A Food Lover's Treasury

by Julie Rugg

An anthology of literary extracts on the subject of food, cooking and dining. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0711229120
• ISBN13: 9780711229129
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Food Lovers Delight!

This book is just plain fun to read for anyone who loves food! Snippets, paragraphs and pages from countless books -- all of them about food -- are collected in various categories. These range from warnings about dining at an inn to the dreadful specter of doing without dinner. The excerpts are taken from wildly different genre...from "Little Women" to "A Day In The Live of Ivan Denisovich." And each one is delicious. A great beach read, something to tuck in a purse and whip out while standing on line at the bank (or waiting for a table at a restaurant).

MAY I HAVE SECONDS, PLEASE?

All of us have opinions stated or unstated, mumbled to ourselves or shouted from the rooftops. There is one subject on which everyone has an opinion and that is food. Polite diners may cautiously use their forks to push aside an unwanted slice of mango while a baby who cannot yet speak can utter a distinct blagh as he spits out his first taste of peas. Yes, opinions about food are everywhere, and most delightfully collected in A Food Lover's Treasury, a book about the references to food that are found in literature. There are over 400 entries, some as brief and clear as Samuel Johnson's, "A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown as good for nothing." Others opine at length, a bit lyrically about their favorite dishes. In Sea and Sardinia D.H. Lawrence was ardent in his praise of vegetable shop displays on a "dark, greasy, night-stricken street," writing of how the street "seems to beam with these vegetables, all this fresh delicate flesh of luminous vegetables piled there in the air..." Yes, we are passionate about food! Entries are organized in nine chapters beginning with Food Philosophy through Local Delicacies and concluding with Manners and Morals. Readers may well find them themselves tempted as I was to go back to a favorite book and locate the quote in the context of the narrative. That was good fun and so is the reading of A Food Lover's Treasury. Tuck your napkin in and enjoy! - Gail Cooke