Reading Wednesday
Jan. 21st, 2015 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari, trans. Beth Archer Brombert. A nonfiction book on food in the Medieval period – mostly in Italy, but with some attention to the rest of Europe as well. This is an academic book on the meaning and symbolism of food, so there's no actual recipes, but that's fine; I'm really interested in the topic of how food can mark various categories of status – class, region, religion – and how these meanings can change over time. Unfortunately, the first few chapters of the book are taken up with much more abstract theorizing (how can historians trust their sources? what does taste or flavor even mean, really? food is sort of like language, in this super-elaborate metaphor that adds nothing to the discussion but needs to be explained in every detail), but once Montanari actually turns to his main subject, the book is fascinating. Food could say a lot about who you were as a person (or, more accurately, who you wanted to be perceived as), and not just the main dish, but little elements like what sort of fat it was cooked in: olive oil, butter, or lard? And even then, what kind of lard: pig? goose? cattle? Each conveyed different aspects of social identities, and that's even before getting into the problem of foods prohibited or stipulated by the Church on Lent and other days. I loved details like how butter went from being considered a very barbaric food by the Romans, who wouldn't even eat it but used it only for ointments, to the basis of the fanciest haute cuisine. Did you know that before tomatoes were introduced into Italy, pasta was typically eaten with butter, grated cheese (so far, so good...), sugar, and cinnamon (ugh!)?
Overall, a great book, once you get past the first three chapters.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Finding Emilie by Laurel Corona. One of the things I want to do with my reading in 2015 is attempt to reduce the massive pile of unread books I currently own (the physical books, specifically. I also own a massive pile of unread ebooks, but they take up less space on my shelves), and this is the first one in that effort. I am very easily persuaded to buy any book that can be summarized as "woman in historical period has romantic and intellectual adventures", and this one is part of that genre. Finding Emilie, to be specific, is about a young woman, noble but not particularly wealthy, in France in the 1760s.
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari, trans. Beth Archer Brombert. A nonfiction book on food in the Medieval period – mostly in Italy, but with some attention to the rest of Europe as well. This is an academic book on the meaning and symbolism of food, so there's no actual recipes, but that's fine; I'm really interested in the topic of how food can mark various categories of status – class, region, religion – and how these meanings can change over time. Unfortunately, the first few chapters of the book are taken up with much more abstract theorizing (how can historians trust their sources? what does taste or flavor even mean, really? food is sort of like language, in this super-elaborate metaphor that adds nothing to the discussion but needs to be explained in every detail), but once Montanari actually turns to his main subject, the book is fascinating. Food could say a lot about who you were as a person (or, more accurately, who you wanted to be perceived as), and not just the main dish, but little elements like what sort of fat it was cooked in: olive oil, butter, or lard? And even then, what kind of lard: pig? goose? cattle? Each conveyed different aspects of social identities, and that's even before getting into the problem of foods prohibited or stipulated by the Church on Lent and other days. I loved details like how butter went from being considered a very barbaric food by the Romans, who wouldn't even eat it but used it only for ointments, to the basis of the fanciest haute cuisine. Did you know that before tomatoes were introduced into Italy, pasta was typically eaten with butter, grated cheese (so far, so good...), sugar, and cinnamon (ugh!)?
Overall, a great book, once you get past the first three chapters.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Finding Emilie by Laurel Corona. One of the things I want to do with my reading in 2015 is attempt to reduce the massive pile of unread books I currently own (the physical books, specifically. I also own a massive pile of unread ebooks, but they take up less space on my shelves), and this is the first one in that effort. I am very easily persuaded to buy any book that can be summarized as "woman in historical period has romantic and intellectual adventures", and this one is part of that genre. Finding Emilie, to be specific, is about a young woman, noble but not particularly wealthy, in France in the 1760s.
