Customer Comments

Jessica Weissman has commented on (11) products.

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish

Jessica Weissman, January 2, 2013

Here's an artisan bread book that takes a new approach. Ken Forkish includes recipes with timings that are realistic for people with day jobs who can't stay home to tend developing dough. He has several non-perferment recipes that work, as well as preferment and levain recipes that are a notch or two less fussy than some.

I've had nothing but good results from his recipes and techniques.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Jessica Weissman, January 19, 2012

Excellent take on the young witch/wizard trope. This one happens in Africa, with a mixture of African and African-American children who have to learn to control their powers and work together.

Lots of action, beautiful description, and swift-moving. The author does in under 300 pages what it took JS Rowling seven books to do.

One of the best books I've read in several years.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey by Jackie Kay

Jessica Weissman, March 17, 2011

Jackie Kay is a fine poet and an engaging writer of prose. She told her story as a Black child adopted by two Scots communists in her first book of poetry. Now she has found both of her birth parents, and tells the story in prose. Not like any other birth parent reunion story I've read, cheerful and fascinating and full of Jackie Kay's good humor and serious emotion.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell

Jessica Weissman, January 1, 2011

This is the best piece of fiction I read in 2010. The inaptly-named Feliks finds, in his early sixties, that pretty much everything he thought about his own early life is wrong, and that the political convictions by which he lived his life are also wrong. He actually changes his mind, coming of age very late.

This might sound dreary, but it is quite the opposite. The book is shot through with humor, and Feliks and the people he rediscovers make excellent company.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies

Jessica Weissman, March 23, 2010

Excellent survey of the topic - if there is life out there, why hasn't it contacted us? And what would happen if it did? Davies reviews all the arguments, going far beyond the superficial duality of life being so unlikely that there IS no other life vs the universe being so large that everything, no matter how unlikely, must have happened more than once. Maybe the Earth formed late and developed life so slowly that all the other civilizations have come and gone on those other planets. Or maybe they just don't want to talk to us. Or maybe they are shouting at us, but doing it in a way we don't recognize as communication. After all, electromagnetic signals may turn out to be the most primitive possible method of interstellar communication.

Davies is a good clear writer, too. If you have any interest in the topic, don't miss this one.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment