Allegra Goodman’s new novel
July 25th, 2010 at 5:01 pm ET
According to today’s Times, Allegra Goodman has a new novel, The Cookbook Collector — which I’ve now ordered. (Disclosure: Allegra Goodman and I were in college together, and we know people in common, although I haven’t spoken to her in 20 years.)
I’ve enjoyed every published word of Goodman’s, from her stories in the New Yorker to the most recent Intuition — she is one on that short list of authors whose books I’ll order in hardcover the moment I hear about them. If I had to pick one novel to take to a desert island, it might well be Goodman’s Paradise Park, the raucously funny yet serious and thoughtful story of a young woman hungry for spiritual meaning. I liked that one so much I gave it as a gift to a dozen people that year. Aside from the stories themselves, I always learn about something new from Allegra’s books — about the Jewish communities in Hawaii and Brooklyn and the Catskills and Miami, for example. (This is something Goodman has in common with Philip Roth, an author you wouldn’t otherwise associate her with — I learned more about the glove industry in Newark, New Jersey from reading Roth than probably everyone who will ever read this blog post put together has ever known about it.) So go buy her new book right now!
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Rich Mintz blogs on online fundraising and social media, American history and culture, bicycling and urbanism, food, technology, and other topics. Professionally, he's an expert in fundraising, constituency development, and social media for nonprofits, cultural organizations, cause-related marketers, and corporations. He is based in New York, where he serves as Vice President, Strategy, for 
August 14th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
[...] Amen! During every American business boom cycle (and I’m old enough that I can say “every,” thank you very much), there are always entrepreneurs who are lionized in the press for just charging forward, trying not to stop to think, just indulging their animal business instincts or riding the wave or making the wave or what have you. This (let’s call him the “Nose for Success” Guy, or “Nose Guy” for short, and 95% of the time it is a guy) is just one of the American business types that we all recognize and are taught to admire. (One of these guys shows up as a character in Allegra Goodman’s new book The Cookbook Collector, which I just finished.) [...]