I'm about to kick off for a vacation and unplug my computer, which means when I'm not swimming or cooking, I will be reading books. I like a trashy beach novel as much as anyone, but I most often reach for books about food and cooking when I travel.
Packed in my bag right now are The Lost Art of Real Cooking by Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafzinger and Reading Between the Wines by Terry Theise.
To help you pack your bags, Faith and I (two of the seven grown women on the planet who have not read Eat, Pray, Love) put together a list of some great food books for vacation reading.
I'll limit myself to ten, otherwise we'll be here all day:
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. A family's memoir of moving to southern Appalachia and eating entirely off their own land and that of their neighbors for a year.
• Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life by Kim Severson. A moving tribute to a handful of cooks, from her mother to Alice Waters, whom Severson credits with pulling her out of a messy time of her life.
• My Life in France by Julia Child. The classic tale of Child's time in France, in love with her husband, food, and life. This is a book I can read over and over again.
• Consider the Oyster by MFK Fisher. The "poet of the appetites" weaves her prose in, out and around the bivalve of love.
• The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. A touching guide to eating and cooking well for one person.
• Far Flung and Well Fed by R.W. Apple, Jr. A collection of 50 pieces by the late, great R.W. Apple, Jr., part travel essays and part odes to great meals eaten.
• On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. If you want to understand the science behind what happens in your oven and on your stove-top, you will not be able to put this book down. A great cover-to-cover read, or a reference volume on a kitchen shelf.
• Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin. A short, sweet volume of comforting and uplifting missives on cooking at home.
• What to Eat by Marion Nestle. With an academic's precision and and activist's fervor, Nestle leads a tour of the average supermarket, explaining the hidden meaning behind a market's layout and dissecting every label's claims. It's depressing, but also energizing.
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. Here Pollan takes readers on a fascinating and important journey through the food chain. This is one of those books that might change the way you eat, for the better.
Faith has these to add:
• Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite by John Thorne. A great read for home cooks. Idiosyncratic, opinionated, not a whiff of pretension.
• Best Food Writing 2009 edited by Holly Hughes. Always a rich read. This edition includes Calvin Trillin, Tamsin Day-Lewis, and Kim Severson, among many others.
• Alimentum. A wonderful journal of literary writing themed around food, it includes poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction.
For an even longer list, check out the Online Education Database's list of 50 Fabulous Food Novels (well, it's really 44 novels and six non-fiction works.)
Use the comment section below to add your picks for summer food reading.
(Image: "Summer Reading" by Jennifer Young, used with the permission of the artist.)
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wonderful compilation. thank you.
You cannot leave out Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life...it is so good. Her writing is amazing and it is full of great recipes!
Thanks! I've read a few but will put the rest on my to-read list. I would like to add that anything by Ruth Reichl is highly entertaining.
My Life In France by Julia is one of the best food books ever... and one of my favorite books ever!
I would add to the list Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, the biography by Thomas McNamee. Perfect for light summer reading, when Alice's effervescence can come through (and when it's easy to forgive the self-indulgence).
I'm reading Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch, by Nigel Slater. A wonderful summer read, as each vegetable appears in the garden, I turn to this book to see what Slater does with it.
No Eat, Pray, Love for me, either.
OMG. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to you for purposefully leaving off "Eat, Pray, Love." Without going into the ranting diatribe that naturally comes when someone mentions it...Thank you!
All beautiful books! I'll add a few to my reading list as well.
Thank you for your recommendations! Definitely will bring at least a couple of these on my flight to China later this month! We will be flying back with Grace, our little adopted 2 year old girl from China. Any recommendations on kid friendly cookbooks?
Oh, and on Eat, Love, Pray - make that 3 of us on the planet who have not read it.
Add me to the list of non-Eat,Pray,Love readers. Something about the idea of that book just rubs me the wrong way.
I second Ruth Reichl as well, I loved Tender at the Bone!
I myself have not read it either...I will wait for the movie on Lifetime..however who is the artist of the painting above?...and personally i love the regional Junior League cookbooks...
