsis
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight year old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, and twenty-three year old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic
Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley. Romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily's boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantast...more
This book was touted to be a Jane Austen type book and I certainly wouldn't say that. Perhaps, it set up me up to be a bit disappointed. Without the hype, I probably would have enjoyed it even more. The book revolves around to sisters: Emily and Jessamine Bach who are polar opposities in every way. Jess was by far my favorite sister. She's idealistic and a bit quirky and dreamy, but I really liked her character. In fact, I'd probably enjoyed the book even more without Emily, the successful CEO o...more
Sisters Emily and Jess lost their mother when at a young age. Now as adults they’ve chosen completely different life styles. Emily is the co-founder of a successful dotcom business. Jess is an eternal student, working in a bookstore and campaigning for eco rights in Berkley.
The characters and premise are interesting, but the problem is Goodman can’t decide whose story she wants to tell. She starts with the two sisters, but she quickly gets side tracked by their friends, family, lovers, co-worke...more
The characters and premise are interesting, but the problem is Goodman can’t decide whose story she wants to tell. She starts with the two sisters, but she quickly gets side tracked by their friends, family, lovers, co-worke...more
3 likes · like · see review
This is a finely wrought tale of two sisters, Emily and Jessamine Bach, and their peers, describing their journey up the craggy paths of adulthood during the time of the dotcom boom and its aftermath (1999-2002). Of course, the sisters travel diverging paths. Emily, age 30, is the focused CEO of Veritech, a Silicon Valley IT startup, while her younger sister, Jessamine, age 25, is an idealistic, wooly-headed philosophy grad student who also works in a Berkeley bookstore. With Veritech’s IPO draw...more
Allegra Goodman is a consummate observer. This book is an interesting read in that Goodman creates a vivid world of high flying techie startups juxtaposed against tree hugging Berkeleyites, represented by two sisters who lost their mother to breast cancer in early childhood. Their mother, however, remains with them through a series of annual birthday letters their mother composed for them, imagining how they would be with each year of increasing age that she will never see. So the book is a well...more
I wanted to read this because I'd heard it was based on Sense and Sensibility, which it is in the characters of Emily and Jessamine Bach, and as it is a comedy of manners. The book is set mostly in Berkeley, but also around Cambridge, MA. Goodman shows her skills as a researcher, and her knowledge of Silicon Valley in the late 90s and a few years thereafter, of the history of cookbooks and of wine impressed me. Jess does end up with an older man (as does Marianne in S&S), but Emily finds out...more
Audio book performed by Ariadne Meyers
I admit I was seduced by the cover of this book, just as one of the characters is seduced by the possibility of scoring a rare book find. But unlike the character, I should have just said, “No.”
Goodman is apparently a talented writer of short stories (based on reviews and articles I’ve read), but this novel really misses the mark. She’s combining three (or four) plot lines to form this larger work, and as a result, none of them is satisfactorily explored. Th...more
I admit I was seduced by the cover of this book, just as one of the characters is seduced by the possibility of scoring a rare book find. But unlike the character, I should have just said, “No.”
Goodman is apparently a talented writer of short stories (based on reviews and articles I’ve read), but this novel really misses the mark. She’s combining three (or four) plot lines to form this larger work, and as a result, none of them is satisfactorily explored. Th...more
5 likes · like · see review
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I must admit to knowing next-to-nothing about this book when I selected it. I fell for the title because I collect cookbooks, read a brief description, found it on sale, and grabbed it. At the time I was unaware of the comparisons to Sense and Sensibility which is probably good because the entire time I was reading it it never ever occurred to me to compare it to a Jane Austen novel which is good because this would have been quite the disappointment of it had that to live up to. Because it is a...more
This was exactly the book I needed as I recovered from my knee replacement. It's a novel that centers around the relationship between two sisters whose relationship is defined by the fact that they lost their mother when they were young. Jess was five; Emily, ten. Their relationships with each other, their father, their friends and lovers is the widening web that creates the novel. One of the things I loved was the way in which varying interests, careers, and passions help create our sense of wh...more
I really enjoyed this book. I think I was first attracted to the book because it paired two stories of polarized sisters each looking for the "correct" way to go about living. I felt deeply connected to the story of Jess whose whimsical nature spoke most to me, but felt the pull of Emily and Richard's logic-centred world that reminded me of my own upbringing.
