Rec List: Food
May. 26th, 2020 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryI love food! Not just cooking and eating, but also feeding people and thinking about how the food we eat is grown, processed, transported ect., and thinking about what food means to people. Of course, I love fiction that focuses on food and explores these topics. This is a list of media that does interesting and clever things with food: food used to tell us about the character or the world. I hope you find something to enjoy!
Guardian — This supernatural investigation Chinese drama does an amazing job of using food to show character and relationships! What the characters eat and how that says so much about them. The way various characters use food to show that they care about each other is just so great! In Chinese culture it's a gesture of respect and love to place food on someone else’s plate. There are several places where this is used very meaningfully. There’s also a key character whose love language is feeding people and some excellent found family group meals. (Spoilery context notes: Major character death, queer tradgey)
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard — This novella about two women on a space station trying to deal with a distant war has excellent food details. There's a wonderful banquet scene and plot relevant vats of fish sauce!
Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliot — Kate Elliot uses food to show the reader more about the world she has created. For example, maize is mentioned early in these books and that gives us a hint of what the Americas are like in this world even though the characters don’t travel there for a long time. The food also tells us a lot about class and other social divides, plus I love the way the main character saviors things!
"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon — This such a great little story about magic swords, potatoes, and the importance of feeding people!
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
by Anya von Bremzen — This memoir mixes family history, Soviet history, and recipes. I love the way it mixes intensely personal things with large scale history, and gives each recipe both personal and political context.
Sliver Spoon by Hiromu Arakawa — I love this manga about a city kid who goes to an agricultural high school. It features some very relatable moments for those of us who haven't thought very hard about where food comes from. But I love the way the characters are able to think deepy about the animals they are raising and the ethics of eating them. (Content note: industrial agriculture, animal death)
Imperial Radch Series by Ann Leckie — These books do a lovely job of using food as a cultural signifier. There are a lot of different cultures in this world that have complex relationships with each other and Leckie uses food to highlight that. I also really like the tea in these books! Tea is not only culturally important but the production of tea is economically and politically important to the plot as well!
What media do you think explores food well?
Guardian — This supernatural investigation Chinese drama does an amazing job of using food to show character and relationships! What the characters eat and how that says so much about them. The way various characters use food to show that they care about each other is just so great! In Chinese culture it's a gesture of respect and love to place food on someone else’s plate. There are several places where this is used very meaningfully. There’s also a key character whose love language is feeding people and some excellent found family group meals. (Spoilery context notes: Major character death, queer tradgey)
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard — This novella about two women on a space station trying to deal with a distant war has excellent food details. There's a wonderful banquet scene and plot relevant vats of fish sauce!
Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliot — Kate Elliot uses food to show the reader more about the world she has created. For example, maize is mentioned early in these books and that gives us a hint of what the Americas are like in this world even though the characters don’t travel there for a long time. The food also tells us a lot about class and other social divides, plus I love the way the main character saviors things!
"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon — This such a great little story about magic swords, potatoes, and the importance of feeding people!
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
by Anya von Bremzen — This memoir mixes family history, Soviet history, and recipes. I love the way it mixes intensely personal things with large scale history, and gives each recipe both personal and political context.
Sliver Spoon by Hiromu Arakawa — I love this manga about a city kid who goes to an agricultural high school. It features some very relatable moments for those of us who haven't thought very hard about where food comes from. But I love the way the characters are able to think deepy about the animals they are raising and the ethics of eating them. (Content note: industrial agriculture, animal death)
Imperial Radch Series by Ann Leckie — These books do a lovely job of using food as a cultural signifier. There are a lot of different cultures in this world that have complex relationships with each other and Leckie uses food to highlight that. I also really like the tea in these books! Tea is not only culturally important but the production of tea is economically and politically important to the plot as well!
What media do you think explores food well?
no subject
Date: 2020-05-26 05:59 pm (UTC)Whenever food in fiction is mentioned I always think about Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books and Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora ones -- I feel like food is a really neat part of the richness of the worldbuilding in both (and sometimes illuminates character, also).
For a really food-centric story what comes to mind is Tina Connolly's The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections (it was one of my favorites on the Hugo ballot last year.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-28 04:09 pm (UTC)I liked the food in "The Last Banquet" but it was bit dark for where my head has been recently.
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Date: 2020-06-02 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 03:14 am (UTC)(Also, hi! apparently I haven't yet discovered every Dragaera fan on DW :P)
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Date: 2020-06-08 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-08 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-08 07:17 pm (UTC)If you end up posting about your reread, I look forward to reading those posts. I'm excitedly awaiting the next Paarfi book, and even more excitedly awaiting Tsalmoth (though it sounds like that one's barely half-written as of now...)
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Date: 2020-06-08 09:00 pm (UTC)I do most of my writing about books on Goodreads, but I am trying to restart posting about reading here -- I get much more caught up in feeling like I must write The Perfect Review, unlike when I write about television and just stream-of-consciousness my impressions. (Which is largely what I do on GR as well, I am not sure why I stick at doing that here, and perhaps now that I have realised it I can change it.)
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Date: 2020-06-08 10:04 pm (UTC)That's interesting! One of the reasons I don't use Goodreads is I feel like their format is set up for Proper Reviews, and I don't want to write proper reviews or any kind of reviews, and I feel much more comfortable blathering at length about random things in the book that are uniquely Relevant To My Interests and connection to other obscure books, and just being as self-indulgent as I want to be in my own space :)
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Date: 2020-05-27 02:33 am (UTC)I always wanted to eat whatever they were harvesting or cooking in those books. Her description of pork cracklins in particular has always stuck with me.
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Date: 2020-05-28 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-27 04:49 am (UTC)On a completely different note, I think the Hannibal television series for your parameters.
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Date: 2020-05-28 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-29 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 12:47 am (UTC)I just read Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie -- literary fiction, set some in London but mostly in Pakistan, and the food is both beautifully described and somewhat twined into the plot.
Sweetbitter is new-adult-ish (IMO), 20something woman in New York making bad personal choices -- she's working in a restaurant so there is a lot about the excitement of discovering new foods and the status appreciating them gives you and so forth. I loved it but I know a lot of people who hated it passionately.
Probably I will think of 10 more when I am trying to fall asleep tonight, so another set of recs may be forthcoming...
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Date: 2020-06-04 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 06:20 pm (UTC)