Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Wild Dark Shore in a Nutshell:

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is a gripping climate-fiction thriller set on the remote and rapidly eroding Shearwater Island between Tasmania and Antarctica. Dominic Salt and his three children have been caretakers of a United Nations seed vault and lighthouse outpost for years, but as storm surges and permafrost melt threaten to destroy the infrastructure, their time on the island is running out. Into this precarious world washes Rowan, a stranger whose boat has wrecked. After the Salt family help her recover from near-drowning, she reveals that she is searching for her missing husband who until recently worked as a biologist on the island. As the water creeps higher up on Shearwater Island and seeps through crumbling walls into the seed vault, Rowan and the Salts must decide what to save and who is telling the truth.

Why you should read it:

To me, Wild Dark Shore is a perfect novel. It has family drama, an environmental focus, is a bit spooky, and I could never anticipate where the plot was going. I loved the setting of the remote island populated by thousands of penguins and seals, the distinct characters of the Salt children, and the mystery of a woman washing up on shore beside her wrecked boat.

This book in three words:

Moody, mysterious, touching

Read this if you loved:

• The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah (my review here)

• Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

• Isola by Allegra Goodman (my review here)

What I baked:

Khachapuri! Fun to say and fun to eat, this delightful bread is the national dish of Georgia. There are many different regional variations, and the one I made is open-faced, filled with three kinds of cheese and topped with an egg, some extra butter, and fresh herbs. The ends of the dough are pinched to hold in all of the cheesey goodness, and they are just so cute!

Why did I bake this bread for this book?

The reason Dominic Salt and his family live on Shearwater Island is to be caretakers of the seed vault, a critical backup for earth’s population. I thought of seeds and how they spout up as they begin their lifecycle, and connected them with the eggs khachapuri are topped with. Both are reproductive structures designed to protect and nourish the next generation until it can survive on its own.

Where did I get the recipe?

King Arthur. Check it out here.

Thanks for reading! Do you have book recommendations or bread recipes I should check out? Leave a comment!

Leave a comment

I’m Hannah Griffin—you may have come across my Substack looking for my reviews of books and the corresponding breads I bake to match them. You can find those posts here. What you might not know from my Substack is that between 2023 and 2024, I canoed and cycled 1,700 kilometres on and along the Columbia River.

I began my journey at the headwaters of the Columbia near Canal Flats, a small town in the Rocky Mountains. I followed the river south, past my home in Revelstoke, and all the way to southern Washington State. I did another few hundred kilometres the next spring, beginning near Priest Rapids Dam and finishing just past the town of Boardman, Oregon. Then in fall of 2024, I cycled 400 kilometres through the blustery wind of the Columbia River Gorge, finishing at the mouth of the river where it crashes into the Pacific.

It was a wild, thrilling, and challenging trip. While I originally conceived of it as a one-shot source to sea adventure, it evolved into something different that I’m very proud of. While paddling the river, the environmental disconnection caused by the Columbia River Treaty was striking. When I got off the river, I learned more about the interesting and disjointed effects of this international treaty I saw from my canoe, and decided to write a book about it.

I’ve completed a manuscript for a book I’m tentatively titling Slow Water: Exploring Disconnection on the Columbia River. This is an adventure memoir exploring environmental and personal disconnection. I’m currently on the hunt for an agent and hoping to publish the book. Below, I’ve included links to writing I’ve published about my experience on the Columbia, as well as media featuring me and my adventure. If you have any questions about the trip, please leave a comment below!

Hannah Griffin’s Writing & Media Coverage About Her Columbia River Adventure

Mountain Life Magazine—Stumped
Columbia Valley Pioneer—Editorial
Pinch of Dirt—Confronting Speedboats, Lazy Lagooners, and Loneliness on the Columbia River
Columbia Valley Pioneer—International Women’s Day: Hannah’s Excellent Adventure
Dominic Bonny Reports—Canadian Paddlers Gets Helping Hand From Columbia River Angel
KW3—Our Local Columbia River Angels Organization: Helping Paddlers
Stoke FM—Woman Gets Laid Off And Decides to Paddle the Entire Columbia River From Canal Flats to the Pacific
Stoke FM—All About the Columbia River Treaty

So imagine my delight when I came across My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food & Feelings at my local library. Curated by Zosia Mamet, it’s like an entire book of headnotes. The anthology is full of short essays by dozens of contributors exploring meaningful memories centered around food. It’s a lovely read, with some stand-out pieces from Patti Smith, Gabourey Sidibe, and David Sedaris.

In the spirit of this book, I decided to do something a little bit different with this issue of the newsletter. Below, I’ve included my own short essay on a dish that has special meaning to me and evokes memories of rainy days in the wilds of Algonquin Park.

________________

Backcountry black bean soup

My first experience with the transcendent power of backcountry food was during a family canoe trip. It was the end of August, and I was eight years old. I had a bowl cut, khaki cargo shorts, and only wore Teva sandals for the entire summer. My parents, brother, sister, and our family friends were in Algonquin Park for a week, the vast expanse of wilderness north of Toronto. The family friends had a teenage son, and his French exchange student had joined for the canoe trip.

It rained the entire week. This was not west coast summer rain that pummels for half a day before burning off into a milky mist. Ontario rain settles in and puts down roots, a dull, seemingly endless thrum of precipitation that drowns your optimism. The bite of fall weather had descended early and our campsite was full of mud puddles. We were all beginning to go stir crazy after hours spent napping, reading, and playing cards in the damp tent. The French exchange student shivered in his pastel raingear, a pained expression on his face.

In the mid-afternoon, my dad boiled water and prepared a big pot of instant spicy black bean soup, and we all gathered under the tarp in a circle, cupping the chipped blue camping bowls in cold hands. The soup was thick, with whole black beans and onions, and deliciously salty. We followed it with mugs of powdered hot chocolate, its startling sweetness as comforting as the temporary warm feeling it left in my chest. It was such a simple meal, eaten in such a basic way, but it made me feel more comfortable and at home in the woods.

I wasn’t the only one soothed by the soup. When I looked up and caught a glimpse of the exchange student across the tarp from me, I noticed he looked at least 25 per cent less shell-shocked from his introduction to Canadian canoe tripping as he had pre-soup. We’ve never talked about it, but I know with one spoonful of black bean soup, my brother, sister, and I would all be transported back to that waterlogged campsite on North Tea Lake.

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

I’ve been in a phase recently where I’ve been reading a lot of great books that came out years ago. My bedside table has been occupied by White Oleander by Janet Finch (1999), The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson (2006), Summer Sisters by Judy Blume (1998), and this issue’s feature, High Crimes by Michael Kodas (2008). It’s a double-edged sword falling in love with a book that debuted so long ago—it feels like you’re discovering a gem, but then you have fewer people to talk about it with.

High Crimes was vivid, fascinating, and shocking, and I think I’m going to remember many details of this book forever. Check out my full review below of this look at bad behaviour on Mount Everest, and scroll to the bottom to see what bread I baked to go with High Crimes.

Plus: I’ve launched a bread baking YouTube channel! Check it out below and subscribe to get notified when I post a new video, from focaccia to milk bread to pizza to bagels!👇

Visit 500 Breads on YouTube

Good Book: High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas (2008)

High Crimes in a Nutshell

High Crimes is an investigative account of the darker side of modern mountaineering on the world’s most sought-after summit. Following a tumultuous 2004 assignment for the Hartford Courant where he joined an Everest expedition, Kodas looks at the cutthroat side of the mountain’s ecosystem. He intertwines two powerful narratives: the tragic abandonment and death of climber Nils Antezana at the hands of an unscrupulous guide, and the disintegration of his own expedition under volatile leadership. Amidst base-camp theft, violence, faulty oxygen supplies, and instances of disturbing indifference toward dying climbers in the “Death Zone,” Kodas paints a portrait of a mountain overwhelmed by commercialization and ego. His suspenseful prose forces readers to confront how a rush to summit may have eroded the integrity of what was once a noble, exploratory pursuit.

High Crimes in Three Words

Scary, immersive, thrilling

What I liked about High Crimes

1. First hand account

The most chilling part of this book for me was reading about Kodas’ experience being part of a deeply dysfunctional Everest expedition. His guide was mercurial and unpredictable, and the group atmosphere deteriorated to the point that Kodas feared for his safety. As someone who likes to drive myself everywhere because I hate the idea of being stuck in a situation I don’t like, the idea of being on a mountain with a maniacal guide is a literal nightmare.

2. Characterization of individualism on Everest

Kodas tells many stories of people in the Death Zone who are only able to look out for themselves. His descriptions of mountaineers stepping over bodies on the way to the top and stealing oxygen from one another illustrated how on the world’s highest peak, being a team player isn’t always the focus. Whether it was caused by lack of oxygen to the brain, physical deterioration, a singular fixation on their goal, or all of the above, this inability to help others struck me as terrifying.

