To me not one of Amado's best though often the one people start with cause of the movie. My favorites: "Tent of Miracles" and "Shepherds of the Night". (latter is really a series of related short stories in the same setting and with the same characters. Like a TV series with an arc.)

TB, my DH just picked up Tent of Miracles recently -- we're going on a spree of reading books about Brazil, to prepare for our honeymoon there. Now I want to read it too! I was sort of thinking I'd try to pick up Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon or Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in a trade paperback while we're there.

If you want a juvenile book that is all about food, I have never read a book that was more like food porn than Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy.

If you want a juvenile book that is all about food, I have never read a book that was more like food porn than Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy.

Ha! I already put it on the list. I remember my sister saying when she reread them to her kids she realized how much food was in that one.

Other ones I have that haven't come up here are Down and Out in Paris and London, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, Heartburn (Nora Ephron), and Liquor: A Novel (Poppy Z. Brite).

What about nonfiction?

M.F.K. Fisher is one of the great essayists and she's all about food.

People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?

The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.... There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love?

Thinking about it, Tropic of Cancer has many rapturous descriptions of meals, mostly because Henry Miller was so poor and scraping to get by that he rhapsodized over the food he got.

There's so much non-fiction on the topic, I don't really think I need to put any on the list.

Most people want to read fiction, preferably classics, so I really just want to get an idea whether the topic is viable for that. Although I'll eventually use the list for voting purposes to give an idea of what people might select for the theme.

I think I haven't read enough classics to be helpful, but I will keep thinking about it. It seems like there must be more.

The only thing I know about Pickwick Papers is in one of the Anne of Green Gables books, when one of the characters says it always makes her hungry because it's full of food.

I don't remember Far From the Madding Crowd being very food-oriented.

It seems like there must be more.

Oliver Twist?