Despite my overall attraction to the story, I felt at times Goodman spent too much time focusing on the inner-workings of the dot.com boom...more
Despite my overall attraction to the story, I felt at times Goodman spent too much time focusing on the inner-workings of the dot.com boom...more
I picked this one up at an O'Hare bookshop before my last 4 hour flight. Albeit a quick read, it wasn't because I was devouring each page as you would hope for from a book with this title. Anyone who knows me would pointedly suggest I picked it up for the Jane Austen comparison declared on the back cover, but hand to God, I didn't even see that when I selected it. And to be honest, I don't quite see the similarites. Maybe the Austen-esque note is a bit of promotional masterminding, but nonethele...more
I saw this book at my local library, they had it on display as part of there "Readers Choice" picks.
It is about two sisters, mainly, one, Emily, who is successful and very well off. Very educated, has created her own company, and is a very great business woman. Very down to earth, takes risks but only when every possible thing to be thought of, has been thought of.
Jess, who is the younger of the two, who is studying philosophy, is a tree-hugger, and works part time in an antique book store.
Tw...more
It is about two sisters, mainly, one, Emily, who is successful and very well off. Very educated, has created her own company, and is a very great business woman. Very down to earth, takes risks but only when every possible thing to be thought of, has been thought of.
Jess, who is the younger of the two, who is studying philosophy, is a tree-hugger, and works part time in an antique book store.
Tw...more
One reviewer described this novel as "abundantly delicious," and I couldn't agree more. When I read a book like this, it becomes the gold standard, and almost everything else pales in comparison. One chapter, which begins with the eating of a peach, is just the juiciest love scene ever but as chaste as the Jane Austen novel that apparently inspired this book. As the twentieth century draws to a close, two sisters with opposite personalities live in the Berkeley area. The older, Emily, is the bri...more
I *LOVED* The Cookbook Collector. Even if the book did seem a little techo-centric at times, you didn't have to be a computer programmer to figure any of it out. Perhaps I was able to easily identify with the sister because they are as different as my sister and I are--in temperment, character and success--though admittedly I never lived in a tree. (A friend and I did consider it, but then I found out I was pregnant and then, frankly, I had bigger problems than the trees.) At one point, Jess, wh...more
It must be tough to be compared to Jane Austen by a reviewer. Unfortunately, it tempts each subsequent reader to do the same. I will confess to being a Janeiac, re-(re-re-re-)reading at least two Austen novels every summer.
The Cookbook Collector is a decent novel, but I did not find myself making such a comparison. Sisters Jess and Emily, one a contemporary student/hippie, the other a Silicon Valley CEO, are each searching for something missing from their lives. The sisters closeness, despite th...more
The Cookbook Collector is a decent novel, but I did not find myself making such a comparison. Sisters Jess and Emily, one a contemporary student/hippie, the other a Silicon Valley CEO, are each searching for something missing from their lives. The sisters closeness, despite th...more
I grow tired of reviews that say "This was good" or "This was bad"...so I keep coming back to giving my experience with each book. I keep trying that approach.
I first loaded "The Cookbook Collector" to my Kindle when it debuted, intrigued by the book's setting in Berkeley. I read the first chapter and then was distracted by something else, and didn't come back to it for a while. When I was in Carlsbad this past month I saw it in the stacks of new fiction at the Carlsbad library, and checked it...more
I first loaded "The Cookbook Collector" to my Kindle when it debuted, intrigued by the book's setting in Berkeley. I read the first chapter and then was distracted by something else, and didn't come back to it for a while. When I was in Carlsbad this past month I saw it in the stacks of new fiction at the Carlsbad library, and checked it...more
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Ms. Goodman's biography can be found on her website at: http://www.allegragoodman.com/goodman...
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“How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end.”
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