‘Tis the season to start holiday shopping, and The Writer’s Table: Famous Authors and Their Favourite Recipes makes the perfect gift for all your foodie friends.
What’s The Writer’s Table: Famous Authors and Their Favourite Recipes about?
As a food blogger, book blogger, and writer, I’m pretty much the perfect audience for The Writer’s Table. This short nonfiction book combines my love of literature and food into a delectable little read. Author Valerie Stivers covers the eating-while-writing habits, dining and entertaining preferences, and favorite recipes of some of the world’s most beloved writers.
The Writer’s Table caters to all sorts of literary tastes. Stivers talks about “literary classics” authors like Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Miguel Cervantes, and Charles Dickens, along with more modern favorites like Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Sylvia Plath, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was also pleased to see more contemporary authors like Maya Angelou, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez, and Joan Didion featured.
Stivers also includes favorite alcoholic drinks and recommends cookbooks and additional recipes related to the authors. The colorful illustrations throughout the book by Katie Tomlinson are the icing on the cake.
What I liked about The Writer’s Table
Each section of The Writer’s Table offers a glimpse into a writer’s family life, friend circle, and entertaining style. It’s not surprising that so many creatives have complex relationships with food. Eating, cooking, dining, and entertaining can all be very cozy activities, much like writing and reading. As Stivers points out, these hobbies often go hand in hand.
I enjoyed learning about many writers’ culinary preferences and dining inclinations. It was particularly interesting to discover how some authors eat while they’re actively creating. Many writers subsist on plain or monotonous meals while writing, preferring to save feasting on better quality and quantity ingredients for when there’s something to celebrate. Meanwhile, some writers had issues with food and eating habits. These issues were often woven into their famous stories and characters.
I read The Writer’s Table as I was cooking up the Apple Cider Beef Stew for The Frozen River, so my reading experience was very meta. But I loved seeing how connected writers are with food over the ages — a passion I’m happy to keep going strong!
What I didn’t like about The Writer’s Table
There are recipes for most author entries in The Writer’s Table, but not all of them. And, of the recipes that are included, most of them didn’t intrigue me. There was no “omg, I have to make this!” dish. It’s probably because most of the recipe ingredients aren’t conducive to modern day cooking, or the dishes presented are, well, odd. Like, one author’s dish is peacock. Interesting? Sure. Mouth-watering? Not really.
The cooking instructions also aren’t very detailed; sometimes it’s just a few lines summarizing what to do. As a result, I feel like The Writer’s Table is more of a food history read than a cookbook.
Should you read The Writer’s Table?
The Writer’s Table is a satisfying read if want to learn more about famous writers. So much biographical history is devoted to romance, friendship, family, or work, so it was nice to dive into some lesser known facts about all things food.
This book would make a great gift for your epicurean friends and family, those who love a conversation-starting coffee table book, or fans of the show Tasting History.
What’s the book-inspired recipe?
Check back in for the book-inspired recipe: Apple Spice Cake