Great list... Does anyone have any Fictional food related suggestions? Like Chocolat, or ???
What a great list! I'm printing!!!
Thank you so much!
I, unfortunately, have read Eat, Pray, Love. It was a selection made by my book club. All six of us hated it, deeming it the most narcissistic piece of literature on the planet!
John Lanchester's "A Debt to Pleasure" is hilarious fiction in the form of memoir. The protagonist is a bon-vivant gourmand and, as you discover, a psychopath. Lanchester is a former food critic and his knowledge of food history, lore, recipes and such, is put to great use.
Hear Hear rep_woman!!! You described it succinctly! ... besides, it's not a "food" book.
One more... More Home Cooking also by the late Laurie Colwin. As good as the first. She's inspirational.
I love Laurie Colwin!
And also have not read Eat, Pray, Love. I started it, but as someone who ate her way through Italy without gaining weight, I couldn't handle the author going on and on about carb consumption and weight gain. That's the last thing we want to read about in a travel memoir.
I'm going to be bold and say that someone who loved that book probably isn't going to be savvy enough to love the Kitchn...
Jeffrey Steingarten's two books, "The Man Who Ate Everything" and "It Must Have Been Something I Ate" are two hilarious food reads.
I also like the Michael Ruhlman series: "The Making of a Chef," "The Soul of a Chef" and "The Reach of a Chef."
Great list! I'm leaving for vacation in a few weeks, and I plan to bring along Cooking for Mr. Latte. I'm saving it until then. Can't wait!
I love The Butch Cookbook for its range of complexities, stand out recipes and wonderful humor!
We can't leave out the "Bad Boy" of the culinary world, Anthony Bourdain. His newest "Medium Raw" is a great read and Kitchen Confidential is a classic.
i concur with JaxLBC. haven't read either of those books, but i loved "a cooks tour" bourdain at his best. it makes you want to find an adventure. also never read "eat, pray, love" and sounds like i made the correct descision. "tales of a female nomad" has a similar premise and seems to touch on more or less the same topics. also really narcissitic. kind of turned me off e.p.l.
Rep_woman is smart. That book is the worst piece of "literature" out there. I refuse to see the movie.
I have to add Like Water For Chocolate as a fantastic fiction food read.
Re: (two of the seven grown women on the planet who have not read Eat, Pray, Love). Make that 3!
"My Life in France" definitely good choice. Fun and quick read that makes you terribly hungry for french food and home cooking, I can't even tell you in how many bistros I sat with this book. Reading Julia Child while munching on french fare....way to go!
ktjo - Yes, that was the other one I was thinking of besides Chocolat.
And unfortunately, I did read Eat, Pray, Love. And I'm sad that I will never get those hours back.
Enjoying Kim Severson's book right now and have read and enjoyed all of Reichl's, Julie and Julia and not to mention Molly Wizenberg's. For a different type of read that isn't about cooking so much but rather a behind the scenes peak at Thomas Keller's restaurant Per Se is from a former server. I *think* it is called "Service Included" but not sure. Juicy little read.
How about Farm City by Novella Carpenter? A very holistic approach to food: raise it yourself! And I heard Anthony Bourdain's new book is a good read...I think it's called "Medium Raw"...
I tried to read Eat, Pray, Love and was really unimpressed. UGH! There are so many other books worthy of my time and yours.
On a more positive note, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and My Life In France are two of the most inspiring books I've read.
I read Eat Pray Love and didn't think much of it one way or another. We read it for book club, and the hostess had DVR'd the Oprah episode where the author appeared. I don't think Oprah cared for the book much either, but the author came off so much better in comparison to her crazy audience.
I got a huge kick out of The Matchmaker of Perigord by Jill Stuart - a funny fiction about a barber who decides to become a matchmaker in a small French town, all tied together with his love of a good meal. Another great fiction is The Five Quarters of the Orange, by Joanne Harris (of Chocolat). I also recently enjoyed Cooking for Kings, a biography of the first celebrity chef Antonin Careme.
