Play Book Tag discussion

The vote wasn't even close - by a whopping margin, the winning tag for the New Year is:

food

How many diet resolutions will be broken in the first two weeks? Plan a delicious month of reads by checking out these books that fit the tag: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

Happy for this one-and all you self-help fans Food is always self help😉😁

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

This page includes links to a listopia, and articles about books related to food and drink.

I'm happy food won, just got the Loopy Whisk's Baked to Perfection: Delicious gluten-free recipes with a pinch of science by Katarina Cermelj. I've made a few recipes from her blog, The Loopy Whisk, that are wonderful (Apple pie bars, Lemon Crackle cookies) and look forward to trying the recipes in the book along with tweeking some of my converted (to GF) recipes using the pinch of science.

Another link! https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

Joanne wrote: "Happy for this one-and all you self-help fans Food is always self help😉😁"

Ha! True, but when you have a stomach ache, this is what you’ll notice on a list of food books:
Has anyone read Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, or Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ ?

I can recommend The Last Supper

HayJay and I will be reading the Lager Queen of Minnesota! Which also happens to fit a candle, ask Nicole R rated it 5 stars. If anyone wants to join us, feel free!

HayJay, I am intending to write back to you. I got really busy with Hanukkah and preparing to leave and then traveling. But I am now nestled in Colorado where snow is a good thing. So I will get to it. But yes, I’m planning to read Other Birds while I am out here in Aspen.

I'm happy, and given the time of year combined with the three choices, not surprised.

Amy wrote: "HayJay and I will be reading the Lager Queen of Minnesota! Which also happens to fit a candle, ask Nicole R rated it 5 stars. If anyone wants to join us, feel free!

HayJay, I am intending to writ..."

I might read this in January as well since it's on my want to read shelf.

NancyJ wrote: "Joanne wrote: "Happy for this one-and all you self-help fans Food is always self help😉😁"

Ha! True, but when you have a stomach ache, this is what you’ll notice on a list of food books:
Has anyone ..."

I haven't read either of those but really enjoyed I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life which I think is in the same vein.

Yay! I didn't say anything before, but I really don't do self-help and rarely anthologies. I would have found something, but wasn't looking forward to it.

I may read Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir.

I'll come back with recommendations.

Oh good! I'm glad that food won the tag selection for January.
I plan on reading A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.

Amy, I'd like to join the group read for the Lager Queen of Minnesota.
It seems fitting since my father, who passed away recently, was a beer brewer professionally. He worked for Falstaff and Budweiser before it was sold by a hostile takeover. I'll order the book to be ready if you can tell me when you all will start reading.

Listopia has tons of books about food. Another possibility is the third book in the Chocolate series by Joanne Harris. A listopia shelf has it as Peaches for Father Francis.

Lots to choose from and I'm getting hungry! (lol)

I'm in for The Lager Queen of Minnesota too! Excited to start the year with food!

DianeMP wrote: "Oh good! I'm glad that food won the tag selection for January.
I plan on reading A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.

Amy, I'd like to join the group read for the Lager Queen of Minnesota.
It seems..."

I enjoyed A Year in Provence when I read it.

Amy wrote: "HayJay and I will be reading the Lager Queen of Minnesota! Which also happens to fit a candle, ask Nicole R rated it 5 stars. If anyone wants to join us, feel free!

HayJay, I am intending to writ..."

I'll join in, it's been on my TBR and my library has the audiobook.

Yay Food!

I was happy with any of the choices so I didn't vote for this month. I have several choices. If I want to take another off the long game personal challenge of reading Amazon's 100 books to read in a lifetime (because if you didn't know, I'm obsessed with all things Amazon) I would pick The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

If you haven't read it already, highly recommend Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. I'm personally a fan of David Chang and really enjoyed his Eat a Peach
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is also really good.

My other options are:
Taste: My Life through Food by Stanley Tucci
Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala
Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen

NancyJ wrote: "Has anyone read Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, or Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ ."

I read/listened to both this past year. Very similar to all of her other books. If I had to rate these compared to her others that I've read, they are lower in the list.

What a nice buddy read, we have! I will start the thread on January 1.

I have save me the plums somewhere on the someday TBR not so secret phone list. But since it’s not actually there yet, I’m going to hold off.

I loved the Chocolat series. I don’t know if it was last year or the year before that I read the entire series is my series of the year. I do think it was 2022. But I read them in order. Peaches, for father Harris was the third. But I highly recommend that series for anyone for whom it might appeal.

Like so many of you, I was hoping that "Food" would be selected. There are so many good choices.

If I had not already read "The Lager Queen", I would join the buddy read. It's a fun book.

Here are two books that I've enjoyed.

