Molly Birnbaum

The problem with memoirs is that it's very difficult to write one without coming across as totally self-absorbed. At least it seems to be. So--although this was an interesting story, I got very frustrated with the author for the first half of the book because she seemed whiny and spoiled and difficult and--as it happens--totally self-absorbed. In the second half of the book, on the other hand, she broadens her focus a bit and talks to people like Oliver Sacks and Elaine Grosinger. At which point, I got a little bored and felt that she was straying far afield of her own story and padding the book a little bit. I am, in fact, impossible to please.… (más)

The problem with memoirs is that it's very difficult to write one without coming across as totally self-absorbed. At least it seems to be. So--although this was an interesting story, I got very frustrated with the author for the first half of the book because she seemed whiny and spoiled and difficult and--as it happens--totally self-absorbed. In the second half of the book, on the other hand, she broadens her focus a bit and talks to people like Oliver Sacks and Elaine Grosinger. At which point, I got a little bored and felt that she was straying far afield of her own story and padding the book a little bit. I am, in fact, impossible to please.… (más)

I was recommended this book by a friend foodie who knew I had lost my sense of smell. It was useful to learn a bit more about how smell works and can be lost and regained, though it seems it is too late to recover mine now 20 or so years later. It was useful to learn about shared fears of dangers not detected and phantom smells. For me the most interesting part was she regained her smell but found it difficult to relearn the names and to identify smells, showing there are multiple parts to the sense of smell.

But also interesting was her relation of her ordinary life with or without smells, eg the loss of smell making it harder to recognise a partner or a baby, and other circumstances which I had hardly thought about.

It's an easy read, a bit repetitive in parts, but the science is easy and the visits to scientists, psychologists and labs interesting. She explains that she (and others) have relearn to cook, concentrating on texture and colour as well as smell. And she concludes that it is not necessary to complicate tastes and smells to make good food, which is a conclusion I would definitely agree with.… (más)

Combining foodie memoir and accessible science writing, it was pretty much guaranteed that I'd love this book. Molly Birnbaum dreams of going to culinary school and becoming a chef. But, a traffic accident wrecks her knee, breaks her pelvis, and completely destroys her sense of smell. Taking her sense of taste along with it, and plunging her into a deep (and totally understandable) depression.

Her story combines learning to adjust to her new normal, some very fine food writing (though tragic, at times, in context), interesting science about a very little understood sense.

Also noting- this is the first book I read start to finish on a Kindle. It was an engrossing read (foodie memoir! with science!) so I was using a new book I was almost sure I'd like, as a test case for working with the e-Reader format.
The verdict: reading on an e-reader is an entirely decent way to gobble down a book. I never pictured myself saying that. Reading on a Kindle is DEFINITELY not reading a proper, paper book. There's a sense of it being not-quite-a-book while also Not A Computer. But it's a perfectly workable format.… (más)