Books for foodies: bound to please

I'm an insatiable eater and an insatiable reader: one who finds as much pleasure with a fork in my hand as I do with a book in my lap. For the like-minded, reading about eating can be as inviting as sharing a home-roasted chicken or as fabulous as a four-course meal at a four-star restaurant.

Having eaten my way through a stack of terrific new food- and restaurant-related books this year, I've come across these great reads, worthy of a place on your gift-giving list.

Julia Child's televised chicken-dropping incident is nothing next to the trials and tribulations described in "Don't Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs" (Bloomsbury, $24.95).

These not-so-haute horror stories, edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman, offer brief essays from the likes of Spain's Ferran Adria; England's Fergus Henderson; Armandino and Marilyn Batali's boy, Mario; and Seattle's own Tom Douglas and Tamara Murphy.

"Don't Try This at Home" is a must for chefs and rabid celebrity chef-watchers, but best read in short bursts (thanks to an overdose of tales describing the difficulties of out-of-house catering gigs), with a tin ear toward the salty language of the restaurant kitchen.

Steven Shaw is the food-obsessed founder of (and a loquacious mouthpiece at) eGullet.com. In "Turning the Tables: Restaurants from the Inside Out" (HarperCollins, $24.95), Shaw turns his hungry eye on his favorite subject: restaurants.

What's in it for you from the well-fed lawyer-turned-culinary-scribe whose Web site pseudonym is "The Fat Guy"? Plenty, beginning with his opening chapter "Getting What You Want," with tips on securing tough-to-get reservations and getting a better table once you're in. With each successive chapter he goes behind the scenes tailing waiters, chefs, fishmongers and meatpackers, talking with cheesemongers, winemakers and restaurateurs, impressing throughout on the ways individual effort makes the difference between an average restaurant experience and an incredible one.

What, exactly, do you eat in a year? And what would it look like if you, say, photographed it all for posterity? In "Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth" (Chronicle, $14.95), Tucker Shaw (no relation to Steven, above) focused the lens of his Canon Elph on every single thing he ate in 2004. Absurd? You bet, but this 365-day pictorial of — literally — everything he ate, is as fun (deep-fried Mars Bars) as it is funny, as familiar (309 bowls of cereal) as it is fascinating.

Big on visuals but sparse on annotation, Shaw adheres to a formula of date, time, description and place, letting his photo-gallery speak (burp!) for itself. Those wondering what the former New York City-based writer is eating these days can keep up with his diet and his latest career move at www.DenverPost.com. He recently scored a new job as the Denver Post's restaurant critic.

Like "Everything I Ate," "Hungry Planet: What the World Eats" (Material World Books/Ten Speed Press, $40) takes the photographic approach, inviting you into the homes (and crowded refugee camps and rustic cooking huts) of 30 families in 24 countries — each posed with a week's worth of sustenance.

If I were to buy one book this year to gift to my food-focused friends, it would be this astonishing piece of photo-journalism, courtesy of photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio. Their "Hungry Planet" provides an honest look — both literarily and photographically — of life lived around the world, viewed through the foods we eat.

These photos could easily stand alone. But coupled with the stories told by D'Aluisio, statistical breakdowns of each family's food expenditures, family recipes and essays from a handful of talented contributors (including Michael Pollan and Corby Kummer), "Hungry Planet" is brain-food of the first order. (See our review of "Hungry Planet" and information about the authors' upcoming appearance > Friday in Ticket.)

It's my habit to read as many food magazines and newspaper food sections as I can get my hands on, as well as Web sites, newsletters and the latest food-centric books published each year. For less compulsive foodies, there's always "Best Food Writing 2005" (Marlowe & Co., $15.95), vetted by editor Holly Hughes.

I love knowing that Hughes rejoiced in many of my favorite reads this year, binding the following between the covers of her book: Gabrielle Hamilton's "Killing Dinner" (from the New Yorker), Pete Wells' "The Pantry Forager " (Food & Wine), Diana Abu-Jaber's "Eat it While it's Hot" (excerpted from her delicious memoir "The Language of Baklava") and John T. Edge's "A Sonnet in Two Birds" (plucked from "Fried Chicken: An American Story").

But it's even more exciting to come across great stuff that I missed. Like Rebecca Skloot's "Two Americas, Two Restaurants, One Town" (a must-read from the New York Times Magazine) and Brett Anderson's "It's to Die For" (on the health hazards of restaurant criticism, from the New Orleans Times-Picayune).

In addition to the above-mentioned books, allow me to put in a good word once again for several gift-worthies discussed in this column throughout the year:

For the wannabe food-writer: "Will Write for Food" by Dianne Jacob (Marlowe & Co., $15.95).

For the sushi fanatic: "Samurai Sushi" by Bobby Suetsugu (Barnes & Noble, $9.95).

For Ruth Reichl fans: "Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Restaurant Critic" by Ruth Reichl (Penguin Press, $24.95).

For anyone who doesn't own the a copy of an earlier version of the classic: "The Unprejudiced Palate" by Angelo Pellegrini (Modern Library Food, $13.95).

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or taste@seattletimes.com. See more columns at seattletimes.com/nancyleson