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So I still haven't finished blogging the books I bought at Kalamazoo last May (and true to my vow, they're still sitting stacked on the coffee table in the living room waiting for me to do so). So perhaps it's time to attack the stacks (and stacks and stacks) of books purchased in the last year, starting with more recent items.
Omnivore Books is a foodie bookstore in San Francisco, carrying both new cookbooks and books on food and an enormous selection of used and antiquarian food-related books. They also host some great food-history lectures which never seem to be at a convenient time for me to attend. It's a bit of a trip to drop by casually (if I don't drive -- which I try to avoid in SF -- it involves about a 12-block walk from the nearest BART station). But I made the trip in December to look for a Christmas present and took the opportunity to poke around for books on French cuisine of an appropriate period for Alpennian background research. I've tracked down a couple of useful cookbooks in Google Books and other archive sources, but I was hoping for something a bit more analytical that might talk about dining habits, serving methods, meal structure, and whatnot, rather than just having recipes and maybe sample menus.
Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. 2004. Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-24323-0
This is very much an academic study of the meaning and uses of "cuisine" as a phenomenon, specifically using the example France from the later 18th century to modern times. There's a great deal of interesting information tucked away in it, but the theory-heavy writing style makes it less accessible that it might be (and a bit tedious to read). Some of the useful/interesting observations cover things like the increasing democratization of culinary literature, the shift in the focus of haute cuisine from private upper class spectacles to a more public "restaurant culture" participated in by a wider variety of classes, and the perpetuation of a stereotype of female "cooks" and male "chefs".
Aresty, Esther B. 1980. The Exquisite Table: A History of French Cuisine. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis. ISBN 0-672-52307-8
A tour through about three centuries of formal French cuisine through the lens of three "celebrity chefs" representing each age: La Varenne, Carême, and Escoffier. The text doesn't focus entirely on these three but they are used to represent different eras/movements. A very readable narrative style, packed with tidbits, quotations, and name-dropping, and copiously illustrated with contemporary images. There is a brief section with sample recipes at the end: not enough to do any serious cooking, but sufficient to illustrate some of the key features.
By an odd quirk of fate, two of my favorite bookstores have ended up literally next door to each other in an otherwise out-of-the-way corner of El Cerrito. I'd actually meant to pick up a special order at the Other Change of Hobbit, but they were delayed in opening and I went into Hackenberg Books to kill some time. Hackenberg specializes in second-hand scholarly, academic, and specialty books. I've been a major fan since they were located in downtown Berkeley, though my bank balance is happier that they're a bit more off the beaten path. One of my purchases was an ethical imperative (I require myself to buy print copies of any book I've considered useful enough to photocopy, when I run across it) and the other was more novel background research.
Smith, A. H. 1987. English Place-Name Elements (A-Iw). Cambridge University Pres, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-04918-0
Smith, A. H. 1987. English Place-Name Elements (part 2 Jafn-Ytri). Cambridge University Pres, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-04919-9
A companion publication to the extensive series of English Place-Name Society publications cataloging British place-names by county. An index of linguistic elements appearing in both simple and compound place-names with citations of their occurrence. This was a key go-to reference for me back in my SCA consulting herald days. Given that I don't spend much time at all on that activity these days, this really was more of an ethical imperative than a practical purchase.
Rubens, Alfred. 1967. History of Jewish Costume. Funk & Wagnalls, New York.
I haven't made a big deal out of it, but in plotting out the next half dozen Alpennian novels, I've become committed to filling Alpennia with an appropriately diverse population, which means tracking down a lot of sociological and material culture details that won't necessarily be found in the standard references. One of the prominent secondary characters in my current work-in-progress (The Mystic Marriage) is Jewish and she's been good "training wheels" for researching non-default characters. Rubens' book goes far beyond my immediate needs, covering a much vaster territory (not only Europe but the entirety of northern Africa, the Middle East and all the way across India to China) and time-scope (Biblical times up through the 19th century). The essential information that I needed boiled down to "by the early 19th century, reform communities in western Europe wore pretty much up-to-the minute fashions except on ceremonial occasions". But the book is a useful resource to have on my shelves in any case.
