Delicious Reads from December's Open Book Night
With the holidays at our doorstep, there’s one thing that’s sure to be on everyone’s mind: food! So naturally, this December we here at Mid-Manhattan decided to dedicate our monthly Open Book Night to a discussion of favorite food or cooking related books. We heard a variety of wonderful suggestions, from personal meditations on vegetarianism and excellent vegan cookbooks to sentimental cooking guides of yesteryear and novels with juicy plots that ruminate on the centrality of food in daily life. Read below to find some delicious books to savor after the holiday feasts are over!
The mood was jolly in the corner room, as we began our book social by discussing various culinary delights here in New York—one patron discussed her never-ending quest to find the perfect croissant here in Manhattan, and the various bakeries she’s tried in the area. New York City has a wealth of distinguished bakers and excellent bakeries. Check out this list of cookbooks filled with award-winning recipes by New York’s best celebrity bakers. For literary cookie recipes beloved by staff here at the Mid-Manhattan library, check out "Cookie Lit".
Joy, one of our book lovers at this month’s event, brought two lovely food-related books that carried a lot of sentimental value to her; one from her childhood, and one that has helped her to become an expert cook as an adult. The first was her copy of Better Homes’ Junior Cookbook, which she’s had since she was a kid. Originally published in 1963, her edition of the Junior Cookbook is filled with kitschy illustrations and easy recipes, like pancakes and cookies that are perfect for getting young people interested in learning the art cooking. Joy couldn’t emphasize enough just how much she loves to cook—her encouraging and enthusiastic words were enough to make any novice interested in playing in the kitchen. A more current cookbook perfect for young people interested in culinary pursuits is National Geographic’s Kids Cookbook, a colorful book filled with kid-friendly recipes for treats and healthy snacks.
Joy also brought a much larger tome, The Food of the Western World, a thorough and comprehensive volume that features helpful definitions of just about anything you could come across in the kitchen, supermarket, and beyond. The library has a wide ranging collection of food reference materials available online, notably The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, and the What’s on the Menu? collection of historical New York City menus.
Our next reader, Elizabeth, shared with us a book called Great Kitchens of the Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal, a new novel that reads much like a collection of short stories centered around a young, beautiful chef named Eva. Filled with foods (and people) both extraordinarily rare and comfortingly common, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is a fun and fast read that packs an emotionally intelligent punch. Each chapter’s title is a food item that is central to the characters and events in the chapters, so the first chapter, “lutefisk,” allowed us to put Joy’s encyclopedia to the test. Suffice it to say that unless you come from an ultra-traditional Scandinavian family, you won’t see this fermented fish dish at your holiday table!
Speaking of unusual recipes, another reader, Karon, who is a dedicated vegan, brought up one of her favorite cookbooks, Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen, a book of simple, fast, and easy recipes that enable busy people to eat healthy. Karon had a lot to say about the raw food movement, she described the details of some of the challenges (hard-to-find ingredients) and benefits (health, ethical rewards) of eating vegan and raw, and encouraged our room full of readers and eaters to give it a try. We even used our handy encyclopedia to look up her favorite vegan condiment, Natto, a savory slime made from fermented soybeans!
On a similar note, our next reader, Ginny, shared with the group Healing with Whole Foods, a guidebook for holistic eating that informs readers all about how to eat the right foods to keep your body at optimal health. She also prescribed a diet heavy in vegetables and light on meat. This book, which is inspired by traditional Asian cuisine, even offers advice on what to eat to heal your body, whether you’re suffering from a head cold or a more severe chronic disease.
All this talk about alternative eating brought up the broader subject of vegetarianism, and the ethics of eating meat. While we had both vegans and carnivores in the room we were able to have an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of both ways of eating, culminating in one reader’s suggestion of Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals, which respectfully weighs the sentimental value of traditional food that uses animal meat and other byproducts against the moral incentives for choosing a vegetarian or vegan way of life. This book, with its in-depth exploration of the warmth of family around holiday dinner tables (usually with a big turkey at the center), provides some excellent insight into the choice to become vegetarian, is a fitting read during the holidays and beyond.
In celebration of the New Year, next month’s theme for Open Book Night is “In With the New!” Join us in the corner room at 6 PM on Friday, January 8 with your favorite books about fresh starts and new beginnings. Is there a book that helped you explore or learn something new? Have you discovered a new author you’re dying to talk about? Are you reading the latest bestsellers? Come tell us about your favorite new reads!
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Past Open Book Nights
Click to see the list of books discussed.
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