3. Investigation into a guide who abandoned his client

I thought the most well-done part of High Crimes was the investigative element where Kodas delves into the background of a guide who let his client die on Everest. Gustavo Lisi was a scoundrel of a climbing guide who after a failed Everest attempt then stole the summit photo of a dying climber. He tried to pass off the bundled-up person in the image as himself.

In 2004, he led Nils Antezana to the top of Everest, but then left his client who was struggling to die near the summit. Lisi didn’t try to rescue Antezana, and instead got back to base camp and immediately posted a celebratory message to his website with no mention of Antezana. Kodas explores the background of Lisi, connects with Antezana’s grieving relatives, and illustrates how easy it was for an unqualified guide to make his way to Everest with paying clients.

Good Bread: Cheddar & Jalapeno Focaccia

Why this book for this bread?

So much of the mayhem in High Crimes occurs when mountaineers are deprived of oxygen and unable to think with their full faculties. I thought a bread whose success also hinges on air (CO2 bubbles created during fermentation, to be exact) would be a great fit for this book.

Recipe for cheddar jalapeno focaccia

For the focaccia, I used Alison Roman’s overnight focaccia tonight, recipe. You can check it out here. After dimpling the dough, I added about 1 cup of cubed cheddar cheese, and diced jalapeno rings from one pepper. If you like heat, keep the seeds. If not, discard them before you add to the dough. I also added a few cranks of black pepper. I always admire the gorgeous round focaccia loaves at my favourite local bakery, so tried my hand at baking this one in a springform and it turned out great.

Watch my cheddar jalapeno foccaccia being made

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Good Things, Samin Nostrat’s next cookbook!

Show I’m looking forward to watching: The Pitt

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Rooti Farmaajo (honeycomb cheese bread, here, drool)

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

The Color of Everything by Cory Richards

Wavewalker by Suzanne Heywood

Fuzz by March Roach

Lookout: love, solitude, and searching for wildfire in the boreal forest trina moyles

The Wager by David Grann

The Outsider by Brent Popplewell

Pure Land by Annette McGivney

Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Return to Solitude by Grant Lawrence

I love baking sourdough bread. It's such a fun thing to have on the go while I'm spending the day at home. Sometimes however, I just don't have the time for an all-day bread baking process. I wanted to develop a recipe that used sourdough starter discard plus instant yeast to produce a quicker bread that still boasted a sourdough flavour. So, here it is! My Sourdough-Ish Bread Recipe!

This easy bread uses instant yeast, sourdough starter discard, flour, and salt. It comes together in just two-and-a-half hours, and most of that is rising time. This is the bread you can make on a weeknight when you want a crusty loaf of #freshbaked bread on the dinner table, without the sourdough timeline.

Full Sourdough Starter Discard Bread Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups of warm water

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

1/3 cup of active sourdough starter

4.5 cups all purpose flour 1.5 tsp salt

Instructions

In a medium sized bowl, combine warm water and instant yeast. Let stand for 5-10 minutes until foamy.

Pour yeast mixture into a large mixing bowl. A

dd sourdough starter and break up with your hands or a spatula. In a large bowl, add flour and salt together and whisk.

Add yeast mixture to flour and mix until a shaggy dough forms.

Turn out on a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, or until the surface of the dough is smooth and springy.

Lightly oil a bowl. Place dough in, and let rise in a warm place for one and a half hours.

Flour a work surface, and tip out dough. Fold each side over itself to form a bowl. Pull against the surface of your counter to create tension on the dough.

Pre-heat oven to 450. Place the shaped loaf in a dutch oven. Score the top of the loaf.

Bake for 20 minutes, and then remove the lid of the dutch oven.

Return to the oven for 10 more minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Enjoy!

Leave a comment

Somehow it’s just two weeks until summer solstice. I’m enjoying the longer days, cold dips in the Columbia River, and willing my tomato and hot pepper plants to grow. This week I’m taking a pause from the usual newsletter structure to mark the middle of the year and recap everything I’ve read this year! Below, I’ve broken all of my reads up by genre, with a quick summary. Let me know in the comments what your favourite read of 2025 has been so far!

What I loved

Non-fiction

How to Be Well: Navigating our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time by Amy Larocca
An investigative look at the massive wellness industry and how it’s infiltrated every aspect of our lives—frequently as the traditional diet and beauty industry under a new guise.
Check out my full review here.

When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon by Alex Cuadros
A beautiful book about the Cinta Larga, an Indigenous tribe deep in the Amazon, near the border with Bolivia, and what happened when settlers began extracting natural resources from their territory in the 1960s.
Check out my full review here.

Into The Raging Sea by Rachel Slade
I seldom read a book twice, but this was just as immersive the second time around. This book chronicles the 2015 sinking of the container ship El Faro, after it sailed into the eye of a category five hurricane in the Bermuda Triangle. As well as extensive interviews with friends and family of the crew, Slade reconstructs the final hours on the ship using audio from the vessel’s black box recorder.

Health and Safety: A Breakdown by Emily Witt
A fascinating memoir of Witt’s immersion in New York’s underground dance music scene. I’m as impressed with Witt’s writing as I am with her, a fellow 30-something, being able to stay up past 1 am.

High Crimes by Michael Kodas: The Fate of Everest in a World of Greed
Published in 2008, this was a stressful, nail-biting read that tells the stories of what people will do in order to stand atop the world’s highest peak.

Memoir

Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!) by Bethany Joy Lenz
A unique story about Lenz’s time as a star of One Tree Hill, and how just as her career was taking off, she became involved in a religious cult. I listened to the audiobook, and hearing Lenz tell her story herself, combined with her excellent voice acting chops, made this a delight.
Check out my full review here.

Over the Influence: A Memoir by Joanna Levesque
A heartbreaking but beautifully told memoir by teen pop star Joanna “JoJo” Levesque about her difficult upbringing with parents who battled addiction and depression, an unlikely rise to fame at 12, and her years-long battle with her record label.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
Ina Garten’s lovely and spirited memoir chronicling decades of personal challenges, triumphs, and relationships. From a lonely childhood to becoming the Barefoot Contessa, this is a transparent recounting of a life full of risk taking.

Fiction

Isola by Allegra Goodman
Captivating historical fiction about a teenager cast off a French ship and left to fend for herself on a desolate island off the coast of present-day Canada. Equal parts love story and survival epic.
Check out my full review here.

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume
A sweeping coming of age story following two girls from very different backgrounds who become friends and spend each summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Once they become adults, their lives take drastically different turns and they must navigate a still-strong but fraught connection.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
A mystery that begins when a camp counselor wakes one morning and discovers one of the camper’s bunks is empty. The missing girl is from the wealthy New York family who own the camp, and in the ensuing search, long-buried family secrets begin to emerge.
Check out my full review here.

Dream State by Eric Puchner
Dream State begins with a major betrayal before a wedding in Montana, and then follows the affected lifelong friends over generations as they grapple with the fallout. It’s drama, biology, love, and the outdoors wrapped into one excellent saga.
Check out my full review here.

Wedding People by Alison Espach
At the beginning of Wedding People, two women encounter one another in a decadent seaside hotel lobby. One is about to get married, having planned the perfect wedding. The other has just gotten divorced, and is there to kill herself. Their initial interaction is the start of a difficult, funny, and poignant week.

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Broken Country kicks off with protagonist Beth’s brother-in-law shooting a dog attacking their sheep. When the dog turns out to belong to the wealthy man Beth was in love with as a teenager, who has just returned to their sleepy village with his son, it sets in motion a tense and dark plot.

All The Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
A riveting story set in 1975 in a small Missouri town where girls have been disappearing. An unlikely hero, a local boy with one eye, saves the daughter of a wealthy family from being abducted. This book focuses on what happens to people in the aftermath of a tragedy.

What wasn’t for me

• The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson

• Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

• The Unwedding by Ally Condie

Favourite Book I’ve Read So Far in 2025: Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

Sometimes you read a book at just the right time in your life. I read this book just after I’d given notice at my job—I’m taking this summer off to take some big swings on a few creative projects. Reading about Ina’s attitude towards going all in on things that feel scary and exciting was inspiring. I enjoyed reading about her thought process and optimism when new opportunities arose, and her unfailing belief in herself to take on new adventures. She always bet on herself. Plus, I can read about food all day.

What have you loved reading so far this year?

Leave a comment

Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed this issue, share with a friend! If you hated it, please share with an enemy.

