“ ‘Eat My Memoir’ is simply delicious. It’s like being invited to a family dinner where old stories are told and secrets revealed, amid a clatter of cutlery and plenty of laughter. And, oh yes, the food. I defy you to resist making Ann’s Devils on Horseback after reading about the Coogans’ cocktail parties and Mrs. Coogan’s ‘hollow leg.’ Enjoy, eat up, and get ready to giggle.”
In early August, before moving to New York, before my brother left for freshman orientation at Dartmouth, we held a special farewell family dinner for him. We had all seen Tony Richardson’s movie of Tom Jones—yes, even the 12-year-old me, […]
And then, glory hallelujah, my father got a job offer in New York City, a better management position with a company called Joy Manufacturing, whose name would be the butt of jokes for years to come. The timing was perfect, […]
I have lost so many photos over the years. Too many moves, too little interest in preserving the past. The boxes upon boxes of family snaps, the little albums of black-and-white photos, held together with a metal clip. I see […]
The house in Allentown is another I return to often in dreams and memories. Not all of it, because I’ve forgotten the look of the main rooms, but downstairs was a cherry-paneled den as an extension off the back of […]
My dad was a company man, which meant he expected to be with the same firm, Ingersoll Rand, from recruitment through retirement. That is not how it turned out, but it was the way it looked in 1960. So […]
Before we leave Mountain Lakes—as we must, because my father was transferred to Allentown, PA, around 1960—I offer up some random snapshots of that blissful little town. Written snapshots because that seems to be how memory works for me, little […]
“Ann Landi’s memoirs are as sprightly and witty as she is in person—and she’s a great cook, too.”
—Katherine C. Hill-Miller, author of “From the Lighthouse to Monk’s House: A Guide to Virginia Woolf’s Literary Landscapes,” and “My Hideous Progeny”: Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and the Father-Daughter Relationship”