Rach's Reading Recs

Fiction, Memoirs and Essays...Oh My!

Back by popular (I think/hope?!) demand is Rach’s Reading Recs. Let’s call it the 2025 new year kick off edition. Below are five books I recently read and loved. Correction: I read four of them. I listened to one. In each recommendation I include info on how I found out about the book, very briefly what the book is about (no spoiler alerts, I promise) and why I loved each book so much. Comments/suggestions/questions are always welcome. Happy reading (and listening!)

Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger

This book came highly recommended to me by an old college friend who I hadn’t seen in years. We recently re-connected over dinner, and Susan (my college friend, not Susan Rieger, the author) raved about this book which was published this past fall. College friend Susan and I took a lot of classes together back in our undergrad days reading and liking the same books. It turns out we still like the same books.

Like Mother, Like Mother is about three generations of women in one family — Zelda, Lila and Grace. Each woman is strong, smart and ambitious. Each woman also struggles to find her place in the world and in her family as she examines decisions made. Whether knowingly or not, these decisions impact the way each woman lives her life as a daughter, friend, partner and mother. I don’t mean to be cryptic. You kind of have to read the book, and it will all make sense. The book spans Detroit in the 1960s up to present day in Washington D.C, New York and California.

I brought this book along with me, my family (and my cold sore) on our winter break vacation. I couldn’t wait to get back to it every day at the beach. My family got sick of me reading lines from the book out loud to them, but I couldn't help myself. There were so many good ones. And then when I read the acknowledgments at the end, I learned that author Susan Rieger sprinkled in actual quotes in the storyline from some of my most favorite writers including e. e. cummings and Frank McCourt. I am always drawn to good mother/daughter stories. The ones that Rieger writes about are fascinating, making me think in new ways about a topic I have thought about, a lot. Bonus points for including info on Lila’s time spent at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a place I hold dear to my heart.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Loigman

My friend

Julie Gerstenblatt

recommended Augusta (can I call her Augusta?) to me, and I couldn’t wait to dive into Lynda Loigman’s newest book. I am friendly with Lynda, and I was a big fan of her last book, The Matchmaker’s Gift, which I also highly recommend. In fact, Lynda came on my baking show to talk about that book in 2022, and we made her grandmother Tillie’s cake together, which BTW is always a crowd pleaser.

The Love Elixir Of Alexa Stern is a dual time line book alternating between 1920s Brooklyn, NY and 1980s Boca Raton, FL. We meet (and I gotta say kind of fall in love with) Augusta as a teenager in Brooklyn. Augusta’s mother has died, and she helps out her father in his pharmacy as she develops a friendship with the pharmacy’s delivery boy, Irving Rivkin. In 1980s Boca, Augusta re-connects with grown older man Irving as well as others from her past. The Brooklyn and Boca characters are super memorable and endearing as are the stories of youth, aging, losing and finding love plus a little magical realism.

I’ve heard Lynda talk about the inspiration for Augusta, which was her husband’s great-grandmother who became a pharmacist in the 1920s as well as her visits to her widowed father in his assistant living community in Boca. I love a good story about a woman breaking barriers, i.e. becoming a pharmacist when mostly men were. And I couldn’t get enough of the later in life Boca social scene which played out in Augusta’s 1980s world. It brought me back to my grandmother’s Boca in ways I hadn’t thought of in a long time.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

I have all of Ina’s (can I call her Ina?) cookbooks thanks to my Aunt Jo, who has a framed note from Ina up in her kitchen. It was actually my Aunt

Linda Levy

who texted me one day asking if I had read Be Ready When the Luck Happens (great title!!) as she wanted to gift it to me to listen to on Audible. Aunt Linda was too late. My friend

Nina Badzin

had already told me that I must listen to this book in Ina’s voice, and so I downloaded the audio book and did just that. Many evenings as I listened to Ina’s memoir, I was making dinner from Ina’s cookbooks. Lately I’ve been cooking from Modern Comfort Food as it’s cold out and we all need a little comfort food.