Hello and welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! I’ve been on a fiction kick lately, with Broken Country, Camp Zero, Isola and Summer Sisters taking up space on my bedside table. My first love however, will always be non-fiction, so I couldn’t resist diving into this issue’s book. I love being the beneficiary of someone else’s multi-year journey exploring a specific topic. In this case, it’s Amy Larocca’s foray into the wellness industry, a $3.7 billion behemoth that has found its way into every part of our lives. I hope you enjoy the review below, and the delightfully un-well bread I baked to go with it.

Plus: I’ve launched a bread baking YouTube channel! 👇

Visit 500 Breads on YouTube

Good Book: How to Be Well: Navigating our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time by Amy Larocca (2025)

How to Be Well in a Nutshell

In How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, Amy Larocca takes an investigative look at the massive wellness industry and how it’s taken over everything from our diets to our beauty routines. She dives into all kinds of wellness fads—like juice cleanses, charcoal toothpaste, and expensive supplements—calling out the sketchy science and marketing tricks behind them. Larocca also explores how these trends often play on our insecurities, especially targeting women, and how they’re really just the latest version of the beauty industry selling us stuff we don’t need.

Instead of offering another how-to guide for being your “best self,” Larocca’s book calls out how wellness has become a luxury lifestyle more than anything else. She points out that most of what’s being sold as “health” is only really available to people who can afford it. With humor and insight, she encourages readers to question the hype and think more critically about what wellness really means—and what actually makes us feel good.

How to Be Well in Three Words

Funny, shocking, sharp

What I liked about How to Be Well

1. Shows the repackaging of the wellness industry

One argument in How to Be Well that really resonated with me is how the modern wellness industry is essentially just the diet and beauty industry, re-packaged as earthy, wholesome, and healthy. I grew up in the heyday of women’s magazines, when a constant dialogue on the virtue of thinness and a narrow definition of beauty seemed normal. Larocca shows how a lot of the marketing we now see around wellness is really just that same industry rebranded in a more palatable way.

2. Use of humour

The wellness industry is overwhelmingly sincere. And understandably so: people are trying to feel better and improve themselves. However, I enjoyed the levity that Larocca brought to the topic. She tries and reports on a vast range of wellness practices and fads—a $2k full body scan, visiting luxury doctors’ offices, coffee enemas, Ashwagandha smoothies—and finds the comedy in each while exploring the validity of their health claims.

3. Look at undiagnosed chronic illness

I appreciated the section in How to Be Well that looked at the great lengths people will take to find relief from undiagnosed chronic illnesses. I think it can be easy as a healthy person to look at those trying “dubious cures” and write them off. But Larocca gives us the perspective of those who have been sick for years, with doctors either unable to give them a clear diagnosis, or in some cases, disregarding their experiences. I came away with an understanding that when your everyday state is feeling terrible, you might be willing to try anything that might help you regain a sense of normalcy and control over your body.

Good Bread: Homemade Pizza Pockets

Reading a 300-page book covering all of the ways our modern society can help us be well really just made me want to eat some pizza. And no, not a cheese-less pizza with kale and a nut-flour dough. I wanted a simple white flour dough, tomato sauce, and cheddar cheese, and for it to be in pizza pocket form. This recipe below is very nostalgic for me, but a great improvement on the frozen-microwave ones that invariably scorched my tongue as a kid. Scroll below the recipe for a video walkthrough of the process!

Recipe for pizza pockets

Makes 12 pizza pockets

Ingredients

Dough:

• 2 cups warm water

• 4 1/2 tsp instant active yeast

• 1 tbsp sugar

• 5 cups white all purpose flour

• 1 tbsp kosher salt

• 2 tbsp olive oil, plus 1/2 tsp more for oiling bowl

• 1 egg for egg wash

Filling:

• 1 cup tomato sauce

• 450 grams of cheddar cheese (or any other cheese of your choice)

• Roughly chopped basil

Place parchment paper on two cookie sheets.

Combine the 2 cups of warm water, 4 1/2 tsp instant active yeast, and 1 tbsp sugar in a bowl. Stir and let sit for ten minutes until surface is foamy.

Add 5 cups white all purpose flour to a large mixing bowl. Whisk in salt.

Add yeast mixture to flour mixture. Mix until a shaggy dough forms.

Roll out and knead on a lightly floured surface for 5 minutes, until the surface of the dough is smooth and springy. Lightly oil a bowl, and place dough inside. Let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes - 1 hour, until doubled in size.

Roll out dough on lightly floured surface. Use a knife or bench scraper to cut into 12 roughly equal sized pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Take a ball, press down with your palm to flatten. Use a rolling pin to roll it into a disc about 5 inches across.

Add 1-2 tbsp of tomato sauce to disc. Add basil on top of sauce. Pinch edges, and slide in a piece of cheese. Seal the pocket. Place on parchment paper. Go around the curved edge of the pizza pocket and fold the dough over itself again. Flip it over, and lightly press down on the pocket. Take a fork and press down on the dough seal on the curved edge of the pocket, all the way around.

Repeat process with the remaining 11 pockets.

Pre-heat the oven to 425.

Crack and lightly beat an egg in a bowl or cup. Using a brush, paint a light egg wash over the surface of each pocket, ensuring you get into the fork crimp marks.

Use a fork to poke holes in the surface of the pizza pockets to allow steam to escape.

Bake the pizza pockets for between 20-25 minutes, until the crust is a deep golden brown. Remove, let cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Enjoy!

Pizza Pockets in Action

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Show I’m looking forward to watching: Sirens on Netflix

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Tartine’s sourdough baguettes

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

Hello and welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! I just got back from a belated honeymoon in Spain, and before I left, I went through my typical pre-travel mania of taking out ebooks from the library. I have a fear of not having anything to read while travelling. Being alone with my thoughts on long travel days? Absolutely not! While browsing books to check out, I was immediately captivated by the cover art for this issue’s book, Isola by Allegra Goodman. It reminded me so much of Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, a book I loved as a kid about a young Nicoleño girl who is left alone on San Nicolas Island for 18 years after her tribe is relocated by Europeans.

I loved Isola. It had everything I enjoy in fiction: complex characters, adventure, and unexpected turns. I was engrossed on the plane, and while in Spain I looked forward to reading a chapter or two before bed each night. I hope you enjoy reading the review below and checking out the bread I baked to go with it. And, if you’ve read Isola, let me know what you thought of it in the comments!

**Plus: I’ve launched a bread baking YouTube channel! You can check it out here.**

Good Book: Isola by Allegra Goodman (2025)

Isola in a nutshell

Marguerite de la Rocque is the orphaned heir to a fortune in 16th-century France. When we meet her, she is living in her family’s castle under the care of her longtime maid, Damienne. Marguerite’s finances are controlled by a volatile male relative, Roberval, who slowly siphons her wealth away on exploratory naval expeditions and gambling. With only Damienne for company, Marguerite watches as the life and resources her parents left for her dwindle.

Eventually Roberval sells Marguerite’s castle and grounds, and she has no choice but to move into his home and live like a servant. Then at 20, she is forced to board his ship on a trans-Atlantic journey to help establish the colony of New France, in present-day Canada. The conditions on the ship are dreadful, but Marguerite forms a close friendship with Roberval’s young secretary, Auguste. When their bond becomes romantic, Roberval finds out and is furious. In a rage, he casts Marguerite, Damienne, and Auguste off the ship, abandoning them on a rugged, tree-less island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Isola in three words

Moody, tense, unexpected

What I liked about Isola

1. Voice

The story is told by Marguerite, who has spent her entire upbringing keeping her true feelings and desires hidden. This comes through in the restrained and cool way she tells her story. Despite the horrors of being marooned on a desolate island and left to die, the narration is factual and removed in a way that makes it feel very real.

2. Changes in setting

The setting changes multiple times in Isola. Marguerite’s story unfolds in her family castle, Roberval’s home, the ship, and on the island. Each environment brings new expectations for how she should act, and how much freedom she has. As the demands and isolation of each setting intensified, she transformed from a somewhat unremarkable protagonist to a force.

3. Roots in history

I loved Allegra Goodman’s author’s note at the end of the book. She explains that while reading her son a library book about New France, she came across a few sentences that referenced noblewoman Marguerite de La Rocque, who was cast off a 1542 voyage onto an unnamed island with her lover and servant. Goodman was taken aback by the brief reference, and it stayed in the back of her mind for years before she used it as the basis of this historical fiction. I love the idea of an author 500 years after this voyage being so captivated by a few sentences, and being able to develop a compelling and rich story about what could have happened on that lonely island.

Good Bread: Sourdough-ish bread

I love sourdough. One of my favourite things is thinking up different variations to make (see here, here, and here). On days where I’m already planning to be puttering around the house, it’s so nice to have some sourdough production on the go. But this week? This week I’m jet-lagged, kind of cranky, and feeling overwhelmed by life. This week, I was not about to bake something that took all day.

