Book Nine: Cookoff

Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America, Amy Sutherland



Seriously, another two-plus weeks to read a book. I swear I'm still working toward my goal, but this past month has really seen me kind of sidetracked. I blame work, but Chris thinks it's all the American Idol I've been watching. It's true that watching American Idol is a serious time commitment, what with it being on about eighteen hours a week, but I think there are other factors involved. However, what I'm here to do is write about books I've been enjoying, not to discuss shitty reality TV, so moving on...

I think that this book came as a recommendation from Kyla way back when, and I've always kept it on my list of books to read. In fact, I'm pretty sure I checked it out from the library a year or so ago, but never got around to reading it back then. But I'm glad I did this time around because it was just what I wanted in a food book. Though, to be honest, the quality of the food in the book wasn't quite along the lines of what I usually enjoy. In a way I think this was more similar to Word Freak than any food book, which, if you care about these kinds of things, came out before Word Freak, so there's none of that copycat element to it. It captures the craziness of the competitive cooking world in that wonderful, long-article-in-the-New-Yorker kind of way. The only thing that was missing for me was pictures of all the regular contesters that Amy Sutherland writes about. Isn't that usually what you want to do when you read about real-life people, especially real life bordering on crazy people--see pictures of what these freaks look like?

I don't have much else to say about this book, other than it was a delightful--but maybe not quite so memorable--read. I feel, though, like I've been reading too much non-fiction lately, which usually isn't my style, so my next book (which I picked up last night right after I finished this) is nice, silly, good-time fiction. Yay!