So I got invited to do something simultaneously very fun and very difficult - make a list of my top ten cookbooks for the database 1000 Cookbooks. I hemmed and hawed (and made a total mess of my bookshelves) to come up with my list. But I was forced to leave off the books that are my true love - food books that aren't cookbooks! To remedy this painful omission, here are my top five books of food writing.

Ruth Reichl - Tender at the Bone

The first food memoir I ever read, and still one of my absolute favorites in this genre. Sad, sweet, thoughtful, and above all it will make you very, very hungry. Fried oysters and devil’s food cake, anyone?

Lizzie Collingham - Curry

An elegant, engaging history of something we’re all extremely familiar with in the present-day, but whose origins we don’t tend to talk about that much. I read this book for my masters’ thesis and look back at it often when I need to be reminded how good food history is done.

Bee Wilson - First Bite

If you’re like me, and you like to think about food as much as you like it eat it, you must read this book. A well-written, extensive examination of why we eat the way we do, from babyhood onwards.

Margaret Visser - Much Depends on Dinner

Written in 1987, but it blew my tiny mind when I read it in 2010 and I still think it’s one of the best and most important pieces of writing about what lies behind our eating habits. A thorough dissection of the history and anthropology of the table.

Laura Shapiro - Perfection Salad

A simultaneously wonderful and horrifying examination of how American cooking transformed into science-driven home economics at the end of the 19th century. White sauces, brutally overcooked vegetables, and Jell-O salads galore. One to make you question whether progress for the sake of progress is necessarily a good thing...