Reviews for The Gastronomica Reader

The average rating for The Gastronomica Reader based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-03-11 00:00:00 Kjl Shh I love reading in bed and I love eating in bed. So I thought reading in bed about eating would be heavenly. Not so! This book is very heavy and large. But I am grateful that our public library has purchased such a handsome volume. I read it at the breakfast table.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-07 00:00:00 Ghada El Sayed Had to return this to the ILL dept so I didn't finish the last section, and skipped some essays that started to drag, but there's a couple of really outstanding, strong pieces near the beginning and end - thinking in particular of, well, everything in The Family Table section - Delicacy by Paul Russell, The Unbearable Lightness of Wartime Cuisine by a. marin, One Year and a Day: A Recipe for Gumbo and Mouring by James Nolan, and there were some truly horrifying illustrations in the piece about Dieting in the culture of American Evangelical Christianity. The interview with Clarence Jones, a 92 year old rice farmer and former sharecropper, was really good. About half were very stilted in their writing, especially the pieces about works of art, and perhaps I shouldn't have read the introduction from the editor because they really set expectations high. 50/50 is a pretty good ratio for a collection of essays, though. Just as in food, people like what they like.