I second the comments about Eat,Pray, Love: even the title is lame. Feh.
And, yes, yes, yes to Tender at the Bone and Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl.
Haven't yet read any of the culinary mystery novels by Susan Wittig Albert whose unwitting detective is Texas herbalist China Bayles,but I hope to soon. One of her titles is "Lavendar Lies." Sounds tasty!
@Betty14. The post isn't citing cookbooks - but *food books*, something more along the line of a memoir or novella - which is a category that Eat, Pray, Love does sort of fall into.
As was previously mentioned, Eat, Pray, Love has a reputation for being narcissistic - even though it obviously has found a following. Personally, I would like to read a book (especially about food) that has had a profound effect on the life and beliefs of a person like My Life in France or one of Anthony Bourdain's books. Eat, Pray, Love was a marketing scam of sorts - she was paid to take those trips & write the book beforehand. . .so it wasn't truly moving.
I think all of you will love The Settler's Cookbook by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Witty, intelligent, moving, inspirational. (And some good recipes!)
Great list. I would also add Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl and A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, as aforementioned.
Personally, I have yet to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I read Committed and found it narcissistic, but I appreciated her insight and perspective on the institution of marriage. I was actually surprised how much I liked her in her televised appearances and interviews. EPL might not have been a good read, but I do think it's ludicrous for shaming a personal MEMOIR for being narcissistic.
Falling Apart in One Piece by Redbook editor Stacey Morrison is also "narcissistic", I suppose, but there's something really therapeutic about it that speaks to the heartbroken; that's special.
Secondly, I think it's ridiculous and pretentious to say lovers of EPL are not savvy enough to enjoy The Kitchn. I have my M.A. in English Lit and I've read my fair share of Harlequins; one has nothing to do with the other and it's that sort of thinking that breeds elitism. Gilbert's content may need work and editing, I'll give it that, but judging from Committed, I actually think she pens really fantastic prose.
@SarahBerneche -- I concur with "I think it's ridiculous and pretentious to say lovers of EPL are not savvy enough to enjoy The Kitchn." -- my degree is in English Lit w/ emphasis in Russian Lit and a minor in Philosophy and I read EPL as well as read the Kitchn daily. I enjoyed EPL in the same way I enjoy the occasional Wendy's Frosty!
I just finished reading "Art. Life. Chooks." by Annette Hughes and enjoyed it. It's a true story about her life and how she left the big city and the high flying world of being an art dealer and then a book dealer to go live together with her partner (a poet) in the country and do gardening, living off the land, taking care of her chickens, simple cooking and making ends meet. Go read it!
And a recount is in order I think as there are definitely more than 7 grown women on this planet who haven't read the earlier mentioned book.
Just want to second (third?) the Laurie Colwin recommendations -- Home Cooking and More Home Cooking are two of my all-time favorite food books. Long before I had read any of her books (her short stories are also AMAZING), my sister or mother had cut out the "Tomato Pie" essay from an old Gourmet and we still pull it out each summer to make it. Yum!
It makes me so sad still that she passed away so young.
"Honey From a Weed" Patience Gray c. 1987. If you want to be transported to Greece. Betcha can't find it.
I had to laugh at what you said about Eat Pray Love. I did read it, but seem to be one of the few who did not enjoy it, at all. I agree with everyone on Laurie Colwin. I so miss her writing. Did anyone mention Calvin Trillin's Tummy Trilogy? I love how he writes about food.
Sara Kate, I'm one of the seven women who haven't read EPL. Calvin Trillin, on the other hand, is the best food writer on the planet.
"The Gastronomical Me" by M.F.K. Fisher has been my favourite read this year.
I just need to add my heartfelt agreement with anything by Laurie Colwin. Her writing is so wonderful. Love Ruth Reichl as well. But one of my all-time faves is "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle. The food! The dry wit! The food! Ahhhh.....
Thanks, a lot of favorites listed above, but some new titles to look for two. I am actually just completing a book about M.F.K. Fisher -- will be out in February 2011 -- maybe it will make next summers reading list!