Recent Reading

Here are some books I've read recently. Writing reviews would be challenging, and I just don't feel like it! The fiction has some really great food descriptions, so I've put in one quote for each novel to give you the flavor. 

I found Mark Bittman's Animal, Vegetable, Junk
to be disappointing. I just didn't learn enough.

The Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths
are fun to read. This is the third in a long series.
I wrote about first two novels here and here.

"Ruth is reminded of a public school (which is surprising as she went to a plate-glass comprehensive). She can almost smell the school lunch—cabbage and overcooked lamb." (Elly Griffiths. The House at Sea's End  p. 31).   

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a book about grief.
I found it both wonderful (especially about food) and unbearably sad.

"Inside the dining room were heavy stone-top tables, each equipped with a hardwood charcoal grill. Nami slipped the waitress twenty thousand won, and our table quickly filled with the most exquisite banchan. Sweet pumpkin salad, gelatinous mung-bean jelly topped with sesame seeds and scallions, steamed egg custard, delicate bowls of nabak kimchi, wilted cabbage and radish in salty, rose-colored water. We finished the meal with naengmyeon, cold noodles you could order bibim, mixed with gochujang, or mul, served in a cold beef broth. I chose the latter." (Michelle Zauner. Crying in H Mart, p. 203.)   

Another sad book: A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling.  

"But more than that, you were a tall, imposing figure, with a physique derived from beef, eggs, butter, and cheese, where our stomachs only knew porridge, radishes, and salted fish all year-round. A wall separated you from the Chinese students, a wall called English." (Zhang Ling. A Single Swallow, p. 230.)