Books About Food Staff Picks (11/29/23)

This holiday season, we’re recommending books about food to satisfy any appetite. Read on to see which titles we’re eating up!

AMANDA’S PICK: PIGLET BY LOTTIE HAZELL

This is a debut novel about one modern woman’s appetites and ambitions. She’s a cookbook editor with a great life and great fiance, who loves the elaborate meals she’s always cooking. But a betrayal two weeks before the wedding leaves her torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what you know you deserve. PIGLET is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us. Fans of Sloane Crosley’s CULT CLASSIC and Melissa Broder’s MILK FED will devour this book club gold novel.

Available for download on Edelweiss and NetGalley. LibraryReads votes due by February 1st.

EMILY’S PICK: OUR CURSED LOVE BY JULIE ABE

If you’re looking for a book with a sweet romance, a touch of magic, and lots of delicious food, look no further than OUR CURSED LOVE! Remy Kobata and Cam Yasuda have been best friends for their whole lives, but Remy is also secretly in love with Cam. When she decides to reveal her feelings during a school trip to Japan (with the help of a love potion), things go awry. The potion has made Cam forget who Remy is, and if Remy can’t help him remember her by midnight on New Year’s Eve, they’ll both be cursed to forget each other forever. As Remy and Cam travel through Tokyo, trying to rediscover Cam’s memories (and making some new ones), they eat all sorts of scrumptious treats, like souffle pancakes, crepes, sushi, ice cream, and Japanese KFC. You’ll love rooting for Remy and Cam as they eat their way through Tokyo and find their way to each other’s hearts.

Available for download on Edelweiss and NetGalley.

MICHELLE’S PICK: RUIN THEIR CROPS ON THE GROUND: AMERICA’S POLITICS OF FOOD, FROM THE TRAIL OF TEARS TO SCHOOL LUNCH BY ANDREA FREEMAN

This is the first and definitive history of the use of food in American law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control. In 1789, to subjugate Indigenous tribes, George Washington ordered his troops to “ruin their crops on the ground and prevent them planting more.” Destroying sources of food is just one way that the United States has used nourishment as a political tool.

In an epic, sweeping account, Andrea Freeman moves from missions to Americanize immigrant food culture to the commodities supplied to Native reservations to USDA nutrition programs to milk as a symbol of white nationalism. She traces the long-standing alliances between Washington and the food and agricultural industries that have produced gaping racial health disparities. And she shows how these practices continue to this day, in the form of marketing for unhealthy subsidized goods that target communities of color, causing diabetes, high blood pressure, and even premature death. This will permanently upend the notion that we freely and equally choose what we put on our plates.

Available for download on Edelweiss and NetGalley. LibraryReads votes due by June 1st.