Brazen Broads Book Bash

I love French cuisine, and Ina Garten's 'Barefoot Contessa' is one of my favorite shows on Food Network.  I came across this cookbook while browsing the food section of my local library. Cooking is one of my hobbies.  I love to make new dishes, and at 238 pages,  Barefoot In Paris seemed a manageable guide to take on French food.  The cookbook is loaded with colorful photos, showcasing everything from finished dishes in great presentations to recommended kitchen equipment.  I enjoyed the stories throughout the text explaining where the recipe originated from and how Contessa has changed them.  A section on table setting was very helpful for using flowers, carrying a theme, and creating a relaxing atmosphere.  Many of Ina's favorite dishes are very easy to prepare and use only a few ingredients.  In my mind, French cooking always loomed ahead as the ACME of ability (that I was absolutely NOT ready for), but after working through a number of the featured recipes, my co

Eerie Suspense on the English Coast....... Published in 1938 originally, Rebecca is one of those timeless novels worth re-reading.  Set mainly in England at the Manderlay estate on the coast, the story is presented in the first person by the young and impressionable new Mrs. Maxim De Winter.  Shy and plain, she internalizes every glance and spoken word, believing that she stands in the shadow of Rebecca, Maxim's first wife and the epitome of everything she, herself, is not.  Her journey, eerie and charged with the whisper of hidden, dark secrets, brings her to the revelation that self pre-occupation borne from insecurity leads one to blindness of the truth that is before us always. Du Maurier's Rebecca is better today than when I read it as an adolescent.  The story winds slowly, twisting and turning through the labyrinth of impressions and lasting effects left behind by the departed from this world.  It contrasts the self doubt and awkwardness of youth and the vain debauchery

The fabulous Marie Treanor, author of the Awakened By Blood Series, sent the Brazen Broads a copy of her new novel, Blood Sin , the sequel to Blood On Silk , and we're giddy with anticipation to read it.  Blood Sin is due out in early April, and we'll be blogging about it just in time for its release, so look for that review and other gushing about the book then.  Also, we'll be having Marie guest post here at the Brazen Broads Book Bash on April 19th, so keep your eyes peeled for that.  For any readers who haven't read her first Awakened By Blood novel, be sure to visit our review of Blood On Silk and for our interview with her, visit here .

A Man's Actions Reveal His Ideology...... Dinesh D'Souza, president of King's College in New York City, former White House domestic policy analyst, and research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, seeks to reveal the motivation behind the man, Barack Obama, President of the United States, in his latest book, The Roots of Obama's Rage.  In the realm of politics, Obama is hailed as savior, accused of being a socialist, ridiculed as an idiot, and praised as a man of peace.  But who is Barack Obama?  D'Souza argues that none of these labels accurately depict the man behind the presidency.  Tracing Obama's life from early childhood on, D'Souza explores the profound impact the abandonment by his father had on Barack Obama, the journey that led him to Kenya, and the family there that introduced him to the man his father was.  The author then follows other significant relationships that shaped the young O