Reading Ideas: Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Essays

Note that I haven’t read most of these, and this is just a sampling of options. I compiled it by referencing Amazon listmania lists and the most recent bestsellers. The possibilities are endless!

Can you recommend any other great memoirs or essay collections revolving around food?

• A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp
• As They Were by M.F.K. Fisher
• Between Bites: Memoirs of a Hungry Hedonist by James Villas
• Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey
• Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris by Clotilde Dusoulier
• Comfort Food for Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl by Marusya Bociurkiw
• Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life by Michael Lee West
• Don’t Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World’s Greatest Chefs by Kimberly Witherspoon
• Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life by Mimi Sheraton
• Fair Shares for All: A Memoir of Family and Food by John Haney
• Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater by Alan Richman
• French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle
• Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece by Patricia Volonakis Davis
• Heartburn by Nora Ephron
• Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford
• In My Mother’s Kitchen: 25 Writers on Love, Cooking, and Family by Various
• Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess by Gael Greene
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food by Moira Hodgson
• Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
• Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) by Anthony Bourdain
• Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy by Michael Tucker
• Miriam’s Kitchen: A Memoir by Elizabeth Ehrlich
• Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball by Molly O’Neill
• My Kitchen Wars by Betty Fussell
• My Life in France by Julia Child
• Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef’s Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal by Gillian Clark
• Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food Writer by Jeannette Ferrary
• Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith
• Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food by Bonnie Marranca
• Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl
• The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin
• The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher
• The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8 Lee
• The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America by Michael Ruhlman
• The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture by Edvige Guinta
• The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love,… by Kathleen Flinn
• The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s most Glorious and Perplexing City by David Lebovitz
• Toast by Nigel Slater
• What We Eat When We Eat Alone: Stories and 100 Recipes by Deborah Madison (Author), Patrick McFarlin (Author)
• Women Who Eat: A New Generation on the Glory of Food (Live Girls Series) by Leslie Miller