I decided to experiment with making a simple instant-yeast dough, and then just adding some of my sourdough starter to it. After mixing, I let the bread rise for an hour before baking, and it felt like a low time commitment for a gorgeous loaf we enjoyed with a bowl of curry. Recipe below!

Recipe for sourdough-ish bread

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of warm water

1 tbsp sugar

2 tsp instant yeast

1/2 cup of active sourdough starter

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

Instructions

In a medium sized bowl, combine warm water, instant yeast, and sugar. Let stand for 10 minutes until foamy.

Pour yeast mixture into a large mixing bowl. Add sourdough starter and break up with your hands or a spatula.

Add salt.

Add flour and mix until a shaggy dough forms. Turn out on a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, or until the surface of the dough is smooth and springy.

Lightly oil or line a loaf tin with parchment paper. Place dough in tin, and let rise in a warm place for one hour.

Pre-heat oven to 450.

Score the top of the loaf. Bake for 23-25 minutes on a middle rack, until the loaf is golden brown.

Why this bread for this book?

Once on the island, Marguerite was a busy gal. Her, Auguste, and her servant Damienne were cast out with only what they could carry. Given that, they spent all day working hard to survive—hunting, foraging, building shelter, looking for water, and keeping an eye out for bears. The entirety of her waking hours were devoted to practical matters. Given that, I thought I’d honor her with a bread that was also practical.

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Virgin by Lorde

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Justine Snack’s ripple bread

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

I started Good Book Good Bread three years ago. From my little cabin engulfed by western red cedars and ferns outside of Squamish, BC, I baked, I read, and I typed. I started this Substack because I was feeling creatively uninspired and wanted to do something just for myself, that allowed me to go on at length about my two favourite things.

Fast forward to 2025, and I’ve moved to another mountain town, gotten married, lost my job, gotten a new job, welcomed a second husky mix into our family (Bruce bear), undertaken a canoeing expedition of the Columbia River (and dealt with a truly humbling case of giardia).

Amidst all of these changes, writing this newsletter every few weeks has been a delightful and nourishing constant. I wanted to take a little pause this issue and share the five most-read Good Book Good Bread issues to date. I’ve included them below. I’d love to hear your thoughts about the books and breads featured in them. What did you love? What wasn’t for you? What other breads should I bake? What books have you recently read that I should check out?

But first:

I’ve always been drawn to adventures and goals focused on a certain number. When I was 33, I ran on 33 new trails. This year, my 35th on this planet, I decided I’d swim in 35 bodies of water (I’m on #9, my birthday is in June, and most of the water bodies I haven’t swam in around Revelstoke are frozen, so I think I’m going to have a busy spring lol).

In this numerical spirit, I’ve recently launched my new YouTube channel, 500 Breads, where I will be chronicling my experience of baking 500 different kinds of bread! This should keep me busy for the next decade or so :)

While writing has always been my first love, for a long time I have wanted to start a bread baking YouTube channel. My ideal way to relax is to curl up on the couch and fall down a YouTube rabbit hole of bakers shaping loaves, breads springing to life in the oven, and bronze crusts crackling when cut into. I wanted to be a part of it.

Twice a month I’ll be uploading a video where I bake a bread start to finish. Sometimes I’ll bake a recipe from my one of my favourite cookbook authors (see Smitten Kitchen’s everything bagel drop biscuits here, and Claire Saffitz’s focaccia here). And other times, I’ll be baking a recipe I developed (see easy pizza dough topped with caramelized onion, goat cheese & sesame seeds here).

It would mean *so* much to me to have you check out 500 Breads and subscribe.

I’m so excited to keep writing this newsletter, to produce recipes and videos, and continue to interact with the awesome community here. Thanks for being part of it!

500 Breads on YouTube

Most Read Good Book Good Bread Issues!

1. Demon Copperhead & berry-filled sourdough discard muffins

   Barbara Kingsolver’s beautiful story of a boy coming of age in the hills of Appalachia, and a tangy muffin studded with raspberries and blueberries, capped off with a crisp, sugary top.
   
   

   READ NOW

   

   ---

2. Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread & The God of the Woods

   A mouthwatering twisted loaf that tastes like cinnamon buns, and Liz Moore’s thriller set at an Adirondack summer camp about family secrets that can no longer remain hidden.

READ NOW

3. The Great Alone & English Muffins

   Kristin Hannah’s 2018 epic about a young woman grappling with extreme family dysfunction in a remote Alaskan cabin, and perfect, craggy english muffins.

   READ NOW

   

   ---

   4. Pull apart garlic bread and Butter

   Asako Yuzuki’s riveting fictional story of a Japanese journalist investigating a female serial killer, and unexpectedly discovering the joy of food along the way.

   READ NOW

   

   ---

   5. Everything Biscuits & When We Sold God’s Eye

   Alex Cuadros’ fascinating non-fiction exploration of how resource extraction has impacted the Cinta Larga, an Indigenous tribe deep in the Amazon, and a salty, cream cheese-filled drop biscuit.

   
   

   READ NOW

   ---

   Thanks for reading! I’ll be back in two weeks with another book review and a new bread to share. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy 500 Breads!

   Visit 500 Breads

Good Book: Dream State by Eric Puchner (2025)

I love reading acknowledgements at the end of a book. It’s such an interesting glimpse into the author whose words you just spent days or weeks reading. I love seeing what is important to them and what elements led to the work I hold in my hands becoming real. They can be heartfelt, academic, long-winded or efficient. In The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel begins her acknowledgements with her daughter’s nanny, who she explains made writing the book possible. At the end of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong gave thanks to artists both living and dead who had influenced his writing.

When reading Dream State, I imagined author Eric Puchner must be a Montana backcountry biologist, an experienced backcountry skier, and a cinephile. Whether it was the details around a backcountry ski trip at the heart of the story, a character who studies wolverines in the mountains, or the world of documentary filmmaking, the voice and detail were so authentic. In reality, Puchner lives in Baltimore and teaches at John Hopkin’s (although his partner’s family does have a home in Montana he has visited for many summers).

In Dream State’s acknowledgements, Puchner thanks a wolverine biologist he learned from who tracked the animals in Glacier National Park, a backcountry ski guide and avalanche expert, and several filmmakers. It becomes clear he is not only an amazing writer but highly skilled at collecting experiences from others to build his characters. He dove into these different vocations and worlds, and was able to gather the knowledge to craft a story that feels like it is about real, fully-formed people.

Read below for my full take on Dream State, and to check out the tangy, spicy sourdough loaf I baked to go with it.

Dream State In a Nutshell

Dream State is a work of fiction that follows lifelong friends over generations as they grapple with a major betrayal. Cece arrives a month before her wedding at her in-laws’ summer house on the lake in Salish, Montana. She’s immersed in planning her wedding to Charlie, when she meets his best friend from college, Garret. He lives in Salish, has fallen on hard times, and has accepted Charlie’s request that he officiate his and Cece’s wedding. Though initially wary of gruff and odd Garret, Cece forms a connection with him that upends how she thought her life would go. The novel follows the three friends for the next 50 years, tracing how one decision altered their lives and those of their children. Set against the backdrop of the rapidly warming Montana valley they are all so connected to, Dream State brings ecology, climate change, relationships, addiction and parenting into one heartbreaking story.

Dream State in Three Words

Immersive, melancholy, moving

What I liked about Dream State

1. Timelines

   Nothing is more frustrating than reading a book where the timeline jumps around and not understanding where you are. When it’s not clear where in time the story has ended up, I become completely removed from the story as I try to orient myself. I’ve never read a book before that manages shifting timelines more gracefully than Dream State. Unlike some books, the chapter headings never include a year or give a stated declaration of the timing. Yet it was always obvious. Without having to come out and say, ‘Now we are in the year 2009’, Puchner drops breadcrumbs in the first few pages of a chapter that let me understand exactly where we were and what had transpired.

2. Language

   I used to be vehemently anti e-reader. I would hear people say, “You can have hundreds of books on them!” and I’d wonder, why do you need hundreds of books at once? Then I went on a six-week canoe trip in 2023, and since I wasn’t about to pack a barrel of books, I reluctantly bought an e-reader. I loved it right away, and I’m a convert. One feature I didn’t realize e-readers had until I bought mine was the ability to click on a word and get a dictionary definition. I think this is so cool, and I enjoy getting to learn new words while I’m reading, instead of just skimming over an unusual word or half-understanding it within its context. I learned so many new words reading Dream State. Puchner covers philosophy, science, cults, ecology, and geology, giving me lots to look up (see: antinatalist, Australopithecus, vertiginous).

