The Hemingway book of this name came up in another thread here and I realized that I didn't have a copy and wanted to reread it. I checked my local lending library (always preferable to adding a purchased volume to my already overstuffed home library (which consist of no less than one main and three sub libraries distributed about the house). Of course they had the Hemingway book, but I also noticed another book with the same title that dealt with food, so of course I also added that to my reading stack.
It is on that second title that I am reporting here - this Moveable Feast is subtitled "Life-Changing Food Adventures around the World". It consists of selected short chapters from many different food writers including many you will be familiar with, including Anthony Bourdain, Mark Kurlansky, and David Lebovitz, and it turned out to be very entertaining, recounting food experiences from all over the globe. I commend it to you for reading in the near term or adding to your Christmas list.
I'd add that there is a second volume published a few years later. I immediately ordered a copy of each to further swell my bulging libraries.
The subjects are interesting and novel. One has a tale by Simon Winchester, British travel writer, in which he eats dog in Korea (apparently a regular part of the diet there). He of course wrote about it and the response was huge and immediate with his editor summoning him to London to show him the mailbags of responses, all of it highly critical, that were arriving with every post.
The letters included one from a retired British Major who threatened "I wish to tell you that I regard you, Sir, as a total scoundrel! If I ever encounter you in a street in London I promise you, Sir, that I will denounce you publically and will then give you a sound thrashing with a horsewhip."
He later had occasion to eat cat, in the form of a stew in West Africa, and he wrote of it, but neither he nor the publisher received any mail whatsoever in regard to that. I wonder what that says about the difference between cat and dog owners....
Warning - good food writing (as with good wine writing) can be hazardous to your shelf space - I just ordered a book by Mark Kurlansky called "Edible Stories: A Novel about Food in Sixteen Courses" based on his article in the book.
