by Mary Olson
Ventura County Library has announced this year’s selection for One County One Book.
One County One Book invites you to join your Ventura county community in exploring a common narrative.
This year’s title is Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen.
Taste Makers is Sen’s debut and was published in November of 2021. In it he explores America’s modern culinary history through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers. The W.W. Norton description of the book asks, “Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.”
This year’s One County, One Book program is officially sponsored by the Ventura County Library Foundation. Copies of the book will be available to borrow from all Ventura County Library branches. Discussions and related events will run through the month of October.
One County, One Book culminates with a special author event with Mayukh Sen at 2 pm on Saturday, November 12, 2022 on the California State University, Channel Islands campus.
If any friends of the library were listening to the NPR program Fresh Air recently, they might have enjoyed a vicarious pat on the back. Fresh Air’s book critic, Maureen Corrigan, mentioned that, during a brief break in transit, the discovery of a wall of used books for sale near the checkout desk at a library saved her from being trapped and miserable for five plus hours on a plane.
Just a little reminder, that, even if you missed our sale on July 16 and our bookstore in E.P. Foster Library is not open, you can pick up an emergency read from such shelves of used books in E.P. Foster Library and Hill Road Library. The Friends of the Library regularly freshen up the books (for adults and children) on offer on those shelves. And, the money deposited in the box adds to our bottom line which turns into more programs and books at your local library.