3. Spending a long time with characters

   Dream State falls into my favourite category of fiction, one that follows a family over a long time frame. Something about spending so many pages with one group of people and seeing how their lives evolve over the years makes a book so memorable to me. It also makes all of the monumental events in their life seem even more emotionally charged and meaningful. I was so invested in the trajectory of their lives that I stayed up til midnight last Tuesday finishing Dream State (was I crying? I was crying) and woke up with some substantial bags under my eyes.

Good Bread: Chili Crisp Sourdough

Why this bread for this book?

This book starts with an intriguing premise, and then delves deeper and deeper into the complexities of relationships as the years roll on. I thought the depth of chili crisp, a condiment with soybean oil, roasted soybeans, crispy bits of garlic and onion, and chili flakes, fit well with the trajectory of Dream State. It’s a bit of a slow burn—it’s nothing like a Frank’s hot sauce, where the acidity hits you right away, or like a Siracha, with an obvious bite of spice. Chili crisp is subtle heat with complex flavour and texture—you taste a lot at the same time. I connected chili crisp to Dream State’s slow build-up, with lots of different characters’ motivations and tensions growing and transforming over decades.

Recipe

I used Tartine Bread’s country loaf recipe (here), and then I added in 1/3 of a cup of chili crisp. The crisp was added in during the bulk fermentation, after I turned the dough the third time.

There are lots of different brands of chili crisp, but I like the OG—Lao Gan Ma. My friend baked sourdough with chili crisp and cheddar cheese last week, and I can’t wait to try making that.

Share

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Health and Safety by Emily Witt

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Lifted by Israel Nash

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Matcha pineapple buns

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

Good Book: When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon by Alex Cuadros (2024)

When We Sold God’s Eye In a Nutshell

This fantastic narrative non-fiction book is about the Cinta Larga, an Indigenous tribe deep in the Amazon, near the border with Bolivia. After the first highway was constructed through Cinta Larga territory in the 1960s, white settlers began appearing in increasing numbers. They were drawn to the area’s rich natural resources, eventually extracting a range of materials from the earth, from centuries-old hardwood trees to diamonds. In varying ways, the Cinta Larga both participated in and resisted the changes brought by outsiders over the decades. Author Cuadros tells the story through Pio, Maria, and Oita, three Cinta Larga who were kids when settlers first arrived, and have experienced the drastic transformation of their people and way of life.

When We Sold God’s Eye in Three Words

Detailed, shocking, illuminating

What I liked about When We Sold God’s Eye

1. Reads like a novel

   By filtering much of the story through Pio, Maria, and Oita, this book reads like a novel in many ways. I got the sense while reading that Cuadros must have developed very trusting relationships with these three individuals as he was able to learn such detailed things about their lives. I became really attached to them, and I wanted to know how they were going to handle each wild circumstance.

2. Never knew where the story was going

   It’s so interesting to read about a real-world topic you know nothing about, especially in such a suspenseful book. I never knew what twist or shocking development was going to take place in this contested corner of the Amazon. The greed that forever changed the Cinta Larga’s homeland made people do brutal and terrible things, ones I could never quite anticipate.

3. Research

   While reading this book, I often found myself thinking with wonder at how many interviews and how much research Cuadros must have done to do to tell the story. In addition to the intimate details of Pio, Maria, and Oita’s lives, this books also packs in plenty of fascinating information about resource extraction, Brazil’s relationship with its Indigenous peoples, and early contact with settlers including the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition of 1914. This book made me want to learn a lot more about the Amazon and the groups that have inhabited it for centuries.

Good Bread: Everything Cream Cheese Biscuits

Why this bread for this book?

When reading Deb Perelman’s description for this recipe in her cookbook Smitten Kitchen Everyday, I liked how she described combining the butter, flour, and cream cheese together until it formed a “rubbly” dough. So much of the conflict and tension over resources in the Cinta Larga territory swirls around diamonds and gold. For years, both outsiders and some Cinta Larga tried their luck at digging up the land and sifting through it in an attempt to unearth some of the precious metals. I thought the rubble-like nature of the dough connected to the land being disrupted in this way.

Watch me bake these biscuits below!

Recipe

This recipe, as mentioned above, is from Smitten Kitchen Everyday. You can view a digital version here. It’s perfect. It takes about a half hour to make these delicious morsels. They are great for a day when you want a nice bread-y something but don’t have the energy or ambition for anything very involved. I baked these after a day of tree-skiing when I was feeling lazy but also very interested in some carbs, and they made my house smell like a bagel shop. Win.

Share

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Seven by Farzana Doctor

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Glory by Perfume Genius

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Chilli crisp sourdough

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

Good Book: Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz (2024)

Dinner for Vampires In a Nutshell

This memoir follows Bethany Joy Lenz, a star of the teen drama One Tree Hill, through the decade she spent in the religious Big House Family cult. The book begins with Lenz’s childhood growing up as a devout Christian in Texas, and her foray into acting as a young teenager. At 20, she lands in LA and begins auditioning for TV shows. Feeling lonely in her vast new city, she’s excited to fall in with a welcoming bible study group. At one of these study evenings, she meets Les, a visiting minister from Idaho who has lost his congregation under mysterious circumstances. He is building a compound in rural Idaho for new followers he is accumulating, and soon, Lenz is invited to visit.

As her career takes off, she gradually becomes more ingrained in ‘The Family’, to the point she can not make even the most minor day-to-day decisions without permission. She’s taken advantage of financially, emotionally, physically, and cut off from her own family. The book is sharp, honest, sometimes funny, and a fascinating look into the slow crescendo of manipulations that allow a group to wrestle complete control from its members.

Dinner for Vampires in Three Words

Intriguing, eye opening

Notable Quote

“I’d been dining with vampires. No, I realized. I am the dinner.”

What I liked about Dinner for Vampires

1. Lenz’s audio narration

   Lenz does such an amazing job of reading the audiobook. Her affinity for accents and acting skills make listening such a delight. The nuance she added to different characters voices made it really engaging and easy to follow who was speaking. A nice touch was that the book also had certain male characters, like her One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray, record some of the recalled dialogue she includes.

2. How it illustrates vulnerability

   I thought the most frightening part of Lenz’s story was how clear it was that Les, the cult leader, targeted her. She was isolated and looking for community, perfectly positioned to write off certain behaviours as simply ‘The Family’ showing how much they cared about her. Lenz was also on the brink of professional success, a clear mark for Les, who used millions of dollars Lenz earned on One Tree Hill to finance the cult.

3. Afterword

   Dinner for Vampires could have ended when Lenz decides to leave the cult. But I found the afterword where she explains what its like moving through the world post-cult to be fascinating. It’s rare to hear from someone about how their day-to-day changes after being ensconced in and controlled by a group for a decade.

Good Bread: My favourite pizza

Why this bread for this book?

I call this date night pizza because it’s a little fancier than the typical tomato sauce, cheese, zucchini pie I often make. I like this pizza because it contains so many different layers of flavour. Sweetness from the caramelized onions. A tart creaminess from the goat cheese. Rich toastiness from the sesame seeds releasing their oils as the crust cooks. Fragrant basil. I thought the way these are all layered together related to the way Les slowly built his control over Lenz—small and sequential actions built on one another that eventually led to her life no longer belonging to her.

Recipe

This is one of the first recipes I’ve developed myself, and I’m very excited about it! The recipe makes enough dough for two large pizzas: I usually freeze one dough ball for another night.

Dough

• 1 3/4 cups of lukewarm water

• 4 ½ teaspoons of instant yeast

• 1 tbsp white sugar

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 4 tbsp olive oil

• 5 cups all purpose or bread flour

Add warm water to a bowl. Add the white sugar and yeast. Let stand for ten minutes until the surface is foamy.

Add your flour, olive oil, and salt. Mix using a stand mixer or a by hand, until a smooth dough forms and all of the dry flour has been incorporated.

Lightly flour a work surface. Knead dough for five minutes until its surface is springy. If you poke a finger into the dough, the hole should slowly fill itself back in.

Let the dough rise in a warm place for 30-45 minutes. Pre-heat your oven to 450. If you’re going to use the Date Night pizza toppings below, now is a great time to caramelize your onions.

Your dough should be doubled in size. Re-flour your work surface. Tip out the risen dough. Divide the dough in half. Each half is dough for one pizza—either make both or seal one in a freezer bag, store in freezer, and save for another night.

Roll out dough.

Top with desired toppings (or follow below for date night pizza).

Toppings

• 5 onions

• 4 tbsp olive oil for onions

• 1 tbsp olive oil for brushing

• Kosher salt

• Goat cheese

• 1.5 tbsp honey

• 1.5 tbsp chili crisp

• 2 tbsp cup sesame seeds

• Flaky sea salt & fresh basil (optional)

While the dough is rising, caramelize your onions. Slice onions thin. Heat 4 tbsp olive oil in a non stick pan on low heat. Once oil is shimmering, add onions.

