Books on food

This month, the book club is going to discuss a book about food, specifically, Jeffrey Steingarten's essays on food collected in It Must've Been Something I Ate. If you're in Manila and you find yourself free on the afternoon of September 29, do join us.

I remember reading Steingarten's nonfiction works about food almost 10 years ago, and I recall that I enjoyed reading both books. So I scoured my shelves to find these titles, which are now yellowing but still in good condition.

I know I had to reread It Must've Been Something I Ate in its entirety, but I can't help but read some of the essays in The Man Who Ate Everything, which is the earlier book and which I find the better between the two. My thoughts on IMBSIA will be posted next week after the discussion.

My shelves are no stranger to books about food: be they about specific food, memoirs by chefs and wait staff which are very interesting to read by the way, and culinary history, to name a few. Recently, I bought Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter, which is turning out to be a very endearing memoir.

But what I'm really digging is Adam Gopnik's nonfiction work entitled The Table Comes First. Gopnik wrote one of the most memorable memoirs that I've read (Paris to the Moon), wherein he chronicled the time when he and his temporarily lived in Paris. In The Table Comes First, he focuses on Paris again and how this city has influenced our sense of food enjoyment. It's quite fascinating, I tell you.

I don't have cookbooks on my shelf, as I don't cook myself. Heck, I can't even make a decent toast. But books and food are two of my great loves. So what better way to celebrate this love than to read books about food, yes? Bring on the bacon!