A passing thought in early pages was that it was the printer who messed up by publishing this book. That's a joke, but it does start very slowly. The first really interesting thing doesn't happen until the end of Chapter 9! Despite an initial confusion, Kaufman's book is woven cleverly on many levels, and fully comes to life through Gloria and Henry's remarkable friendship in Oxford.

Standage convincingly transforms colorful side notes from old world history texts -- spice trade routes, the domestication of grain -- into the dominant, driving forces that shaped human civilization. Lifelong learners will enjoy perusing these well-researched pages. He illuminates credible premises in entertaining, informative ways -- such as how Britain's food supply logistics helped the American Revolution to succeed, or how the existence of the potato made Britain's Industrial Revolution possible. Even well-honed trivia buffs will find new conversational highlights and factual gemstones here. This book could easily serve as a college textbook or reference resource.

Moira Hodgson is undoubtedly an interesting, widely traveled, and well educated woman, but her book of “adventures in life and food,” It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time, consistently failed to engage me. From its earliest pages, this personal memoir reads more like a private diary for her own later reference than a set of stories intended to entertain, inform, and amuse an outside audience. It’s a dense dump of sequential memories, and deciphering her shifts and transitions of time and place are not often easy for the reader. The addition of section and chapter headings: “Egypt,” “Stockholm,” Vietnam,” “New York,” “Losing my parents” etc. – and courteously including more foreign phrase translations and inside joke explanations – would have greatly improved its clarity and flow.

I loved the IDEA of this book, and hoped it would reach the same heights of warmth, impact, and believability as Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring or Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. Unfortunately, Charbonnier’s stiff, third-person prose kept me at too great a distance from the mind and heart of the enigmatic Nannerl. I think Charbonnier could have better connected with her readers by including a map of the story’s geography, for instance, and a foreword citing extant letters, family histories, palace documents, etc. as anchors upon which her tale was spun. For me, confidence that this narrative was soundly researched and factually based would have added a credible dimension to this sometimes disjointed and imperfect book. As an early reader, I couldn’t help wishing that one final pass by a brilliant editor could have tightened this novel for a more successful and sympathetic public run, and made it more fully satisfying. While Mozart’s Sister was very good in places, as outlined in other reviews -- ultimately for me, this telling fell short.