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It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time: My Adventures In Life And Food (2009)

by Moira Hodgson(Favorite Author)

3.09 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0767912705 (ISBN13: 9780767912709)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Nan A. Talese

review 1: I liked it. It's not a "foodie" book and it's not a travel book and it's not really a memoir in the traditional sense. She just tells about her life and the traveling she's done and the food she's eaten.She's been to places that don't really exist anymore and I found that fascinating. She lived in Berlin after the war but before the Wall went up. She lived in Lebanon when it was a posh posting for the Foreign Service. I think it would be difficult to cook from any of her recipes - they call for ingredients that existed only in London in the 1940's. But they were fun to read.I liked it. It passed the time and it entertained me. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. And I'm not sorry I spent the time reading it.
review 2: It seemed like a good idea at the time. Moira ... moreHodgson has traveled the world, living for many years abroad, even as a child, as she was taken along with her family as her father, in the service of the British Foreign Service is stationed in Saigon or other exotic locales. She becomes a food journalist and meets and befriends many writers and artists.I enjoyed the early parts of the book, much more than the walk of fame that became the second half. I found her childhood recollections of life in Egypt and long ocean voyages interesting and fun. I found her descriptions of dinners with famous guests and her long laborious descriptions of all the names she knew rather dull.I also found that she skipped over bits which I would have loved to hear more about. Such as living with only one eye. I know from reading Sacks that people with only one working eye, or lacking some component of 'normal' sight do actually have a very different view of the world and I would have been very interested in hearing her perspective on that. She also glosses over the various deaths of her family members, most notably her mother who gets the briefest mention, one would think it barely affected her compared with her fathers death which shows so much emotion in her writing.It was a strange memoir to me. Moira spends so much of it talking about the famous people and less talking about her own family members, I hadn't really found a memoir such as this before and don't know if I'd be likely to read Hodgson again. less

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