Where I Come from: Stories from the Deep South by Rick Bragg. The book made me seriously hungry when I read it.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl. It's a tender look at her childhood.

Just grand to be starting off the year with such a large Buddy Read for Lager Queen! I'm from MN so find that J. Ryan Stradal's books really resonate. I read Kitchens of the Great Midwest by this author last year and it made my top 5 books of the year list. Highly recommend to anyone who has not yet read it. The School of Essential Ingredients and the second book in this series are also wonderful books for this tag.

@Hayjay, I loved Kitchens of the Great Midwest too.

Here are a few recommendations - books I've read and enjoyed this year that fit the "food" tag:
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
The Book of Salt
A Moveable Feast

I am going to read:
Search by Michelle Huneven - the protagonist is a food critic.

For those who like cozy mysteries, I have been enjoying Mia P. Manansala's series Tita Rosie's Kitchen - it's Filipino themed. Book 1 is Arsenic and Adobo.

I can highly recommend With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. It was a 5 star listen for me in 2020.

Anne wrote: "I can highly recommend With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. It was a 5 star listen for me in 2020."

Looks interesting, I will check it out!

I have lots of options and am happy food won!

- The End of Food / Thomas Pawlick
- Twinkie Deconstructed / Steve Ettlinger
- Stuffed and Starved / Raj Patel
- The Big Skinny / Carol Lay

YIPPEE! I was so hoping for food - though pretty sure that was going to be the choice.

I have several options sitting here vying for reading time. We'll see what gets my attention. No doubt many will be cozy mysteries or romances because there are a zillion of them and I love 'em.

However, let me mention a couple of different mystery series revolving around food. One is a series by the late Virginia Rich featuring Eugenia Potter that was continued posthumously by mystery writer Nancy Pickard as the Cooking School Murders. Another wonderful series centers on chocolate and is set during the Regency era -- Andrea Penrose is the author, who is well-known for her Wrexford and Sloane series. First came the Chocolate one...and you learn an amazing amount about the commercial side of chocolate during that era.

A recent historical romance I read and loved features a female chef during the late regency era -- Miss Delectable by Grace Burrowes

I want to reiterate my 5 star recommendatoin of Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West. It's got old west, robber barons, railroads, early days of flight, Grand Canyon, pink jeep tours, Harvey Girls and food food food. It's a page-turner.

I also highly recommend Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir by Padma Lakshmi, the host of Top Chef. It's about her life which is quite fascinating, but also food, Top Chef, Salman Rushdie, and some personal issues that many of us can relate to. It also happens to be tagged 'India' by 26 people, thus fitting one of PBT's Birthday Candles.

I echo the recommendation for Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.

Another chef memoir I really enjoyed -- Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson. His New American Table is as much a book of essays with recipes as a cookbook with essays.

I also loved My Life in France by Julia Child, Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste, and Provençal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France a collection of essays by Mary Ann Caws. I even liked Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. I mean, cooking Julia's Beouf Bourginon in a tiny NYC apartment kitchen - I can relate.

For those who really really wanted self-help, there are a whole lot of books about healthy eating, healthy diet, learn about food, grow your own vegies to live sustainably. Go for it! I would recommend (if you did not read it for WPF) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by semi-finalist Barbara Kingsolver.

I could go on for days. I do after all have a shelf entitled 'food and cooking'.

So on to the recommends:

When talking about food and books, I always recommend two of my beloved mystery series, Chief Inspector Bruno by Martin Walker which begins with Bruno, Chief of Police and the Inspecto Chen series by Qiu Xiaolong beginning with Death of a Red Heroine.

I've also been thinking about animals and farming as related to food and two books which I loved were Locally Laid: How We Built a Plucky, Industry-changing Egg Farm - from Scratch and The Cows of Bangalore: Adventures with My Milk Lady.

Other food books which I'll separate in fiction and nonfiction are:
Fiction-
The Book of Salt
Memorial
Hidden in Paris
Cooking for Picasso
The Music of Bees
Butterflies in November
Black Cake

Nonfiction-
Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them
Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food
My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life
The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest
A Pig in Provence: Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France
Under the Tuscan Sun
Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life

Thanks for all the list links! I saw a couple on there that I remember really loving at the time (enough that I still have them on my physical bookshelf, which I've cut in half over the last couple of years):
The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry

And a few I read and loved recently that would fit:
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall
Death of a Bachelor by M.A. Hinkle

Theresa wrote: "A recent historical romance I read and loved features a female chef during the late regency era -- Miss Delectable by Grace Burrowes"

I'm going to take a look at this one, thanks Theresa! I love historical romances when I can find the good ones, but it feels like looking for a needle in a haystack sometimes :)

I also saw A Gentleman in Moscow on one of those lists, and that's one I want to try for the Happy Birthday PBT

Pam wrote: "Thanks for all the list links! I saw a couple on there that I remember really loving at the time (enough that I still have them on my physical bookshelf, which I cut in half over the last couple of..."

