Saturday, August 28, 2010

Sunday Salon: Food books for book clubs

I am officially on the board of the Women's National Book Association, Charlotte chapter. One of the things we board members do (besides learning the super-dooper, top-secret handshake) is to compile a list of similarly themed books for our reading group month brochure. The brochure doesn't come out until October, when it is officially reading group month but we have to put everything together in advance. So I chose to focus on food books that I think will appeal to reading groups. Here's what my list looked like:

Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber
La Cucina by Lily Prior
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
Serving Crazy with Curry by Amulya Malladi
The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard Morais
Georgia’s Kitchen by Jenny Nelson
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant edited by Jennie Ferrari-Adler
Spiced by Dalia Jurgensen
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
Candyfreak by Steve Almond
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

It's a bit of a mix between old and new, fiction and non-fiction. It skews heavily toward paperback releases but there are a few hardbacks thrown in too. I only included books I've read and enjoyed since my list could be fourteen times as long if I included those still waiting patiently in my to be read stacks. So what did I miss? Did I leave off your favorite? And most importantly, for the books that contain recipes (and not all do), has anyone made any of them successfully?

This week in my reading travels I watched a young man impersonating his twin and falling in love with a fiance not his own in Regency England, I briefly visited with young writers on the Jewish experience, I rode along as a reporter tried to illuminate and understand life growing up with her bi-polar mother, and I kept the secret of another woman's father's unusual profession: raising gerbils as lab animals. Where did your reading take you this week?

2 comments:

  1. Hey Kristen - I'm extremely worried now as I haven't heard of any of those books on your list, and I must not investigate them further since my TBR mountain is still the size of Everest!

    This week in my reading I have battled literary phantoms with the Ghost of Sherlock Holmes and witnessed the terrors of Auschwitz through the eyes of a luthier.

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  2. Congrats on being on the board!

    You visited some really interesting places last week. I visited Cedar Cove, WA as well as Texas and Tuckernuck Island, MA. It was an enjoyable week :)

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