Comfort Food | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Jacobs
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $9.75
You Save: $15.20 (61%)
New (44) from $9.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 11775
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0399154655
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780739496404
ASIN: 0399154655
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: CHARITY SALE!!! New book in mint condition. 100% of the proceeds benefits the literacy efforts of Books for America.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this smart, delicious novel by the bestselling author of The Friday Night Knitting Club, a celebrity chef shows her friends and family the joy of fulfillment and manages to spice up her own life at the same time.
Shortly before turning the big 5-0, boisterous party planner and Cooking with Gusto! personality Augusta Gus Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party shed rather nother own. Shes getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to plan her own birthday party. What she needs is time on her own with enough distance to give her loved ones the ingredients to put together successful lives without her.
Assisted by a handsome up-and-coming chef, Oliver, Gus invites a select group to take an on-air cooking class. But instead of just preaching to the foodie masses, she will teach regular people how to make rich, sensuous mealsreal people making real food. Gus decides to bring a vibrant cast of friends and family on the program: Sabrina, her fickle daughter; Troy, Sabrinas ex-husband; Anna, Guss timid neighbor; and Carmen, Guss pompous and beautiful competitor at the Cooking Channel. And when she begins to have more than collegial feelings for her sous-chef, Gus realizes that she might be able to rejuvenate not just her professional life, but her personal life as well. . . .
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Ate it up! September 4, 2008
I can't ask for much more. Friendships, relationships between mothers and daughters, a bit of romance and drama, plus cooking? Gus, a fifty-year-old mother of two, has her own show, which is done in her house. She has had this show 12 years. However, she isn't like other chefs and the ratings are drizzling out. So Alan, the boss, adds a little spice, Carmen. Carmen likes to cook but likes herself and fame more.
We also have a whole other cast, that make up for a very interesting book that you will want to gobble in one setting. Find out if Carmen and Gus can co-exist together on a show. Find out if the show will end or if they will have a second season. Find out who finds love but most of all you will be thrilled and entertained throughout the whole book.
A tasty read . . . September 1, 2008
This is the first Kate Jacobs' book I've read and I rather enjoyed it. It took me a couple of chapters to get into the story but once I did, I was satisfied and it wasn't as predictable as some have said. There were more than a couple of lines that were laugh-out-loud funny. It's light reading, but I would recommend it.
 Decent second effort August 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Following The Friday Night Knitting Club (which is a really good read), this book comes as a slight disappointment. While the cooking show setting and the food-central focus of the book is entertaining at time, the book never seems to ascend beyond a superficial storyline or develop its characters fully. The author can write about food and cooking well, but something in this story seems to be missing. It's not a bad read, just not up to the level of her first effort.
 Not as Good as I Thought it Would Be August 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Comfort Food is a disappointing. After reading The Friday Night Knitting Club, which I enjoyed thoroughly, I realized after the first few chapters that I was not going to like Comfort Food as much. It chronicles the life of Gus Simpson as a celebrity cook on the Cooking Channel and her lessening popularity with viewers...the other characters are her family and one reclusive friend. Gus's revamped live cooking show is basically a train wreck. Carmen Vega, Gus's on-screen cooking rival chef, uses other people to her advantage. Meanwhile Gus's love life heats up but somehow I did not buy her romance with the new culinary producer/chef of the live cooking show. It was not a "delightful" read at all and I cannot recommend this book to others.
 A Snoozer. August 14, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Zzz... oh, I'm sorry, did you say something? I apologize -- I was put into a deep sleep by this latest book from Kate Jacobs. A great cure for insomnia!
I couldn't make it past 100 pages. Too much telling, not enough showing, and no clue where the book was going or why. If I read one more word about poor little Gus the TV star, who seems like a total unlikeable control freak, I was going to scream. Nothing happened, and I didn't really care if it did or not.
The inconsistencies really got to me, too... she doesn't own a cookbook but somehow has a copy of Julia Child's French Cooking Vol. II in her house, who doesn't wear a seatbelt even though her husband died in a horrific traffic accident... whatever.
This is going on my "will never finish" list.
|
|
|
