The Books canon

Sourced and shelved.

Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.

Honey from a Weed

1986 · 374 pages

Gray gave up an editor's job for stone quarries in Tuscany, Catalonia, Naxos, and Apulia, cooking wild greens, snails, and game over wood fires and setting down a Mediterranean already disappearing.

★ 5.3

A Book of Middle Eastern Food

1968 · 513 pages

Egypt expelled its Jews after Suez, and Roden, exiled in London, collected recipes from displaced Sephardi and Arab families and the histories behind them. English-speaking kitchens learned hummus, tabbouleh, and mezze from her.

★ 5.3

The Art of Eating

1954 · 784 pages

Fisher wrote about oysters, wartime rationing, and eating alone, and made food a way of writing about hunger of every kind. The poet W.H. Auden said nobody in America wrote better prose.

★ 7.0