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Be Ready When the Luck Happens
Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir | Ina Garten
4 posts | 5 read | 3 to read
In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table. Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose. From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
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Christine
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I‘ve always liked Ina. I enjoyed watching a feminist perspective inform her personal and professional growth. But this is a light pick for me. I think I just wasn‘t the right reader for this book, at least not in this moment in time/history.
Further thoughts in spoiler comment below! Not spoilers per se, but I wouldn‘t want to mar anyone's experience of escaping into this one, as the food (and many other) aspects are delightful!

Christine It was a tad heavy on the business talk for me, but, much more than that, I was preoccupied by her immense social class and race privilege, which I saw operating in her life at every turn but rarely if ever acknowledged. 1d
peaKnit I would agree re: her social/race privilege, she seemed very blessed in some ways but what an empty childhood with parents who didn‘t seem to have kids because they wanted them. I do love Ina though, her voice is like a hug. I enjoyed the audio. 1d
TheBookHippie I was ….EH. Way too much privilege for me. I do love her cookbooks and I did feel bad about her childhood. 1d
Christine @peaKnit @TheBookHippie Yes, just awful how cold her parents were, and I admired her candor and vulnerability around that. 21h
40 likes4 comments
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cariashley
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I learned how to cook watching Ina and Giada on the Food Network years ago, and have always been a Barefoot Contessa fan. Her life is even more fascinating than I expected, and I loved reading about her relationship with Jeffrey, warts and all. I‘m a Hamptons girl myself and her warm and breezy aesthetic reflects all the best things about this area. Listening to this was a balm for the past week and all the horrendous news here in the US.

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Hooked_on_books
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I‘ve only watched bits of BC here and there but heard good things about this, so I decided to give it a go when it popped up at my library. I enjoyed spending some time with Ina and hearing her story. Only a small bit of this talks about her show and I liked that. She‘s very relatable, and I like her life philosophy enshrined in the title.

AmyG I love Ina. Her recipies are consistently good and doable. I look forward to reading this one. 3w
37 likes1 stack add1 comment
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peaKnit
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I‘ve harbored a crush on Ina for as long as I can remember. A crush in the sense that I wanted to be in her orbit, read her books, watch her shows, make her recipes and be as cool as her. What a wonderful story of hard work, stubbornness and perseverance, not to mention a thread of her love story with Jeffrey throughout. Well told in her own words and voice.

19 likes2 stack adds