Grace Burrowes is a really excellent historical romance writer, and she is prolific. Her backstory is fun too. The first books published were The Windham Series, which I loved. Story is that her agent or editor liked them so much, asked her how soon she would have another. She said she had more than a dozen in a drawer at home. Those were all published over the next couple of years and she's been keeping it up every since.

A Gentleman in Moscow - the Latvian Stew! The real recipe for it is online at Towles website or in his blog or both.

Glad you mentioned Locally Laid and The Milk Lady of Bangalore which I too loved.

Another fun memoir is The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School set in Paris.

And while this is really a book about a family in Persia during the Islamic Revolution, food and family meals are a core part. To Keep the Sun Alive

Theresa wrote: "Pam wrote: "Thanks for all the list links! I saw a couple on there that I remember really loving at the time (enough that I still have them on my physical bookshelf, which I cut in half over the la..."

Oh that sounds promising. I feel like finding a new author with a large backlist is the ultimate dream :)

I've just thought of two more recommendations!
The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili (perfect for cold weather reading with a hot chocolate, but is a chunkster)
and
City of Thieves by David Benioff.

Theresa wrote: "YIPPEE! I was so hoping for food - though pretty sure that was going to be the choice.

I have several options sitting here vying for reading time. We'll see what gets my attention. No doubt many ..."

Thanks for recommending Andrea Penrose's series involving chocolate. I see I had the first oneSweet Revenge on my Want to Read since I enjoy the Wrexford & Sloane series.

Robin P wrote: "Theresa wrote: "YIPPEE! I was so hoping for food - though pretty sure that was going to be the choice.

I have several options sitting here vying for reading time. We'll see what gets my attention..."

I suspect you will love it. Unusual main characters and plotting. Opens with Lady Ariana undercover as a male chef in the kitchen of a member of the aristocracy... that's just the first pages.

I threw all of my points to Anthology because I have soooo many on my TBR. But Food was my second choice so still happy!

I plan to read Walking on Walnuts and also a few books from a few culinary cozy mystery series on my TBR.

A few more that have not already been mentioned ...

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones
The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan
The Wedding Officer: A Novel of Culinary Seduction by Anthony Capella

I second Joy’s recommendation for Search by Michelle Huneven. I found the book very insightful. It’s literary fiction plus food. The audio doesn’t include any recipes though. You’ll need the print book for those. Note - this book fits leadership too.

Other than Lager Queen, are there other books that fit 15 candles? Mod’s 5 star books?

What a wonderful tag on the heels of the holiday season!

I love city of thieves! I will never forget the treacherous hunt for the eggs!

Yay!

On my radar:
Nonfiction, about food or with food playing some large role:
Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol (really want to read this one!)
Salt: A World History
Crying in H Mart

Fiction, with food having some large role:
Sin Eater
Like Water for Chocolate
a food-centered romance (I'm sure I'll find something)

Woot woot! I'm going to try to read Stanley Tucci's memoir.

Jenni Elyse wrote: "Woot woot! I'm going to try to read Stanley Tucci's memoir."

I read his book earlier this year and absolutely loved it!

I'm not sure if you like audios, but he narrates his own book and I thought it really added something special to the experience.

I'll probably be sticking mostly to food themed cozy mysteries. A few on my list are:

Death by Dumpling
Buttercream Bump Off (fits the February candle)
Penne Dreadful
Carrot Cake Murder
The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship (not a cozy mystery)
Glazed Murder

Good Eats: The Early Years is my book for January for my Cookbook Club, so that is one I have. If I have time I will read
Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West

Sue wrote: "Jenni Elyse wrote: "Woot woot! I'm going to try to read Stanley Tucci's memoir."

I read his book earlier this year and absolutely loved it!

I'm not sure if you like audios, but he narrates his ow..."

Thanks for letting me know! I'll definitely try to get hold of the audiobook. :D

I’m thinking of reading City of Thieves and Black Cake for this tag. I think City of Thieves works for a couple of different candles as well.

Looks like there could be another buddy read for Black Cake! I think Holly and BooknBlues and I read it this year. That will test my memory skills.

And, it’s wonderful that you are reading about the guy immune connection.

Ann☕ wrote: "NancyJ wrote: "Has anyone read Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, or Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ ?

I've read [book:Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Und..."

Thanks Ann. That's good to know. I have it in my audible library, along with another book about autoimmune (and pain). I need a push to read many non-fiction and health books, so I'm putting some on my Subdue the Shelf list. I'll let the dice decide.