The Cookbook Collector

A Novel

By: Allegra Goodman

Narrated by: Ariadne Meyers

Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times best-selling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.

Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, 23-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much - as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: Love that stays.

©2010 Allegra Goodman (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"If any contemporary author deserves to wear the mantle of Jane Austen, it’s [Allegra] Goodman, whose subtle, astute social comedies perfectly capture the quirks of human nature. This dazzling novel...is Goodman’s most robust, fully realized and trenchantly meaningful work yet.” ( Publishers Weekly)

"Fans of Goodman's lovely, nuanced novels have a treat in store with this tale of two sisters." ( Entertainment Weekly)

"Goodman is remarkably successful in creating rich, engaging characters and a complex story of love and identity." ( Library Journal)

Wonderful , and Captivating

loved it.! very detailed. loved the narrator. wasn't what I thought but loved the book anyway

Great book!

This book is fantastic. Allegra Goodman does tell the story of the .com surge, 911; lots more. People living in either Boston or California will recognize the people such as Amanda Palmer who she’s morphed into a software writer/performance artist; they’ll recognize places and events, including restaurants, popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. Goodman remembers how we all first used our phones, how freely we moved about the country, how we compensated. It’s long and it’s ambitious, which usually means an exhausting novel to read, but stick with it, because it is fantastic.

Predictable

Every single character felt like a trope, predictable and with just enough character depth to thing “oh the author googled that.”

Despite that I did enjoy the story!

Loved this story!

This book has a cast of very contrasting characters with opposite stories and lives that eventually interweave and come together for a very satisfying read. I had a very hard time getting used to the narrator as she made the lead female characters sound like they were whiney thirteen year olds. Enjoyable from start to finish.

Enjoyed the story, the narrator - not as much

I enjoyed the story overall. It was a story of love and loss. It also included a fictionalized history of the dot com boom and crash, and it's a love letter to antique books. As a computer person and lover of antique and classic books myself, it kept my interest. The description of the books made me want to find an antique book store!

The narrator was ok. She did a pretty good job creating different voices for the characters, however her voice sounded somewhat young girlish, and it was distracting to me at some points.
It's always a little strange when a male narrator tries to create a female character and a female tries to create a male, but in this case, it was a bit more annoying because of her voice in general.

She wasn't as good as Martin Jarvis when he reads Dickens, but she wasn't terrible either.

I'd recommend this audiobook to anyone interested in a good love story

Slight & souless, although well witten

Is there anything you would change about this book?

While there are important themes touched upon here, there is almost nothing at stake for the characters, minimal interesting conflict (even between distinctly different sisters) and virtually no memorable insights.

Could you see The Cookbook Collector being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

It would play best in animation, a Saturday morning cartoon of "lost girls finds themselves."

Just MAHvelous!

I remember Allegra Goodman from "Intuition", which I thought was a darker, more deeply layered novel than "The Cookbook Collector". I thought Goodman's first novel had more mystery and more seriously conflicted characters, and the core group was science-based instead of the technology startup boom in 2000, not that the latter observation is enough in itself to blame or praise a novel. However, I found this novel overdone with "stuff" - overstuffed? - just way too filled up with things: technology, money, cars, rare books, clothes, food, "happiness", whatever that means, and of course all the brand names that go with all the stuff. The pairing of the "hot" old wealthy guy (loaded with brilliance, musical and culinary talent in addition to dollars) with the naive young girl with no visible means of support is just another 2010 version of an old, tired cliche. I also thought the old guy seemed a bit shallow - and of course he's toned and fit because of his daily runs - in spite of his diverse interests. The only thing that really saves the ending from terminal triteness is that no-one ends up pregnant to celebrate their new romance. But I could not give the book anything less than a five just because reading it felt like eating too much chocolate cake, despite the story line that deals sensitively with the pain and losses of 9/11. It's still really well-done. I just liked "Intuition" better.

The narrator has a quirk which takes some getting used to. I guess in an effort to add authenticity to dialogue, she pauses a bit, hesitates after reading the first word of a spoken sentence, as though the person is unsure of what he/she is saying, or is thinking out loud. It seems that too many of the characters speak this way, and after I noticed it, of course it bothered me even more. There is one character with severe anxiety and here perhaps the tic is appropriate, but for the most part the verbal patterns did not need to be there.

I really wanted to like this book.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I enjoyed the plot, although the climax of the novel can be seen from many miles away.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Ariadne Meyers?

The narration had a negative effect on my enjoyment of this book. To be specific, it was the voices for the male characters. The vocal placement was unnecessarily dropped and scratchy for one character, while Emily's friend with a degree from MIT sounded like a surfer dude.

Was The Cookbook Collector worth the listening time?

Sadly, not really. Parts are extremely engaging.

An engaging read

I have never taken time to review an Audible selection, but The Cookbook Collector really kept me listening and as the end approached it left me wanting more. Ms. Goodman interweaves multiple storylines with luminous writing. Well worth the expenditure of a credit and the investment of time to listen.

Love the book... nice written and read

Love the book.., although it was sometime predictable.., the characters and the story are well written.., a lot of romance and computers but it also reflects the dot com era that was lived by my generation