Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Nearing 30 and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves' livers and aspic, but a new life--lived with gusto.

The Tender Bar: A Memoir

by J. R. Moehringer

The bestselling memoir that captured the hearts of readers and critics nationwide is now available in paperback In the tradition of This Boy’s Life and The Liar’s Club , J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar is a raucous, poignant, luminously written memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar. A national bestseller that was named one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2005 by the ... (more)

Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Food

Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Food

by Michael Stern, Jane Stern

Road trip! In this rollicking memoir, Jane and Michael Stern tell what it's like to eat everywhere across the U.S.A. Driving more than three million miles, eating twelve meals a day, they discover not only the pleasure of biscuits and gravy and cherry pie r la mode, but a world of cooks, customers, and fellow roadfood devotees for whom good food is one of life's essentials. Hop into the car for hilarious... (more)

Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

by Stephen G. Bloom

In 1987, a group of Lubavitchers, one of the most orthodox and zealous of the Jewish sects, opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside tiny Postville, Iowa (pop. 1,465). When the business became a worldwide success, Postville found itself both revived and divided. The town's initial welcome of the Jews turned into confusion, dismay, and even disgust. By 1997, the town had engineered a vote on what everyone... (more)

Mindless Eating

Why We Eat More Than We Think

by Brian Wansink

In this illuminating and groundbreaking new book, food psychologist Brian Wansink shows why you may not realize how much you’re eating, what you’re eating–or why you’re even eating at all. • Does food with a brand name really taste better? • Do you hate brussels sprouts because your mother did? • Does the size of your plate determine how hungry you feel? • How much would you eat if your soup bowl secretly... (more)

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution

by Thomas McNamee

The first authorized biography of “the mother of American cooking” ( The New York Times ) This adventurous book charts the origins of the local “market cooking” culture that we all savor today. When Francophile Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, few Americans were familiar with goat cheese, cappuccino, or mesclun. But it wasn’t long before Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers inspired a... (more)

The Wal-Mart Effect

How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy

by Charles Fishman

Wal-Mart isn’t just the world’s biggest company, it is probably the world’s most written-about. But no book until this one has managed to penetrate its wall of silence or go beyond the usual polemics to analyze its actual effects on its customers, workers, and suppliers. Drawing on unprecedented interviews with former Wal-Mart executives and a wealth of staggering data (e.g., Americans spend $36 million an... (more)

Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave

Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave

by Stefan Gates

"Gastronaut" is an irreverent journey through the crazy, twisted, mixed-up world of food. It's full of extraordinary, extravagant and bizarre culinary experiences, arcane information and practical recipes for spectacular food. Each of us will spend 16 per cent of our waking lives cooking and eating. That time is far too precious to waste on chores, so why not turn cooking into an adventure? This book of strange... (more)

Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand

Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand

by Alex Kapranos

The lead singer of the acclaimed, platinum-selling group Franz Ferdinand takes readers on a rock-and-roll culinary adventure around the world The extremely successful band Franz Ferdinand has millions of fans around the globe, and the group's frequent tours bring its members not only to a wide variety of places but also face to face with a wide range of food. Here, lead singer Alex Kapranos collects his... (more)

The Invention of Curried Sausage

by Uwe Timm

An ingenious, revealing, and charming tale about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food by a woman who met, seduced, and held captive a deserter in April, 1945, just before the war's end. The Invention of Curried Sausage is an ingenious, revealing, and delightful novel about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food. Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s,... (more)

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

by Bill Buford

The Omnivore's Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century "What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans... (more)

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

by Anthony Bourdain

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door.In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded that appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectable shocking banquet that lays out his 25 years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine. From his first oyster in the Gironde to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop... (more)

What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained

What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained

by Robert L. Wolke, Marlene Parrish

Einstein's cook was lucky. But you, too, can have a scientist in your kitchen: Robert L. Wolke. Does the alcohol really boil off when we cook with wine? Are smoked foods raw or cooked? Are green potatoes poisonous? With the reliability that only a scientist can provide, Robert L. Wolke provides plain-talk explanations of kitchen mysteries with a liberal seasoning of wit. A professor of chemistry and a lifelong... (more)

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

by Ruth Reichl

At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making sense of the world. . . . If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were." Her deliciously crafted memoir, Tender at the Bone, is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by a passion for food, unforgettable people, and the love of tales well told. Beginning with Reichl's mother, the... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: food book club book

Julie and Julia

My Year of Cooking Dangerously

by Julie Powell