Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell

January 29, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Penguin Press, 2009. 320 pgs. Library copy. Since reading The Millionaire Next Door earlier this month, consumerism has been dominating my thoughts. I’ve been particularly contemplative of how people have rejected of material goods, attracted to articles like one in The Guardian by a man who lives “houseless” in Alaska and contemplating rereading Not Buying It.  In my search for more books on the topic, I was reminded of Shell’s book on consumerism. I borrowed her book from the library in […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Economics, Europe, Food, Nonfiction, North America, Scandinavia, Thailand, United States • Tags: Ellen Ruppel Shell

Gulp by Mary Roach

March 22, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. W.W. Norton, 2013. 348 pgs. Library copy.  Subtitled “Adventures on the Alimentary Canal”, Roach’s book guides readers on the journey of their food — from the saliva generated at the smell of food to the stomach and then onto the colon and the way out. The path isn’t without a few side trips to answer questions like can one survive being swallowed alive, can the gas you pass be set on fire, and can you really eat yourself to […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Book Club, Food, Nonfiction • Tags: Mary Roach

The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz

December 23, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Simon & Schuster, 2014. 480 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet”, Teicholz’s book documents how the low fat diet became the national – and thanks to America’s outsized influence on that global food system, international – nutrition diet nearly sixty years ago. With rates of heart disease skyrocketing, nutritionists and scientists assumed correction meant causation decreeing that fat, especially saturated fat, were to blame. Yet while rates of heart […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Chunkster, Food, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Nina Teicholz

The Coke Machine by Michael Blanding

November 30, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by George K. Wilson. Tantor Media, 2010. 13 hours, 3 minutes. Library copy. I am horribly addicted to Coca Cola. I can easily down six or seven cans (or, their equivalent at a restaurant) without batting an eye, which obviously places me in the “heavy user” category by The Coca Cola Company. I have tried many times over the past six years to kick the habit going cold turkey for ten weeks or ten months until […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Food, Nonfiction, North America, South America, United States • Tags: George K. Wilson, Michael Blanding

Books About Food Politics

November 10, 2014 by Christina

I’ve written two theses on industrial agriculture, food politics, obesity, and American eating habits yet I still do not feel like I can truly call myself an expert. There are still so many books to read on the topic, so many books still to be written. But if there is a topic I constantly find myself suggesting nonfiction books for, it would be food politics (or, the more sinister sounding “Industrial Agriculture”). Most people have heard of The Omnivore’s Dilemma […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Food

My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

October 14, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by Kimberly Farr. Books on Tape, 2006. 11 hours, 17 minutes. Library copy. Child’s memoir was placed on my mental to-read list after the release of the film “Julie and Julia” in 2009, but I was only recently reminded of this when I spied the audiobook read by Kimberly Farr on the shelf at the public library. In the book, Child explains how she fell in love with French food in the fall of 1948 during […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Europe, Food, France, Nonfiction • Tags: Alex Prud'homme, Julia Child, Kimberly Farr

Year-Round Slow Cooker by Dina Cheney

September 6, 2014 by Christina

Can I say what a beautiful invention the slow cooker is? I’m so glad I followed my parents’ suggestion to buy one, and that the round-up of cookbook reviews from last month convinced me to see what cookbooks particularly made for slow cookers my public library had available. I select Cheney’s cookbook because it included a recipe for Hungarian goulash, but I ended up flagging six recipes and making five during the month of August. (I am clearly over summer; […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Food, Nonfiction • Tags: Dina Cheney

Just Married and Cooking by Brooke Parkhurst and Jamie Briscione

August 2, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribner, 2011. 323 pgs. Library copy. I was toying with the idea of sharing my thoughts on cookbooks here for the past few days (I had been taking pictures to send friends and family), but I figured few — if any — people would be interested until I opened up my feed reader and saw several posts contributing to the Cook It Up! Challenge hosted by Trish of Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity. I don’t […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Food, Nonfiction • Tags: Brooke Parkhurst, Jamie Briscione

Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss

June 10, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Random House, 2013. 446 pgs. Library copy. Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese (triple what we ate in 1970) and seventy pounds of sugar (about twenty-two teaspoons a day). We ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt a day, double the recommended amount, and almost none of that comes from the shakers on our table. It all comes from processed food, which is heavily dependent upon salt, sugar, and fat to create texture, taste, and […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Food, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Michael Moss

Bananas by Peter Chapman

September 30, 2013 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Canongate, 2009. Originally published 2007. 240 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. I should preface this review by stating my bias against bananas. They taste rather like how I imagine cardboard would taste, and I can barely tolerate them in smoothies let alone in baked goods. But bananas are one of the most popular fruits in the United States and this book, subtitled “How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World”, ended up on the list of books I […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Food, Nonfiction, South America • Tags: Peter Chapman

The American Way of Eating by Tracie McMillan

August 26, 2013 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribner, 2012. 336 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Subtitled “Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields, and the Dinner Table”, McMillan’s book is very reminiscent of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed as McMillan goes undercover to work among the working poor of the United States picking and sorting grapes, peaches, and garlic in California; selling baking products and produce at Walmart in Michigan; and working in the kitchen of America’s largest sit-down chain restaurant, Applebee’s, in New York City. The […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Food, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Tracie McMillan

Detroit City Is the Place to Be by Mark Binelli

January 9, 2013 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Metropolitan Books, 2012. 318 pgs. Review copy from the publisher. Subtitled “The Afterlife of an American Metropolis”, Binelli’s book combines his personal history of growing up in Detroit with the development and subsequent decline of the Motor City. Detroit, which the book calls “America’s most epic urban failure”, has become a bit of a Mecca for urban planners, land speculators, and urban agriculturalists who all want to “save” the city. Different plans — from a citizen crime […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Food, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Mark Binelli