We got such a sweet compliment this month in the comment section of the survey that we just had to gush. This book club member wrote: “It's such a pleasure to be a part of this group! Not only am I expanding my horizons in reading books from other countries, but the selections are so varied that I often read genres and books I would not have chosen for myself yet I end up enjoying immensely. Thank you!”
And to that, we reply: No, thank you! That really made our month. <happy sigh>
Before we get to the results of the vote, I wanted to share a new cookbook I recently devoured with recipes inspired by the private restaurants of Cuba.
“Cuba is experiencing a cultural and culinary renaissance. With a recent influx of investment and tourism flooding the country, paladares (private restaurants) are on the forefront of change. This is the first book to tell the story of Cuban cuisine through the lens of the restaurant owners, chefs, farmers, and patrons, while examining the implications of food shortages, tourism, and international influences of a country experiencing a paradigm shift in cooking.”
Packed with 150 authentic & modern recipes adapted for the home cook along with stories & vivid-color photographs, it brought Cuban cooking to life for me.
SO WHAT BOOK ARE WE READING NEXT?
“What 1984 did for surveillance, and Fahrenheit 451 did for censorship, A Planet for Rent does for tourism. It’s a wildly imaginative book and one that, while set in the future, has plenty of relevance to the present.”
“A Planet for Rent criticizes Cuban reality in thinly veiled terms. Cuban defectors leave the country not on rafts but on 'unlawful space launches'; prostitutes are 'social workers'; foreigners are 'xenoids'; and Cuba is a ‘planet whose inhabitants have stopped believing in the future.’ The book is particularly critical of the government-run tourism industry of the ’90s, which welcomed and protected tourists—often at the expense of Cubans—and whose legacy can still be felt today.” - The NY Times
“The most successful and controversial Cuban science fiction writer of all time, Yoss is known for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism. In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss pays homage to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and 334 by Thomas M. Disch. A critique of Cuba in the 90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, A Planet for Rent marks the debut in English of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice.”
”Some of the best sci-fi written anywhere since the 1970s.… A Planet for Rent, like its author, a bandana-wearing, muscly roquero, is completely unique: riotously funny, scathing, perceptive, and yet also heart-wrenchingly compassionate.… Instantly appealing.” - The Nation
(Suggested by Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder)
Happy reading!