Wednesday reading experience #30

Read one of the great foodie books. I recommend Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) was a famous French gastronome and his book on the subject, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), is still in print. Here he is discussing the effects of digestion on men of literature (translation by Anne Drayton, from the Penguin edition):

"I believe that men of letters, for the most part, owe their choice of genre to their stomach.
According to my theory, comic poets will be found among the regular, tragic poets among the constipated, and pastoral and elegaic poets among the lax; whence it follows that the most lachrymose of poets is only removed from the most comic of poets by a degree of digestionary concoction."

The book covers all kinds of subjects and their relation to food, eating and digestion, and is a must-read for true foodies.

Other good food reads I can recommend are:

The Book of Tea by Anthony Burgess and Alain Stella – a brilliant coverage of the history of tea, tea-drinking traditions, tea natural history and tea varieties, full of gorgeous photos and illustrations.
The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe. Although some of the history chapters are a little dry, this is a great read for those who wish to know where that heavenly substance comes from, how it came to be known to the world and how it’s made.
Unfortunately I have not come across a really good book about coffee, so I can’t recommend one.
Tender at the Bone and Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. The first is a wonderful memoir that describes the making of a foodie, and the second is a memoir and collection of her food articles and restaurant reviews from the New York Times.
A Cook’s Tour in search of the perfect meal by Anthony Bourdain. Combines two of my favourite hobbies: travel and food. If you're wondering why I am not recommending Kitchen Confidential, it’s because while it’s an interesting read, it is uneven and sometimes just plain gross.
The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must Have Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten. Two great collections of food essays and articles by an obsessive gastronome.
Salt: A world history and Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky.
For a food porn fix: any of the Culinaria books. Gorgeous and heavy coffee-table books about food culture in different countries, rich in recipes and photographs.

I have avoided cookbooks, but many of these books have recipes in them as well.

And, just for fun, some of the foodie books on my TBR list:

The Art of Eating and The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher
Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Meme: Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

This meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . To see more favourite book-to-movie adaptations, head over there to see which movies the other participants have nominated. I am going to cheat and interpret ‘movie’ as ‘film’, so I can include television adaptations. Oscar and Lucinda , from the book by Peter Carey. Apart from the changed ending it is an incredibly faithful adaptation, with every character perfectly cast. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , from the book by Stieg Larsson. This one actually improves on the book, which is well plotted but badly written. Cold Comfort Farm , from the book by Stella Gibbons. Perfect casting and quite faithful to the original. High Fidelity , from the book by Nick Hornby. Moving the story to America didn’t hurt it one bit. Fried Green Tomatoes (at the Whistle Stop Café), from the book by Fannie Flagg. Perfect casting and faithful to the story. Pride and Prejudice from the book by Jane Austen, the latest BBC adaptation. Incredibly f...

Reading in Reykjavík

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