Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature Book

I was excited to read this book because I'm a big fan of "The Beginning of Wisdom" and I also like his collection on courtship and marriage ("Wing to wing, oar to oar" - with his wife, Amy Kass) but I found this book to be, while centered on one theme, a bit all over the place. His writing is always beautiful, and always enjoyable, but here, I felt like he was trying to fit various random ideas in philosophy into one theme, not matter how much he had to push the fit. Sometimes it works (I enjoyed some of his pieces in the chapter entitled "Host and Cannibal" - ie on food and hospitality, and understanding the stranger") but sometimes it didn't (I couldn't get on board with the whole conversation on form and material being and how he tried to get it to be tied to eating in Chapter I.) Maybe I'm biased, but I really really enjoyed the pieces involving biblical analysis - ie the laying out of how "the expulsion from the garden is coupled with a shift from fruit to bread" - (p211)and showing the development of man's relationship with different types of eating throughout the book of Genesis. When I read, it's usually for enjoyment but also with an eye towards usable pieces for class - and I think the entire last chapter on "Sanctified Eating" was great.
Again, the writing is beautiful - it's a worthwhile read - I just found myself skipping through a bit to look for the gems.