Summary: Meandering essays about food, life, friend and family.
Shauna Niequist loves food, life, her friends and her family. This book exudes pleasure at the realness of life. That is not to say life is always easy, but that life has pleasures and we should enjoy them. Bittersweet, her previous book is more about why we need the hard parts of life to enjoy the sweet parts of life.
Bread and Wine, is more about making sure we take time to enjoy the sweet parts of life.
Niequist is an essayist. Her essays tell her and her family’s story, but this not a memoir. She is exploring ideas of how our lives are affected by food, the time around the table, the relationships that are so often made around food.
There is the obviously image of the Eucharist in the title of the book, but that is my biggest disappointment. That image was only explored very briefly at the end of the book. It feels like so much more could have been done with it.
One interesting feature of the book is that Niequist has a recipe at the end of most chapters. Usually one that was either directly referenced or relates to something in the chapter. I haven’t actually tried any of the recipes yet, but the way she writes about the food show bother great passion for food and a lot of her own personality.
This is not a Michael Pollan style book about how we need to eat better. Rather it is a book about how we need to live better, love better and how food is such a central point to the way that we live and love.
Bread & Wine Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook
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Note, I did receive a PDF copy of the book from the publisher for purposes of review. But I forgot about it and purchased the kindle version when it was on sale.
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