The Perfect Pantry

Bookworms in the Pantry 2007: The Complete List

Imagine my surprise when, back in February, I discovered Bookworms in my pantry. It started with one -- my friend Marcia, who lives up the road -- and spread from Rhode Island to The Philippines to Michigan to Washington DC to Wisconsin, to North Carolina, to England ... well, it turns out that there are bookworms everywhere! More than twenty-five Pantry readers shared their favorite reads.

Each Bookworm recommended five food-related non-cookbooks to add to our collective library. On this list you'll find Michael Pollan and Julia Child, of course. Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain. Calvin Trillin, Nigel Slater, Lewis Carroll, MFK Fisher, Kermit Lynch, Dr. Seuss. There's something for everyone.

More or less alphabetically, here's the entire list for 2007 (books mentioned more than once are indicated in parentheses), including suggested additions that arrived by email.

• A Cordiall Water, by MFK Fisher
• A History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage
• A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
• A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman
• Adventures on the Wine Route, by Kermit Lynch (2)
• Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: the Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution, by Thomas McNamee
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll
• American Diner Then and Now, by Richard J.S. Gutman
• The Anatomy of Dessert, by Edward Bunyan
• Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard (includes "Babette's Feast), by Isak Dinesen
• Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, by Barbara Kingsolver (2)
• An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, by Elizabeth David
• Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses, by Isabel Allende
• The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin
• Are You Really Going to Eat That? Reflections of a Culinary Thrill Seeker, by Robb Walsh
• The Art of Eating, by MFK Fisher (2)
• Back Story (and the Spenser mystery series), by Robert B. Parker
• Becoming Whole: The Story of My Recovery from Breast Cancer, by Meg Wolff
• The Belly of Paris, by Emile Zola
• The Big Oyster, by Mark Kurlansky
• Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, by Sarah-Kate Lynch
• Blue Jelly: Love Lost and the Lessons of Canning, by Debby Bull
• Blue Trout and Black Truffles, by Joseph Wechsberg
• The Body in the Bouillon: A Faith Fairchild Mystery, by Katherine Hall Page
• The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong
• The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
• Bread Alone, by Judith R. Hendricks
• Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf, by Susan Mansfield Taber
• The Century in Food: America's Fads and Favorites, by Beverly Bundy
• Chocolat, by Joanne Harris (2)
• Cod, by Mark Kurlansky (2)
• Comfort Me with Apples, by Ruth Reichl (2)
• Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasure and Politics of Local Food, by Gary Naban
• Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life, by Michael Lee West
• Cooking for Mr. Latte, by Amanda Hesser
• Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jabar
• The Day Everything Tasted Like Broccoli (Maximum Boy #02), by Dan Greenburg
• The Dead, by James Joyce
• The Debt to Pleasure, by John Lanchester (2)
• Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, by Jennifer Traig
• The Devil's Larder, by Jim Crace
• Dictionnaire Gastronomique, by Bernard Luce
• Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell
• Eating Between the Lines: The Supermarket Shopper's Guide to the Truth Behind Food Labels, by Kimberly Lord Stewart
• Extra Virgin, by Annie Hawes
• Extremely Pale Rosé: A Very French Adventure, by Jamie Ivey
• Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
• Fat Land, by Greg Critser
• Feeding a Yen, by Calvin Trillin (2)
• Floyd in the Soup, by Keith Floyd
• Food in History, by Reay Tannahill (2)
• The Food of France, by Waverly Root
• French Lessons, by Peter Mayle
• From Here You Can't See Paris, by Michael S. Sanders
• Garlic and Sapphires, by Ruth Reichl (4)
• The Gastronomical Me, by MFK Fisher
• The Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier
• Gluten-free Girl, by Shauna James Ahern
• Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss
• Havana Salsa, by Viviana Carballo
• Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, by Bill Buford
• Her Fork in the Road, edited by Lisa Bach
• The Hills of Tuscany, by Ferenc Mate
• Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin
• How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, by Marjorie Priceman
• Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio
• In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust
• Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
• I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato, by Lauren Child
• Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, by Julie Powell
• Killer Calories (Savannah Reid Mysteries), by GA McKevett
• Killer Pancake, by Diane Mott Davidson
• Kitchen Confidential: Notes from the Culinary Underbelly, by Anthony Bourdain
• The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater
• La Cucina, by Lily Prior (2)
• The Land was Everything, by Victor Davis Hanson
• The Life of Hunger, by Amelie Nothomb
• Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel (2)
• The Magic of Provence, by Yvonne Lenard
• The Mammoth Cheese, by Sheri Holman
• The Man Who Ate Everything, by Jeffrey Steingarten
• The Measure of Her Powers: An MFK Fisher Reader, by MFK Fisher and Ruth Reich
• The Mistress of Spices, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2)
• Monsieur Pamplemousse series, by Michael Bond
• More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin
• The Mortdecai Trilogy, by Kyril Bonfiglioli
• Mostly True, by Molly O'Neill
• Murder Al Fresco, by Nadia Gordon
• My Life in France, by Julia Child
• The Nantucket Diet Murders (Eugenia Potter series), by Virginia Rich
• The Nasty Bits, by Anthony Bourdain
• The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
• On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee
• On Persephone's Island, by Mary Taylor Simeti
• On Rue Tatin, by Susan Hermann Loomis
• One More Day, by Mitch Alborn
• The Oysters of Locmariaquer, by Eleanor Clark
• Oranges, by John McPhee
• Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin', by Paula Deen
• The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, by Brillat-Savarin
• Pomegranate Soup: A Novel, by Marsha Mehran
• Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of MFK Fisher, by Joan Reardon
• Pot on the Fire, by John Thorne
• Road Food, by Jane and Michael Stern
• Salt, by Mark Kurlansky
• Second Nature, by Michael Pollan (2)
• The Secret Life of Lobsters, by Trevor Corson
• The Seven Silly eaters, by Mary Ann Hoberman and Marla Frazee
• The $64 Tomato, by William Alexander
• The Short Stories of Saki, by HH Munro
• The Soul of a Chef, by Michael Ruhlman
• Spice: A History of Temptation, by Jack Turner
• The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon
• Sweets: A History of Candy, by Tim Richardson
• Take Big Bites, by Linda Ellerbee
• Talking with My Mouth Full, by Bonny Wolf
• Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl (2)
• The Tequila Worm, by Viola Canales
• Thunder Cake, by Patricia Polacco
• Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare
• Toast, by Nigel Slater (2)
• Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, by Theodore Bestor
• The Tummy Trilogy, by Calvin Trillin
• Typical American, by Gish Jen
• Under the Jaguar Sun, by Italo Calvino
• The Van, by Roddy Doyle
• Vie de France, by James Haller
• Vineyard Blues, by Philip R. Craig
• Voice of the Violin (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries), by Andrea Camilleri and Stephen Sartarell
• The Way Life Should Be, by Christina Baker Kline
• The Whole World Over, by Julia Glass (2)
• We Could Almost Eat Outside: An Appreciation of Life's Small Pleasures, by Philippe Delerm
• Why We Eat What We Eat, by Raymond Sokolov
• Women Who Eat: A New Generation on the Glory of Food, by Leslie Miller
• The World is a Kitchen, edited by Susan Brady and Michele Anna Jordan
• The Zen of Fish, by Trevor Corson

