FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This week's New York Times Book Review is devoted to cookbooks and books about food.

I especially liked the symposium about famous foodies' favorite out-of-print books.

The books noted in the review which most intrigued me, the most interesting last, follow...

My Life In France, by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme seems like one of those books I think I'd like to read if I didn't have a few other obsessions I'm more willing to spend time with.

Two For The Road has gotten quite a bit of press. I won't hold that against it-- I may leaf through it in the book store.

The Nasty Bits, by Anthony Bourdain. I really enjoyed Kitchen Confidential but I'm kind of over Bourdain right now. I might read one or two of the essays in the book in the store but I'm not sure I'd buy it.

Insatiable, Tales From a Life of Delicious Excess,' by Gael Greene, the former New York magazine restaurant critic's look back at her life in food. The whole hidden face under the hat thing really bugs me but it might be good to round out my understanding of a critic's perspective. I'll probably buy it and put it on my shelf for a while.

Horsemen of The Esophagus, by Ryan Nerz. As a kid I laughed myself silly during the mass vomiting blueberry pie scene in Stand By Me. Then a few years ago when I watched a few programs about competitive eating and learned the names of some of the players on the competitive circuit, Takeru Kobayashi, Cookie Jarvis, Sonya Thomas (the Black Widow), and Eric Booker, ever since then I've been vaguely following their exploits. I could probably sit down and read a book about a year on the competitive eating circuit.

Heat, by Bill Buford, the former fiction editor of The New Yorker who worked in Mario Batali's restaurant, Babbo.