Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food and Love from an American Midwest Family

I'm not a huge fan of memoir (most people are far less interesting than they think they are), but this one was recommended and it had recipes so... My life and Ms. Flinn's life are very different, but so many of the foods she talked about were part of my childhood that it was like reading my own food history. Food can evoke memories like almost nothing else and each dish Ms. Flinn mentioned seemed to stir up another vivid piece of my childhood until this almost became like a dual memoir--hers and mine. 'Burnt Toast...' made me cry and it made me nostalgic and, most of all, it made me want to cook the foods of my youth, just to taste them again.

Having read " The sharper the knife, the less you cry" (and enjoying it a lot!) I was looking forward to reading the life story of Ms. Flinn, that led up to her trip to Paris. This book was highly enjoyable. It was good to hear about a "normal" person, who life wasn't either "plain horrible" or "just picture perfect!" I hope Ms. Flinn is planning on writing many more books - I look forward to reading them!

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, the third memoir by Kathleen Flinn, is a sweet story of family, of the immigrant experience, and of the ability of our senses to trigger a memory. The first half of the book is anecdotal family history while the second half the more personal story of her own life. The recipes are part of the book but not central to it.

Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2015/09/burnt-toast-makes-you-sing-good.html

Reviewed for GoodReads First Reads program

Just read the sample of this family story, not interested enough to read the rest.

I loved this book and immediately headed back to the library to get her other two books.