Stir every few minutes. After 10 minutes, sprinkle with 2 tsp of salt.

Continue stirring every few minutes, letting the onions brown but not burn. Add more olive oil as needed. Onions should be blond to light brown, which should take roughly 40 minutes.

Add caramelized onions in small spoonfuls across the pizza. Add goat cheese in small spoonfuls in the spaces in between the onions.

Brush all exposed dough with olive oil. Sprinkle sesame seeds over dough brushed with oil.

Mix together honey and chilli crisp. Drizzle half over surface of pizza.

Bake until pizza is a deep golden colour, between 15 and 20 minutes. Remove, and drizzle the remaining honey chilli crisp mixture on top. Sprinkle flaky sea salt and fresh basil if desired. Cool for 5 minutes, slice and serve.

Share

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Waiting Room by Kathryn Mohr

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Smitten Kitchen’s everything drop biscuits with cream cheese

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

My first summer, my cabin and I went on a three-day-canoe trip where it rained so hard I woke up in the tent in a puddle, a harrowing experience for my young self, but somehow I love canoe trips as an adult. Back at camp, I fished, I swam, I played a goblin with no lines in the camp play, and I excelled at capture the flag and camouflage. When my parents stopped by the camp on their own canoe trip to say hi, my hair was matted and my counselor told them I kept insisting on sleeping in my bathing suit. I was planning to swim in the morning, so why not? I was feral, and I loved every minute.

Later, I worked several summers at a different camp, leading canoe trips on lakes and rivers that dotted and criss-crossed northern Ontario. Those childhood and teenage summers had a bigger impact on me and who I became than the entire school year did. I think about camp all the time, and many of my good friends today are those I met during those magical months living in the woods.

Given my soft spot for summer camp, I was immediately excited to read The God of the Woods when I learned it was a thriller set at fictional Camp Emerson in the Adirondacks. It’s one of the most engaging books I’ve read in ages, and the character development is excellent. I have been sick and low energy lately, and the bread I paired with this book was the perfect comforting loaf that made my house smell delightful. Enjoy!

Good Book: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (2024)

The God of the Woods In a Nutshell

On a summer morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson, counselor Louise wakes and notices one of the camper’s bunks is empty. The missing girl is from the wealthy New York family who own the camp—the Van Laar’s. They also own the massive wilderness preserve the camp and a family compound sit on, and employ many of the working-class residents of the nearest town. Worse, Louise was out all night drinking with her friends, and is unsure of how long 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar has been missing from the cabin.

A search ensues, and we meet the Van Laar family, and learn that they had another child vanish in these woods ten years ago—Barbara’s older brother, Bear. Further amplifying the tense situation is that a serial killer has escaped prison and is roaming the Adirondacks, and several of the family members and friends staying at the Van Laar compound have ugly and dangerous secrets themselves.

The God the Woods in Three Words

Mysterious slow burn

What I liked about God the Woods

1. Switching timelines
   Half of this book occurs in 1975, and half ten years before when Barbara’s brother went missing. The story jumps back and forth, showing what was happening at the camp and in the Van Laar family before, during, and after both disappearances. The different points in time are smoothly woven together, and it worked well to keep a slower plot arc exciting. I also liked that Moore includes a section at the start of each chapter that shows you exactly where in time we are. I find sometimes books that play with timelines expect the reader to keep track, and it can get confusing. This just let me focus on enjoying the story.

2. Constant misdirection

   Moore is skilled at dropping subtle clues that had me thinking I had a handle on the plot and knew where Barbara, and Bear, had disappeared to. She peppers in tiny details about characters that lead you to think you’ve solved the mystery, and then it suddenly pivots. I had no idea where the book was going until the conclusion, which ended up being satisfying and impossible to predict.

3. Complex female characters

   I found the book’s most powerful aspect was in showing the distinct stories of how different women survive and protect those they love. The camp counselor, Barbara’s mother, the detective, and Barbara’s best friend at camp are all unique and fascinating characters told without the stereotypes or tropes often used to portray female characters in crime-based stories.

Good Bread: Cinnamon pull-apart bread

Why this book for this bread?

The plot of this book is driven forward by secrets, and the events put in motion when those secrets begin to unfurl themselves. The hidden cinnamon butter filling tucked into each segment of this bread represent the damaging truths the Van Laar family is intent on keeping concealed. Plus, any excuse to make a twisted or coiled bread.

Recipe

In the last issue, here, I baked a savory pull-apart garlic bread. I adapted that recipe by adding more sugar in the dough, omitting the sourdough starter, and instead of garlic butter, I made a cinnamon butter filling. I also added an egg wash to give the loaf a nice shiny exterior. Chef’s kiss!

Share

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Songs for You by Brigid Mae Power

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Baguettes

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

Typically my ideas for this newsletter go book first, then bread. I’ll read a book I love, and then I spend some time pondering what kind of bread could fit with the theme. Occasionally though, I come across a bread recipe I can’t stop thinking about. In these cases, the bread comes first. This delightful pull-apart garlic bread fits squarely into my favourite category: stuffed, enriched-dough, like babka, monkey bread, and feta-filled flatbreads. Enjoy, and if you’ve read the book I chose to pair with it, leave a comment below and let me know what you thought of it!

Good Bread: Sourdough discard pull-apart garlic bread

Recipe

I used the recipe from This Jess Cooks, found here. The recipe uses both yeast and sourdough discard. and the resulting loaf was fluffy with a nice sourdough tang. I’m not a big fan of the called-for parsley in the garlic butter, so I used cilantro instead. Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly, topped it with Maldon sea salt right out of the oven, and it was AMAZING. My house smelled so good, and I enjoyed a piece with some cheesy scrambled eggs and roasted kabocha squash for a hearty breakfast on a snowy morning.

Good Book: Butter by Asako Yuzuki

Butter In a Nutshell

Butter is a whirlwind of a novel inspired by the real-life case of the ‘Konkatsu Killer’, a 42-year-old Tokyo woman who was convicted of poisoning and killing three bachelors she met online between 2007 and 2009. In Asako Yuzuki’s re-imagining, the murderer is Kajimana, a gourmet home cook and seductress who is serving a lengthy sentence in Tokyo Detention Center.

Kajimana’s crimes have become tabloid fodder and the country is captivated by this unassuming killer. People are also obsessed with Kajimana’s appearance, and speculation abounds as to how a woman the press labels as plain and overweight could have had a string of men fall in love with her.

Kajimana refuses to speak to the media, until journalist Rika, the only woman in her newsroom, writes her a letter asking for a stew recipe mentioned in the criminal trial. Kajimana, unable to resist communicating about good food, writes back, and the two begin having regular meetings at the prison. But instead of getting the scoop of her career, Rika begins a Kajimana-directed education in food and gastronomy. Alongside digging into what really happened with Kajimana’s victims, Rika experiences a transformation in her own life, one that leads her to explore misogyny, intimacy, food, and societal expectations for women in Japanese culture.

Why this book for this bread?

The garlic pull-apart bread is formed by rolling twelve dough balls out into discs, and spreading them with herbed garlic butter. Once out of the oven, the toasty brown loaf is then brushed with more garlic butter. A book focused on a mysterious criminal who is entirely fixated on the ingredient was the perfect match for a butter-centric bread. Although, given Kajimana’s strong preference for European butter of the highest quality, I doubt she’d approve of the Western Family store brand butter I used in this recipe.

Butter in Three Words

Suspenseful, unusual, unpredictable

What I liked about Butter

1. Memorable recipes & interplay of crime and food

   The descriptions of food in Butter are ridiculously descriptive, sometimes taking up several pages on a single dish. Warm rice with cold butter and soy sauce, four quarter pound cake, simple pasta with butter and salmon roe—the passages about these meals are cemented in my brain, in part because they are dictated to Rika by a convicted serial killer.

   This contrast between the dark details of grisly crimes and the delicious descriptions of food and cooking were unusual and a combination I’ve not seen represented like before. The two don’t seem to go together at all, but Yuzuki handles them so they become inextricably linked—the murders couldn’t have happened without the role food played. It’s a bit unpalatable at times, hard to stop reading, and an unconventional way of telling a morbid story.

   What didn’t work for me about Butter

   At 464 pages, I think Butter was about a third too long. The beginning and the end had a lot of heightened suspense, but it lulled at times in the middle. The unusual plot and a need to see where this strange story was going to go kept me reading, however. I also found myself wishing I was fluent in Japanese and could read the original version, as I got the sense a lot of the language and culture-specific meanings may have been tough to directly translate.

