research, quoi.

Something odd has been going on chez moi. And by "chez moi," I mean the chez-est "chez" can be. I don't think I would've noticed it had I not felt so self-conscious every time I pay a visit to the chiropractor and observe people observing me. The other maimed folks in the waiting room look at me, and then squint to see what book I'm gripping in my paws. And then Dr. Dexter calls me into his laboratory of voodoo and, seeing my book cover, says "but you're still set on Turkey, huh?"

The thing is - the last three books I've read have been blatantly about France. Non-fictional France. Two of them entirely food related, and the other inclusive but not limited to food. What have I become? And why am I drawn to these absolutely brilliant though highly specific books? I read fiction, damnit. I like to read about people and places that aren't real. And food? Why would I read about food when I could just eat it instead?

I blame work. For two reasons. Well, one really. I can't count how many books I've touched in the last six months. Probably tens of thousands of individual volumes and thousands of different titles. I put every single book in place when the store moved in January, and then I got to rearrange them at least twice after that. Since then I've unpacked I don't know how many hundreds of boxes from publishers and distribution centers and authors. I've ripped covers off of old editions and seen books NAKED. (It is a sad, sorry, somber sight, by the way. It feels totally wrong.) And yet books never seem any less special or precious to me. I'm often struck at just how shitty some books are and still manage to be published, but hey. That just means there might be a chance for me one day. By and large, I am still so curious about new titles, and actively excited when we get something unusual or cool.

Unfortunately (and here's the clincher,) bookstore employees aren't really supposed to read the books they sell. At least not at work they're not. Because if you're reading - get this - you're not working. You are, in fact, actively shirking your duties of unpacking boxes, ticking things off of lists, entering them into the computer, and shelving the new arrivals. I.e. robotics. So if your boss is around, you have to SNEAK READING. Don't even get me started on how this makes it very difficult to honestly recommend a book to a customer when you haven't read any of them.

Anyway. This weirdly makes books even cooler, and makes reading them kind of naughty and exciting. Not in a sexy librarian way. Just in a "I'd like to educate myself thank you very much" way. So one day I saw a title on the "ship back to the publisher" list (the paper back edition had finally come out) and after reading the dust jacket, thought I would spare it from its pulpy, recycled fate. This book was "Au Revoir To All That: The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine" by Michael Steinberger. And if you haven't read it, go buy it now. Or get it from the library. It's awesome. Because more than discussing how Camembert has drastically changed since pasteurization and thermisation, and how A.O.C. wine labels mean next to nothing now, Steinberger does a really incredible job of pinpointing how food in France is related to everything else in France. Politics, economics, social structures, ethnic minorities, globalization. He also writes a lot about Michelin and the infamous Guide Rouge. Which we sell at the big DL. A lot. He talks about how food came to be something more than sustenance, and how food and sex and ego are much the same. Could a book be more interesting?

Only if it were called "The Fruit Hunters" and talked about octogenarian virgin fruitarians. (See last June.) Which is one of my favorite books of all time. Let's just get that straight right now. I read it a year ago and think about it all the time, still.

Food is interesting to me. We eat it. We love it. We need it. And it controls us - even if we try our hardest to ignore it. Whether we appreciate it or loathe it, it controls us to some degree. That's wild. As my great epiphany of January 2010 revealed to me, the French are particularly genius at exploring that relationship, and celebrating it with beauty and elegance. For all their faults, I think the French understand appetite better than the rest of us - that is: hunger, thirst, lust, craving. Desire, perhaps. Their aesthetics are playful and intimate, and they know how to make life satisfying. They know how to turn toast into something pretty and fulfilling and artful. And I want to know how to do that too. So I've been reading, and learning, and listening. I've also been laughing a lot, since the last three books I've read have been hilarious, and not always very gentle.

Reading list:
Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger
The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
Stuff Parisians Like by Olivier Magny

*now reading concurrently Good Bread Is Back: A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It Is Made, and the People Who Make It by Stephen Laurence Kaplan, and An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K Fisher by Anne Zimmerman. Good Bread is Back is, amazingly, not a joke. I first heard about Stephen Kaplan on TV and then had the extreme pleasure of reading about him in Au Revoir wherein he describes a bread to the author as "as good as Brigitte Bardot's ass" or something absurd like that. The second book was actually almost literally dropped into my lap by a friend at work who knows the author. M.F.K. Fisher was (I'm learning) the mother of food writing, if you're not counting Proust. She discovered her obsession for food in... Dijon, France.

See? France is everywhere. It's not just me. I swear.