In her eagerly awaited memoir, Ina writes about her remarkable journey from her difficult childhood to meeting Jeffrey (Jeffrey!!!!), her early career as a budget analyst where she wrote papers on nuclear energy in the Ford White House to becoming a specialty food store owner after seeing an ad in The New York Times for the then unknown Barefoot Contessa store in the Hamptons, to becoming a prolific cookbook author, cooking television star, and well my (and my Aunt Jo’s) forever cooking and entertaining hero.

I knew some of Ina’s story, but the book revealed way more. I took away many excellent big and little life lessons. What impresses me most about Ina is her ability to say no and walk away from opportunities or new ventures when she had a feeling they weren’t for her. That is not easy to do. Ina is also a feminist in every sense of the word. Her choices early on with Jeffrey were surprising to me (I thought they were always perfect together) and also quite admirable. I miss hearing Ina’s voice in my AirPods as I cook, but I won’t soon forget what she said to me, at least that is how personally I felt it.

It. Goes. So. Fast. The Year of No Do-Overs by Mary Louise Kelly

I heard NPR’s All Things Considered co-host host Mary Louise Kelly (I love a woman with two first names) interviewed about her book It. Goes. So. Fast. (great use of punctuation) on Kelly Corrigan’s podcast last year, and I added it to my TBR list. It took me a while to get to this book as I knew it was in part about sending your kid off to college. I was then on the verge of becoming an empty nester/child launcher, and I was a little nervous to go there even if it was just through reading someone else’s thoughts on the matter. I am so glad I did.

In this beautiful, funny and introspective book, Mary Louise (can I call her Mary Louise? M.L?) writes about her eldest son’s last year at home before he headed off to college as well as her very purposeful decision to be there for the last of moments. It was her year of “no do overs.” At the same time, she is struggling with losing her father. It was fascinating to read about the stories that Mary Louise covered for NPR while at the same time living the life of a mom in D.C. How do you drive carpool, do the story on Ukraine and interview the Secretary of State?

I related to this book on many levels, but not because I have written about Ukraine or interviewed any Secretary of State. My dear dad died the summer before my daughter’s senior year in high school, and I was feeling all of those feels of soon having a quiet house with the kids being off at school on top of missing my dad who I spent so much time with. I have read about these themes before but Mary Louise is honest in a way I have never quite seen before. Thank you M.L. (there I said it) for writing this. I think about what you wrote a lot, like recently when my kids were home for winter break and I said to myself “no do overs.”

I’ve Tried Being Nice by Ann Leary

I still think about Ann Leary’s 2013 Modern Love Essay Rallying to Keep the Game Alive about how playing tennis with her husband actor Denis Leary saved their marriage. The full version of this essay is in this excellent collection/new book. I saw posts about the book from Ann Leary on Instagram. We are Insta friends, and after I read this book, I felt like maybe we could be real life friends?

I’ve Tried Being Nice is a collection of essays which covers topic like tennis (see above), packing tips, having bats in your house (I know!), brushes with fame on the red carpet, plus alcoholism, saying goodbye to beloved houses and becoming an emergency medical technician. This theme of having tried to be nice and moving on resonates throughout the book in moments of levity and moments of deep introspection. Ann (I am calling her Ann what with our Insta friendship and all) sprinkles this concept throughout the collection quite beautifully.

Ann’s writing is funny, super clever and also completely serious in a way I aspire to be in my writing life, especially these days as I am working on a collection of essays of my own. I love how she weaves the practical with the etherial and the darkness with the lightness. Also, I don’t think I will ever stop thinking about that bat in that house.

CJP Boston Event

Boston friends: Come join me and my friends Amy Blumenfeld and Jennifer Weinstock on Wednesday January 29th at 7pm at what promises to be a wonderful event sponsored by CJP Women’s Philanthropy. Sign up right here.

A ticket to the event includes a signed copy of the new anthology ON BEING JEWISH NOW (Zibby Publishing) which Amy and I both contributed to along with 75 authors and advocates.

I got a new coat, the Aritzia Super Puff (see pic below) to wear in Boston in January. I think it will work. The nice young lady who helped me out at the store told me that the coat keeps you warm in up to thirty below temps.