Omnivore Books is a foodie bookstore in San Francisco, carrying both new cookbooks and books on food and an enormous selection of used and antiquarian food-related books. They also host some great food-history lectures which never seem to be at a convenient time for me to attend. It's a bit of a trip to drop by casually (if I don't drive -- which I try to avoid in SF -- it involves about a 12-block walk from the nearest BART station). But I made the trip in December to look for a Christmas present and took the opportunity to poke around for books on French cuisine of an appropriate period for Alpennian background research. I've tracked down a couple of useful cookbooks in Google Books and other archive sources, but I was hoping for something a bit more analytical that might talk about dining habits, serving methods, meal structure, and whatnot, rather than just having recipes and maybe sample menus.
Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. 2004. Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-24323-0
This is very much an academic study of the meaning and uses of "cuisine" as a phenomenon, specifically using the example France from the later 18th century to modern times. There's a great deal of interesting information tucked away in it, but the theory-heavy writing style makes it less accessible that it might be (and a bit tedious to read). Some of the useful/interesting observations cover things like the increasing democratization of culinary literature, the shift in the focus of haute cuisine from private upper class spectacles to a more public "restaurant culture" participated in by a wider variety of classes, and the perpetuation of a stereotype of female "cooks" and male "chefs".
Aresty, Esther B. 1980. The Exquisite Table: A History of French Cuisine. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis. ISBN 0-672-52307-8
A tour through about three centuries of formal French cuisine through the lens of three "celebrity chefs" representing each age: La Varenne, Carême, and Escoffier. The text doesn't focus entirely on these three but they are used to represent different eras/movements. A very readable narrative style, packed with tidbits, quotations, and name-dropping, and copiously illustrated with contemporary images. There is a brief section with sample recipes at the end: not enough to do any serious cooking, but sufficient to illustrate some of the key features.
By an odd quirk of fate, two of my favorite bookstores have ended up literally next door to each other in an otherwise out-of-the-way corner of El Cerrito. I'd actually meant to pick up a special order at the Other Change of Hobbit, but they were delayed in opening and I went into Hackenberg Books to kill some time. Hackenberg specializes in second-hand scholarly, academic, and specialty books. I've been a major fan since they were located in downtown Berkeley, though my bank balance is happier that they're a bit more off the beaten path. One of my purchases was an ethical imperative (I require myself to buy print copies of any book I've considered useful enough to photocopy, when I run across it) and the other was more novel background research.
Smith, A. H. 1987. English Place-Name Elements (A-Iw). Cambridge University Pres, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-04918-0
Smith, A. H. 1987. English Place-Name Elements (part 2 Jafn-Ytri). Cambridge University Pres, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-04919-9
A companion publication to the extensive series of English Place-Name Society publications cataloging British place-names by county. An index of linguistic elements appearing in both simple and compound place-names with citations of their occurrence. This was a key go-to reference for me back in my SCA consulting herald days. Given that I don't spend much time at all on that activity these days, this really was more of an ethical imperative than a practical purchase.
Rubens, Alfred. 1967. History of Jewish Costume. Funk & Wagnalls, New York.
I haven't made a big deal out of it, but in plotting out the next half dozen Alpennian novels, I've become committed to filling Alpennia with an appropriately diverse population, which means tracking down a lot of sociological and material culture details that won't necessarily be found in the standard references. One of the prominent secondary characters in my current work-in-progress (The Mystic Marriage) is Jewish and she's been good "training wheels" for researching non-default characters. Rubens' book goes far beyond my immediate needs, covering a much vaster territory (not only Europe but the entirety of northern Africa, the Middle East and all the way across India to China) and time-scope (Biblical times up through the 19th century). The essential information that I needed boiled down to "by the early 19th century, reform communities in western Europe wore pretty much up-to-the minute fashions except on ceremonial occasions". But the book is a useful resource to have on my shelves in any case.
