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3 weeks ago | 
ruhlman.substack.com | Michael Ruhlman |Ann Hood
We’ve just arrived Islay, an island 12 miles north of Northern Ireland in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, lured by our favorite spirit, the smoky, peaty whiskies of this rugged land, population just over 3,200. There’s something enormously satisfying about going to the source of the food and drink you love. To a place like Islay. The uniquity of this place (new word for me, thank you Anu Garg) is not evident until you are actually standing in the mud, inhaling the peat smoke.
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1 month ago | 
ruhlman.substack.com | Michael Ruhlman |Ruth Reichl |Ann Hood
We’ve just returned from the beautiful colonial city of San Miguel de Allende, 170 miles NW of Mexico City. It was my first time and Ann’s first time at the writers’ conference. John Irving opened the conference, reading from his forthcoming novel, Queen Esther. And, happily, among the keynotes was , who gave a fabulous presentation combining her memoirs and her fiction. If there is a better ambassador for the importance of writing about food, I don’t know him or her.
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2 months ago | 
ruhlman.substack.com | Michael Ruhlman |Ann Hood
My wife , above, is hosting a Zoom gathering/launch party to discuss a new book of essays on a perennially rewatched mother-daughter, small-town, big-emotions TV show: LIfe’s Short, Talk Fast: 15 Writers On Why We Can’t Stop Watching Gilmore Girls. This Monday, November 11, at 7 pm eastern. It’s free! To register, see link below.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
people.com | Ann Hood
'Life's Short, Talk Fast' edited by Ann Hood and a portrait of the editor. Photo: Credit: Beowulf Sheehan; W. W. Norton & Company Inc In the summer of 1973, all I wanted to do was kiss boys. Cute boys, to be exact. Best of all: cute boys with sexy cars — Mustang convertibles, flirty MGs, souped-up Camaros. I was 16 years old and worked as a department store model at the Warwick Mall and that summer boys were everywhere.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
rimonthly.com | Casey Nilsson |Paul E. Kandarian |Ann Hood |Lauren Clem
Stories about our favorite secret beaches tucked away in in the coastal corners of Rhode Island. Rhode island is home to more than 400 miles of coastline, but believe it or not, not every mile comes with a cost. Luckily, many Ocean Staters have a favorite freebie secret beach, though not everyone wants to share the deets.
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Jun 28, 2024 | 
ruhlman.substack.com | Michael Ruhlman |Ann Hood
One of the greatest pleasures of traveling with a former flight attendant who never lost her travel bug—as a shark must swim to breathe, Ann must travel—is that you tend to find yourself in places you never knew you even wanted to go to. Georgia, for instance, on the Russian border; a little seaside town in Portugal, Nazaré, eating something you never knew existed (gooseneck barnacles); Spello, Italy.
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Jun 19, 2024 | 
valleybreeze.com | Alan Rosenberg |Ann Hood
Fiction gets both a local and an international flavor in these terrific audiobooks that tell of the lives of Asian Americans, Israelis in America, and Americans in Europe. “Lies and Weddings”By Kevin Kwan, read by Jing Lusi. Penguin Audio, 15 hours, $25. The author of “Crazy Rich Asians” is back with another high-concept novel of the foibles of the super-wealthy.
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May 22, 2024 | 
csmonitor.com | Monica Wood |Eve Chung |Colm Toibin |Ann Hood
“You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible,” wrote Anton Chekhov. His words could describe many of the characters in the books highlighted by Monitor reviewers this month. Among the novels are the story of a woman attempting a fresh start after her release from prison, and the saga of a World War I veteran seeking redemption from an act of betrayal during the war. Why We Wrote ThisLooking for a great new book to kick off the summer? We have 10 of them.
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May 17, 2024 | 
bookreporter.com | Ann Hood
In a trench dug in the French countryside during World War I, a young American solider named Nick Burns tries to deal with the horrors through art. During the anxious quiet moments in combat, he paints a picture on the walls of the trench. It’s a scene of home and the people he misses most, bisected with the image of the Charles River. When a shadow moves across his work, and a voice comments on his mural, his life changes even more dramatically.
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May 14, 2024 | 
publicseminar.org | Claire Potter |Ann Hood |Emma Minor |Adam Tooze
Picture this: it’s 1936, the depths of the Great Depression in New York City, and you are a bright, Jewish, first-generation American man. You are a teenager, maybe even as young as fifteen or sixteen, from the Lower East Side, Brownsville, Brooklyn, or the Bronx. You’re smart, you’ve finished high school, and what your parents want more than anything else is for you to get a college degree and be a professional, not a garment worker or shopkeeper like they are.