If this isn't the very best list of food-related non-cookbooks anywhere, I'll eat my hat. And if there's no hat in my pantry (after all, it's not really perfect), I'll eat something else.

A mysterious Bookworm

From her natural products shop in Keene, New Hampshire, Susan Ginsburg writes Views from VitaSource, a blog about "good health, natural living, and the hope for a great green world." VitaSource, her current business, focuses on supplements, herbs, body care and teas, and on her blog Susan shares the knowledge she's accumulated in 25 years of running stores and a restaurant. She also delves into philosophical and ecological issues of the day, so you'll always find something interesting when you visit. Susan loves culinary mysteries (as do I), and as this week's Bookworm in the Pantry she gives us five deliciously crafted series.

 UPDATE. Susan recommended:

• Killer Calories (Savannah Reid Mysteries)
• Killer Pancake
• The Body in the Bouillon: A Faith Fairchild Mystery
• The Nantucket Diet Murders (Eugenia Potter series)
• Vineyard Blues
  

Would you like to be a Bookworm in the Pantry and add to our collective library of good reads?

Start here.

 

The Bookworm chronicles

Nicole Spiridakis, a San Francisco-based journalist, is the passionate cook behind the stove at Cucina Nicolina, and this week's Bookworm in the Pantry. A copy editor at a private financial news wire service, Nicole contributes frequently to the San Francisco Chronicle's Home and Garden section. As a freelance writer in Washington, DC, before returning to California, she wrote features for the Reuters wire (notably, on cold-water swimmer Lynn Cox of "Swimming to Antarctica" fame, and Aron Ralston, the Colorado climber who survived a harrowing experience trapped in a Utah canyon). You never know where Cucina Nicolina will take you -- to Greece, to the farmers' market, on a hike or a barbeque -- but you'll always end up with food, and a good book to read. What's better than that?

UPDATE. Nicole recommended:

• Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
• Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution
• The Whole World Over
• Crescent: A Novel
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
  

Would you like to be a Bookworm in the Pantry and add to our collective library of good reads?

Start here.

A Bookworm who loves ... grapefruit?

Zoomie Station, a three-month-old blog, springs from the kitchen of Zoomie, the nom de plume of a San Francisco-based career counselor who writes about lots of things: cooking, restaurants, tableware, weddings, books, her Beloved, and her great-grandmother's china, to name a few. Clearly her taste is eclectic -- the same probably can be said, thank goodness, about all of the Bookworms in the Pantry -- and her list of recommended food-related non-cookbooks  is unique: five books from a series of fifteen that's completely new to me (and how did I miss it?). Zoomie adds, "All are amusingly written by Michael Bond [the creator of Paddington Bear] and all feature the bumbling ex-Sureté-officer-turned-food-critic for a major French restaurant guide, Monsieur Pamplemousse, and his bloodhound, Pommes Frites. It's a funny and well written series and, as you might expect, features lots of descriptions of food and restaurants he's reviewing." Doesn't that sound like fun?

UPDATE. Zoomie recommended:

• Monsieur Pamplemousse
• Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution
• Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Militant Housewives
• Monsieur Pamplemousse on Vacation
• Monsieur Pamplemousse Hits the Headlines
  

Would you like to be a Bookworm in the Pantry and add to our collective library of good reads?

Start here.

Mom's your Bookworm

A Santa Monica, California, accountant turned full-time mom of a young son, MetaMommy blogs about pretty much anything that strikes her fancy -- pancakes, cell phones, travel, potty training -- on her young blog, They Call Me Mommy. This week's Bookworm in the Pantry, MetaMommy keeps us all entertained, while keeping an eye on her active toddler. She has a particular passion for cooking, but also writes about technology, parenting, and the charming absurdities of everyday life.

UPDATE. MetaMommy recommended:

• Eating Between the Lines: The Supermarket Shopper's Guide to the Truth Behind Food Labels
• Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
• Pomegranate Soup: A Novel
• Toast
  

Would you like to be a Bookworm in the Pantry and add to our collective library of good reads?

Start here.