Author Archives: Christa Porter

High fantasy, first loves, and secondhand books.

Bookshops & Bonedust is a prequel to Legends & Lattes, which was a previous NLC Friday Reads.

Both of these cozy, fantasy novels follow Viv, an orc barbarian, as she has not your typical barbarian adventures. Although, her barbarian skills do play a part, just in more unusual ways.

In this novel, Viv’s leg has been injured too badly to continue questing with her group of mercenaries, so she must take a break to heal up and recuperate. She is left behind in Murk, a quaint ocean town. At first, she is understandably angry and frustrated about her situation.

But, Murk isn’t as sleepy and boring as she assumes. Viv befriends the owner of a bookshop, helping her revive her struggling business, and falls in love with reading in the process. Perhaps this plants the seeds of what happens when Viv decides to retire from adventuring in Legends & Lattes?

But it’s not just a relaxing break for Viv. There’s the mystery of a necromancer, skeletons popping up everywhere, and a summer romance. Readers of Legends & Lattes will enjoy learning more about the history of Viv’s sword and her future friendships.

If you enjoyed Legends & Lattes, as I did, you will definitely feel the same about Bookshops & Bonedust. I hope the author has more stories about Viv to tell. I’d love to learn more about her past adventuring days or her life after settling down.

In February 2020, Max Miller posted his first Tasting History video to YouTube. A week later COVID-19 hit, and he was furloughed from his job. As the world entered the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, people went online, looking for entertainment, distraction, and connections. Tasting History was there. And the rest is, well, history.

Now, his viral video series has become a cookbook, Tasting History, Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes. Full disclosure: I haven’t cooked anything from this cookbook yet, I’ve just been enjoying reading through it so far.

We have been watching the Tasting History videos almost from the beginning, so when Max announced there would be a cookbook coming out, I knew we had to have it. And I was not disappointed.

The videos are a combination of recipe demo and history lesson, and that format has been carried over into the cookbook.

The book is arranged by geographic area: The Ancient World, The British Isles, Continental Europe, The Near & Far East, and The New World. Within each section the recipes are from oldest to newest. The oldest being Stew of Lamb, from Babylon, c. 1740 BC. The most recent recipes are both from 1914: Simnel Cake from England and Pecan Pie from Texas. Each recipe includes a few paragraphs about the history of the dish and the area of the world it originates from.

Since many old recipes do not provide precise measurements, or ingredients that we may recognize or have access to today, Max has re-created them as best as he can, based on his own cooking and historical knowledge. If you watch his videos, he does taste each dish, and he doesn’t always like them. But, that’s part of the fun and experimentation.

I think Tasting History, both the cookbook and the video series, is perfect for foodies, history buffs, or foodie history buffs. Max is still making videos, and I look forward to watching the new ones every week. A fun tip: he is a big Pokemon fan, and there is always a figure or plush in the background of each video that relates to the dish he is making. See if you can find them all!