Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.

– Arnold Lobel

I am currently reading The Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson. The jacket and reviews on Amazon.COM make it sound like an interesting, off-beat book, so I am curious to see how it develops. The first several chapters have captured my attention already. I hope the rest of the book is as engaging.

I recently started reading Charcuterie & French Pork Cookery by Jane Grigson, originally published in 1967. It is both an interesting historical document and an excellent introduction to charcuterie. The recipes are classics and, while rather uncomplicated by today’s standards, still yield excellent results.

I am reading it because a chef-friend of mine is opening a new place this year, and she’s very interested in preparing charcuterie in-house and has invited me to assist them in getting up and running.

I am currently reading THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by Kevin Brockmeier. The Publisher’s Weekly describes it as:

Starred Review. A deadly virus has spread rapidly across Earth, effectively cutting off wildlife specialist Laura Byrd at her crippled Antarctica research station from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the planet’s dead populate “the city,” located on a surreal Earth-like alternate plane, but their afterlives depend on the memories of the living, such as Laura, back on home turf. Forced to cross the frozen tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best friend from childhood, a blind man she’d met in the street, her former journalism professor and her parents. Brockmeier (The Truth About Celia) follows all of them with sympathy, from their initial, bewildered arrival in the city to their attempts to construct new lives. He meditates throughout on memory’s power and resilience, and gives vivid shape to the city, a place where a giraffe’s spots might detach and hover about a street conversation among denizens. He simultaneously keeps the stakes of Laura’s struggle high: as she fights for survival, her parents find a second chance for love—but only if Laura can keep them afloat. Other subplots are equally convincing and reflect on relationships in a beautiful, delicate manner; the book seems to say that, in a way, the virus has already arrived. (Feb.)
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It’s very interesting so far, but I am admittedly not very deep into the book yet.

I am reading THE SUPPER OF THE LAMB by Robert Farrar Capon. My friend Mary W suggested it to me, and I trust her taste in books so much that I ordered the book (and somehow ended up with two copies) sight-unseen. If the first 15 pages are any indication, I am going to enjoy this book very much! The author’s gentle tone and easy sense of humor left me wishing I had more time to read it this afternoon! Here are some excerpts from reviews posted on Amazon.COM:

It is a book about food, spirituality, ferial and festial cooking (ferial being cooking done with leftovers; festial being the type of cooking that creates leftovers), and reflections on life and reality. Worth buying simply for his devotional reflection on the beauties of an onion. There is obviously tongue-in-cheek here, but there is also great spiritual depth. The theme of ferial cooking is transferred to a kind of manifesto on ferial living. Capon sees food, and life as well, through a lens of wonder. Capon’s book is really a recipe for living life more fully. To read this fine book is like sitting on a stool in Capon’s kitchen, listening to this old-school master talk (as he slow-cooks) on subjects as diverse as onions, knives, wine, love, dinner parties, and baking soda.

It thrills me to know that Capon has several other books about food as well, so if this turns out as well as I am hoping, I have more of his works to enjoy!

To be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

– Robertson Davies

A couple friends and I are working our way through House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This is the predecessor of ONLY REVOLUTIONS, which I attempted to read a couple books back and failed to finish. House of Leaves is, itself, a difficult book, but it is an engrossing story very deftly told.

YOU SUCK is a follow-up to BLOODSUCKING FIENDS that Mr. Moore has written at the request of his readers. I’m only 80 pages in and have laughed out loud several times already.

I am currently reading The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steven Rinella. It’s sort of a road book meets hunting book meets culinary book, and it’s fun. Mr. Rinella’s activities as he tries to collect ingredients to re-create a 3-day, 45-course meal from Le Guide Culinaire are very entertaining.

I decided to put down ONLY REVOLUTIONS for the time being. Though I was enjoying the book, I was struggling with it because this period of time is so busy with the holidays and my busiest time at work. I kept losing the thread of the book because I wasn’t able to devote the time and attention this book demands and deserves. I will get back to it once things calm down, and will start with SAM’S side this time, as it seems the more logical place to begin.

So, I’ve put it down in favor of GASTRONAUT by Stefan Gates. Gates is an “epicurean desperado”, willing to cook and eat anything — at least once. After all, he argues, if we eat 22 tons of food over our lifetimes and use 16% of our waking lives preparing food, shouldn’t we try for the occasional “culinary epiphany” by maximizing our “excitement-to-mastication ratio”?

I like the light tone of this book. It’s interesting reading and going quickly, so I will soon have to decide what to read next…