“Food fiction” is a broad genre that can include nuances of other categories such as humor, mystery, romance, history, self-reflection, etc. The list is endless. As a foodie, I’m always interested to see how an author can weave food or cooking into a fictional narrative. Sometimes it can be subtle touches, such as the celebrity food truck chef featured in The Chef by James Patterson, and other times a novel or memoir can totally revolve around the topic of food, such as the underbelly view of the restaurant industry in Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler.
In other cases, a specific restaurant or food setting can be a grounding location for a book’s characters, such as The Little French Bistro by Nina George. Or a certain recipe or type of food can feature prominently in both the title and the storyline, such as Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi or Sourdough by Robin Sloan. Memoirs are also a popular way to integrate food and memories into a story, such as Stealing Buddha’s Dinner: A Memoir by Bich Minh Hguyen.
All of these books and many more can be found in the Carr Recreational Reading Collection. To search for other books with food or other topics in their title or description, click on the link to browse all available titles in the Recreational Reading Collection. Then use the “Remember all filters” function in the sidebar to save your filters and add more search terms in the search box, such as food, cooking, chef, restaurant, etc. If you find one you like, please drop me a line! Rebecca.diamond@rutgers.edu. And also, please let us know if there’s a book you would like to read but it is not in the collection – we will add it to our wish list. Happy reading!