Gary E's Reviews > The Baba Nyonya Peranakans: A Journey into her Past, Traditions, and Cuisine

Great book

I rarely rate any book with 5 stars . . . but I am more apt to do so with non-fiction.

I know the author and count him as a friend . . . which of course means that I am biased. I know how long it has taken him to put this book together and that along with our friendship is going to make me more biased. I am trying to put that aside and be as honest as possible with myself but to me this is undoubtedly a 5 star book.

I have been looking forward to this book for a very long time and after reading it I must say it was worth the wait. This is a very special book. As such due to the timing of its release and my personal reading goals for the year this reading takes a honored place. I set multi tiered reading goals (to avoid putting too much pressure on myself and to keep my enjoyment of reading as less of a task. This year my reading goals were at least 52 books (one a week), preferably 60 (5 books a month), optimally 72 (6 a month) and a pipe dream of 80 (my previous best was 69).

Well as the end of the year approached it looked like 80 was in sight so I deliberately choose this as my 80th read.

Simply put I loved reading this. I loved the fact that I was reading a book that a friend published (another first for me). I could sense the evolution of this from a recipe book to a combined history and recipe book. When Alex first told me about this change I accepted that he knew what he was doing but I did not fully comprehend why he did it. Reading the finished product it is very obvious why he choose this format. The importance of a specific dish for a certain event can not be adequately stated with just a recipe and a paragraph or two. The story behind the dish is need not only to inform the dish but to tell the reader the story of a threatened culture.

I sensed the importance of this book pretty early on and it became more and more obvious with each passing chapter.

I would objectively classify this book as extremely well researched and well produced. The use of multimedia in this book is quite frankly the best I have seen. The links to videos, pictures, slide shows, articles/websites, etc etc really add to the experience for those readers who want to understand as much as possible about various details. It is also done in a very unobtrusive way . . . I feel that if you don’t want that extra information you can skip over it without loosing context. Most of all I like the fact that links to easily printable versions of every recipe. I have read novels featuring recipes that I want to try and my only choices were screenshots of e-books or actual pictures f pages for print books.

All in all I say well done Alex . . . I hope you and your family is as proud of this effort as I am. You have done an extraordinary job. I can’t wait to try some of the recipes after the madness of the holidays is over.

If you are considering purchasing this book I can not recommend it strongly enough . . . buy it . . . you will not be disappointed!