Share

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Patterns in Repeat by Laura Marling

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Stromboli

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

Leave a comment

Do you ever hit a roll with reading a long string of books you love? I’ve been in one lately, and it’s glorious. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, The Hunter by Tana French, The Wedding People by Alison Espach, and the subject of this week’s newsletter, A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. This is especially nice after I had a reading slump in the summer. I kept starting critically acclaimed books, couldn’t get into them, and then felt like I was missing some intellectual streak everyone else who loved these books had. This was most acutely felt while trying to read The Idiot by Elif Batuman, a book that had me staring up at the ceiling and wondering, am I the idiot? Thankfully, my reading experiences the last few months have been much more pleasant.

I was late to the Shilpi Somaya Gowda party. Earlier this year, I read her book The Secret Daughter, which was published in 2010. You can check out a Good Book/Good Bread issue on it, plus a recipe for spiced sourdough here. She’s a beautiful writer, and I was thrilled to see her newest book, A Great Country, getting lots of attention.

Read below for my full take on A Great Country and to learn why I baked this bread to match it.

Good Book: A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

In a Nutshell

When we meet the Shah family, they have just moved to the fictional gated community of Pacific Hills, California. Parents Priya and Ashok immigrated to the US from India two decades earlier. Through flashbacks, we learn about the sacrifices and hard work that led Priya, Ashok, and their three children to become firmly entrenched in the upper middle-class. Their kids have vastly different experiences in their new neighbourhood compared to the one they grew up in. The eldest resents the affluence of the kids at her fancy new school, while the middle sister fits in immediately. The youngest, twelve-year-old Ajay, is quiet and withdrawn, fixated on robotics and building a drone. The family’s tensions and problems are all thrown into sharp focus when Ajay is arrested one night while flying his drone near an airport. A misunderstanding with police snowballs into a major problem. The incident divides and inflames the community, one the Shahs are trying hard to fit into. A Great Country explores belonging, generational conflict, and what ambition and success can ultimately cost.

A Great Country in Three Words

Refreshing, emotional, engaging

What I liked about A Great Country

1. Characters don’t act how you want them to

   Many times while reading A Great Country, I found myself willing a character to act differently. Their choices were sometimes hard to read about. This was a great illustration of how people can act in unexpected and confusing ways when faced with stressful circumstances. What might appear to an outsider as the obvious solution doesn’t always feel so obvious to those at the centre.
   

2. Covers so many social issues

   Somaya Gowda gracefully wove together a range of social issues in this story, including police violence, racism, privilege, and assimilation. The fact that this book could touch on so many of these topics while developing such a cohesive narrative is a testament to her skill.

3. Shows how people handle things they can’t control

   One of the most interesting aspects of this book was how Somaya Gowda’s characters react in such varied ways to tumult. Once the misunderstanding with Ajay is set in motion, the fallout becomes unmanageable for the family, with each new development making them feel more helpless. Yet each family member navigated this differently, with anger, action, defiance, or silence.

Good Bread: Nutella banana bread with browned butter

Why this bread for this book?

When the Shahs move into their new neighbourhood of Pacific Hills, it represents a major step towards realizing their American dreams. The community is gated, full of lavish swimming pools, and ocean views. Living in Pacific Hills means so much to the Shah family, and its outsized importance in the story made me think of a bread I could picture cooling on a countertop in one of those sleek, suburban American homes. Banana bread fit the bill. According to King Arthur Flour, banana bread is the most searched for bread recipe online in the US. When I found a recipe on The New York Times cooking (linked here) that featured browned butter and Nutella, I had to make it. And full disclosure: I also felt burnt out and unmotivated this week, and an easy banana bread may have been all I was capable of baking.

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: The Paranormal Ranger by Stanley Milford Jr

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Mahashmashana by Father John Misty,

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Sourdough discard garlic pull-apart bread

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

ps. if you’re looking for some other newsletters to enjoy, below are a few of my faves:

Shangrilogs

What To Read If

Betwixt

Share

Last issue, I included Miranda July’s All Fours in the “What I’m looking forward to” section of the newsletter, where I also list new music I’m excited about and bread recipes I want to dig my hands into. The next day I received a message from a friend, saying she couldn’t wait to see what bread I would pair with All Fours. It made me laugh, because the book dives into expansive themes like aging, death, desire, betrayal, and does so with a few explicit and wild sex scenes. I wasn’t sure how I could connect a humble loaf of bread to it. But then I spent all week thinking about how the book made me feel, and what kind of bread that feeling could translate to.

Read below for my recap of All Fours, and to learn why I baked the bread I did.

Good Book: All Fours by Miranda July (2024)

In a Nutshell

The unnamed protagonist of All Fours is a semi-famous artist who decides to embark on a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York City. Then, she will spend a few weeks by herself in the city working on creative projects. It’s a big deal for her to leave her husband and child behind, and she’s never been on a long drive like this by herself. About 30 minutes after leaving her front door, she gets off the freeway to get gas, and encounters a younger man, Davey, their eyes locking through the glass as he cleans her windshield. Instead of continuing on her journey, she checks into a roadside motel and has Davey’s interior designer wife redecorate her rented room. She spends three weeks there, and her perception of her life becomes entirely unmoored as she has an intense emotional affair with Davey. All the while, she communicates with her husband as if she is on the planned trip. When she returns to Los Angeles, she has to decide if anything about her life still makes sense. All Fours is a hilarious, bizarre, and sometimes stressful-to-read story about a woman reinventing herself in the unlikeliest of places.

All Fours in Three Words

Funny, absurd, honest

Three Things I liked about All Fours

1. Sharp turn from a typical journey narrative

   All Fours lulls you into believing you’ll be following a cross-country adventure. Our protagonist is nervous, knowing driving to New York City will be challenging both as it is something she hasn’t done before, and because it will be the longest she has been away from her eight-year-old child. There are preparations, maps, routes, and towns written down that will be safe and interesting for her to stop in. She makes plans with friends in New York City, envisioning luxurious days spent immersing herself in the east coast art scene. Stopping off the freeway on the outskirts of Los Angeles is such a blunt and unsatisfying start to the book that it made me pay attention, knowing this book wasn’t going to follow a conventional structure.

2. Keeps ramping up

   Once our narrator starts to upend her life, each decision she makes takes the hilarity and bizarreness of this book to a new level. We watch her make decision after decision that continue to push both her boundaries and those of the people around her. It reminded me of the feeling I had watching the recent movie The Substance. While All Fours isn’t body horror or gory like the movie, both gave me a similar feeling of “oh my god I can’t believe this went there.”

3. Contrast between self-obsession and collective wisdom

   I typically find books that have a tremendous amount of introspection from the narrator hard to take. At a certain point, I can’t handle endless reflection and self-exploration. I just need something real to happen. The protagonist in All Fours was a fascinating character because she certainly is consumed with thinking about herself and her life for so much of the story. At the same time, when she is trying to work through her beliefs about her life and what it means, she reaches out to her community of other women for their insights, experiences, and guidance. I found that to be such an interesting combination and made me like her more.

Notable Quote

“For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces- each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned.”

Good Bread: California Sourdough

Why this bread for this book?

Second question: what is California sourdough? Well, I made it up. Reading All Fours, California and its climate seemed so omnipresent, especially held in contrast to New York City, the destination the main character never makes it to. When I imagined her three weeks spent on the outskirts of Los Angeles, I pictured her under the bright midday sun and an open sky. And as dark as some of her actions during that time were, they illuminated a lot of truths her and her husband were denying about their marriage. I thought that idea of lightness and sun would be a good fit for a bread for All Fours, and so folded in turmeric to give the crumb a golden hue. Tart sun-dried tomatoes seemed like the perfect California ingredient to round out the recipe.

Recipe

I used my go-to sourdough recipe, which is from The Kitchn, linked here. After the third fold, I added a quarter-cup of turmeric, and one-and-a-half cups of julienned sun-dried tomatoes. I did an overnight proof in the fridge, and the resulting loaves were extra tangy from the longer fermentation time. Next time I might add some lemon zest or rosemary.

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: New album from The National

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Laffa flatbread from Benny Blanco’s Open Wide cookbook

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

ps. if you’re looking for some other newsletters to enjoy, below are a few of my faves:

Shangrilogs

What To Read If

Betwixt

Share

Good Book: Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll (2023)

In a Nutshell

Bright Young Women is about the victims and survivors targeted by Ted Bundy at their sorority house one harrowing night in 1978. Our protagonist, Pamela Schumacher, is the high achieving president of her sorority at Florida State University. Pamela is organized, studious, and will be on her way to law school in a few months. On a humid night, many of her friends head out to a party, but Pamela stays home to study. She wakes at 3 am to a strange noise, and encounters a man fleeing the house. Pamela catches a brief glimpse of his panicked face. Within minutes, Pamela discovers that the intruder had just murdered two of her sorority sisters, and brutally injured two others. In the days after, Pamela tries to unravel the mystery of what happened that night. This book turns on its head the popular narrative popular in the press that Ted Bundy was brilliant and charismatic, instead focusing on the promising and intelligent young women whose lives he upended. The title is a play on the words of the Florida judge who called Ted Bundy “a bright young man”.

Bright Young Women in Three Words

Honest, suspenseful, difficult

What I liked about Bright Young Women

1. Avoids being sensational

   Knoll has a very pragmatic way of writing about the horrific details of the murders. I found she was skillful in developing honest and realistic narration that never veered into sensationalism. Given the true nature of the content, it felt like she handled it in a very respectful way.

2. Secondary story

   While Pamela and her sorority sisters are the focal point of the book, Knoll introduces a second storyline through the character of Tina, whose close friend Ruth went missing in Seattle several years prior. Tina is convinced the same man killed Ruth who terrorized the sorority house, and travels to Florida in the days afterwards to make contact with Pamela. The two work together to dig into the ineptitude of the justice system that contributed to the murders, and this secondary story adds a sense of urgency.

3. Doesn’t name the killer

   Knoll never names Bundy. Instead, she refers to him as The Defendant throughout, de-centering him from the story. She then focuses on the inner lives of the women affected by his crimes, developing them in a much more fullsome way than is typical of books about murder.

Notable Quote

“ But it made for a more salable story if he was portrayed as someone who did not have to kill to get his kicks, who had prospects in his romantic life and his career. […] The Defendant peered back at me with black vacant eyes. They are scary eyes, don’t get me wrong, but what frightens me, what infuriates me, is that there isn’t anything exceptionally clever going on behind them. A series of national ineptitudes and a parsimonious attitude toward crimes against women created a kind of secret tunnel through which a college dropout with severe emotional disturbances moved with impunity for the better part of the seventies. ”

Good Bread: Chocolate Sourdough

Why this bread for this book?

I knew I wanted to bake something dark for such a dark topic, and the cocoa powder turning this loaf a rich dark brown was perfect. It’s also unusual to see such a dark sourdough loaf, and it made me think of a change of perspective, like how Knoll presents this story.

Recipe

I used my go-to sourdough recipe, which is from The Kitchn, linked here. After the third fold, I added a half cup of cocoa powder, and a half cup of crushed baking chocolate. It was tough to gauge how long to bake this loaf for. I generally eye-ball the colour of the crust and pull it out when it has reached a malty dark brown colour. The already dark dough made this difficult, and I think I underbaked it. But, the soft crumb worked well given the desert-like quality of the chocolate chunks and cocoa powder. I ate it warm with a pat of butter and *chef’s kiss*.

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: All Fours by Miranda July

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Broken Circle Breakdown soundtrack

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: green tomato focaccia

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

ps. if you’re looking for some other newsletters to enjoy, below are a few of my faves:

Shangrilogs

What To Read If

Betwixt

Share

Once a month I also produce a “Shorts” edition of the newsletter, which goes out in between regular newsletters. Shorts feature a little description and photo of a delicious bread someone else baked (i.e. something I ate at a bakery or restaurant, or a friend’s place) plus a link to an excellent online piece I enjoyed—either something new or an older article that had an impact on me. Think of this a crumb-sized version of the Good Book/Good Bread newsletter. Enjoy!

Good Bread Someone Else Made

This is a small everything ciabatta bun from the excellent La Baguette in Revelstoke. Our town is very small (8,000 people), yet punches well above its weight in terms of awesome bakeries. La Baguette makes excellent pizzas, chewy bagels, and endless loaves of tangy sourdough. I noticed a few day-old ciabatta loaves and snapped them up, and was not sorry. They had a super soft crumb and were topped with dried onions and seeds. It also made me realize I’ve never made ciabatta before, so it’s going on the to bake list.

Good Short Read

On board the Creed cruise: the unfathomable return of the ‘worst band of the 90s’ by Luke Winkie in The Guardian. Link here.

This cruise sounds like my worst nightmare. Thankfully, Guardian writer Winkie went on it instead of me, and his piece about cruising the high seas with Creed is hilarious.

Leave a comment

Good Book/Good Bread Greatest Hits

In case you’re new here or missed them, below are my five most popular newsletters from the last year.

1. The Secret Daughter and Spiced Sourdough here

2. Lookout and Smoked Paprika Bread here

3. Demon Copperhead and Sourdough Muffins here

4. The Great Alone and English Muffins here

5. The Outsider and Strawberry Chocolate Chunk “bread” here

Thanks for reading! If you like Good Book/Good Bread, share it with a friend! If you hate it, please share it with an enemy.

Share

I’m always torn when people ask me whether I prefer fiction or non-fiction. There’s something about amazing non-fiction where my mind is blown by stories that are so bizarre or interesting you couldn’t make them up. That’s why I was drawn to studying journalism—uncovering the fascinating details of real life. But its the characters in fiction that seem to occupy a permanent place in my brain. I just read A Little Life and Jude St. Francis is a character I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Lydia from American Dirt, June from Yellowface, Elsa from The Four Winds, Demon from Demon Copperhead—they are all cemented in my memory. These days I’m reading more fiction, but when I heard Cory Richards talking about his new book The Color of Everything on a podcast, I was intrigued by the combination of adventure storytelling, mental health, and memoir. I got my hands on it and tore through it in five days, finishing it with my headlamp on, sandwiched between my two sleeping friends in our tent on a west coast bike trip.

Good Book: The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within by Cory Richards

In a Nutshell

The Color of Everything is Cory Richards’ memoir of his life spent climbing and working as a National Geographic photographer, his turbulent teenage years when he was diagnosed as bipolar, and decades spent struggling with mental health. Richards grew up in Utah with loving and attentive parents, but also experienced violence and grief in his formative years. His teenage years were largely spent in mental health treatment facilities, which he sometimes ran away from. After dropping out of high school, he gets into climbing and begins a journey that eventually leads to him to countless alpine accolades, including becoming the only American to summit an 8,000 metre peak in winter. Richards develops an impressive photography career chronicling his climbs, and everything seems to be going beautifully. His accomplishments and adventurous life are good coping strategies until he almost dies in a catastrophic avalanche. In the ensuing years, his trauma rises to the surface and he loses his career and many friends, and has to make the difficult decision to confront his past.

The Color of Everything in Three Words

Honest, gripping, riveting

Structure

The Color of Everything is told in first person, in semi-chronological order.

What I liked about The Color of Everything

1. Brave inclusion of many personal issues

   My biggest impression of this book was how brave it was that Richards included what he did. Not only he is honest about how his mental illness presented in the various realms of his life, he is honest about his destructive behaviours. Richards shares his infidelity, sex addiction, drinking, suicidal thoughts, violent history with his brother, and how he was investigated for inappropriate conduct at National Geographic. I imagine at least some of these chapters were terrifying to put out into the world. But as a reader, I found the candor and straightforwardness allowed me to really trust his narration.

2. Dismantling of his identity

   The most interesting part of this book for me is when Richards decides to stop being a climber. This happens in 2021 when he is on an expedition to climb an unclimbed route along with several teammates in Nepal, including filmmakers who have spent thousands of dollars and hours working on a project about Richards. At base camp, he begins to have what doctors will later tell him is a mixed bipolar episode. After not sleeping for multiple days and hallucinating, he quits the expedition, and after, climbing altogether. (You can read a New York Times piece about this expedition here.)

   
   At this point, Richards has built an amazing career, defined himself, and outrun his demons on risky climbing expeditions, but these strategies are no longer working. It was interesting to see how he approached examining who he was and what gave him purpose, and seeing how he left something behind that had given him so much validation.

3. Narrative balance

   Richards writes a lot of scenes in the present tense, and many have a thriller-like quality to them. I found the book to be a really excellent combination of tense adventure scenes and more quiet introspection.

Notable Quote

“That my life can look so perfect from the exterior and feel so chaotic within seeds a deep sense of guilt, as though by living at all, I’m doing something wrong.”

Good Bread: Rye Sourdough

An underlying current in The Color of Everything is an internal darkness Richards carries with him throughout his life. I thought a bread made with rye flour, dark and richly flavoured, would be a good match for the darkness running through this book. I wanted to make it with freshly milled flour. Fresh milled, whole grain flour contains the entire wheat berry: wheat, germ, and bran. It has nothing additional added, and I thought these qualities fit well with such a raw and honest book.

Recipe

I used the sourdough 90 rye recipe from The Perfect Loaf, here.

Looking forward:

Book I’m looking forward to reading: A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko

Music I’m looking forward to listening to: Sun Glories by Chuck Johnson

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Cinnamon raisin sourdough

Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.

ps. if you’re looking for some other newsletters to enjoy, below are a few of my faves:

Shangrilogs

What To Read If

Betwixt

Auraist

Share