Friends and fellow bookworms, I'm off my rocker. I'm off my rocker and into a cushy upholstered chair, because it's the only place I can get comfy enough to bury my nose in a book but not so comfy that I drift off into dreamland after just a few pages. I've had a lot of reading to do this month, and I can't wait to share it all with you.

You see, I joined two food-centric online book clubs last month. Let's face it, food IS my favorite subject to read AND write about after all. And isn't that why you're here too? I'll have another review for you soon enough, but today I'd like to tell you about one of the titles I've had my nose in. It's this month's selection for The Kitchen Reader book club: , edited by Amanda Hesser.

Typically, I'm the gal who swims against the stream and thinks essay collections like this are overrated, boring, and redundant. However, Hesser's got a good eye--and perhaps a great stomach to go with it. During her tenure as food editor of The New York Times, she took on the challenge of breaking the boring old habit of sentimental, sad-bastard food writing with a column entitled--you guessed it--"Eat, Memory." She looked past the sea of tired old essays about mom's apple pie and grandma's strudel and latched on to the pieces that were really about something-- the connection between food and love, loneliness, desperation, and a range of other very real, powerful emotions.

The book contains 26 of such essays, Hesser's cream of the crop. Topics range from mysterious almond-flavored carrots to a bickering match in a Paris restaurant to a forbidden childhood love affair with Tang. I'm not going to tell you about my favorite essays or the ones I didn't care for, because I want you to go pick up the book yourself and read for yourself. And then I want you to give the book as a gift. That's certainly one of this book's strongest attributes: it's got something for everyone's appetite.