Linda

This was definitely a trainwreck book. I won't say I didn't enjoy it, because obviously I finished it, but it was a sort of perverse curiosity enjoyment. This is the sort of romance novel people who hate romance novels indicate to argue their point about it being a blighted genre.

One of the funniest and best books about eating and restaurants and our pathos about knowing who the New York Times food critic is in the world.

Creepy and atmospheric and taught me more about foot fetishism than I ever needed to know.

Third in the Material World series, as far as I'm concerned, only this time it's about how people eat and interact with food and how all of that is changing. The profiles of the two families in China – one in rural, one in Beijing – are startlingly telling, and so were the profiles of the English and American families. I never get sick of looking at what people are eating or how they cook it, and what it says about people to see how they consume.