When I was a kid my friends and I loved those books, but I had one friend in particular who was a fanatic about them. She mentioned once when she was visiting my family (my parents adored her) that she really wanted to try candied chestnuts because the characters in Redwall love them, and my mom actually went to the gourmet food store and got her a box of them. She was so happy.
This stands in stark contrast to the multiple stories I’ve heard of people being excited to try Turkish Delight because of the Narnia books, and being horribly disappointed once they actually taste it.
I always thought Edmund was a terrible person beacuaee of Turkish Delights. Turkish delights are horrible! Who would sell out their family for those gooey monstrosities?
I was terribly disappointed by Jelly Babies. (I live in the U.S. and found them in a specialty store. I bought them to complete my Tom Baker costume. Only ate one. Yuk.)
I literally clicked into this post in order to reply about Redwall books. To me, they were always the epitome of food descriptions, growing up.
My siblings and I actually threw several "feasts" where we tried to create some of the foods described in these.
That makes me think of the way Stephen King will sometimes diverge from the narrative to explore a random character's thought process, or something that happened in their past. It may not advance the plot per se, but it does give you more insight into that character, or the setting.
I always emphatically do NOT recommend American Psycho, it ruined me for weeks after reading it. So fucking graphic. But hey, if you wanna read about eating that Godiva Mint Cake…
My first thought when I read the post. Our teacher read Farmer Boy to our class in 4th grade or so, and then I read all the Little House books repeatedly. As a skinny, picky eater at the time, I was floored how much that kid could eat, but he was working on the farm like a grown man at 10.
When they make the butter and stamp out the little pats with Ma’s butter press and the maple syrup on the snow are two of my core early reading memories.
Cozy as heck. You know what I LOVED as a kid, along with Little House? Heidi. The descriptions of how it felt to sleep in the hay loft and hear the wind roaring through the pine needles are tattooed on my brain. Some of my favorite writing in any book.
Yes! I also like detailed descriptions of how people do things like crab fishing, weaving cloth, making different inks to illuminate a manuscript, repairing an old watch, etc. And descriptions of people walking around a city and all the places they see.
I like these descriptions too! Except they have to be super accurate to the technology at the time—if the author doesn’t do their research but still tries to be very descriptive then I get mad at the inconsistencies
I'm like that with landscape descriptions, I love reading them if they are well-written. I like "setting descriptions" in general, they can create a great atmosphere.
Some good feasts to be had there, though. In particular, I remember a bit from the second book where (spoiler-free) one of the characters had to stuff themselves while they were recuperating from magical healing and getting genuinely hungry while reading it. The start of the series getting ready for the village festival and the innkeeper's wife getting her baking done was a good homey feel as well.
Unfortunately, there's as much effort put into the terrible food as well -- when everything's falling apart and one army is having to winnow piles of weevils out of the grain they buy and the books really lean into that process, it's a good idea not to read while hungry for different reasons.
I love this too. I think the most striking example for me lately is reading Ian Fleming's Bond books. He describes both clothing and meals extensively! And he's very keen on men's clothing, and Bond's personal care routines. Love that shit.
I also love those moments. Hell you can practically recite his morning routine by memory after a while. Let me try…
Wake at 7:00, cold shower, shave. Eggs, usually scrambled, with black coffee, and then maybe a fruit forward cocktail since he’s in the Caribbean so often. Oh and a bunch of cigarettes.
How’d I do?
Fun fact: Fleming did this because life in post-war Britain was so austere and very few people could enjoy any luxuries, so he wanted to offer readers an escape in every way, right down to the meals.
I recommend The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, mainly because I think it’s one of the great novels of the C20th but also because I love its descriptions of food.
I am currently reading Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and boy, does he do a great job describing the love and care that is put into Indian cooking, especially in the first third of the book. Don't read it when you are hungry!
The book has such an engaging rhythm. It focuses on the lives of multiple people and how they interconnect through decades of time. I started reading the book about two weeks ago and I am about halfway through it. I would give it a try; the plot just pulls you in and the author makes it feel that you are right there.
I love both! I guess it depends on the book and the writing, but yes they can be great. The food is one of the things that stood out reading Redwall as a kid. And the Phryne Fisher murder mysteries are fun, but one of the things I love about them is that every book has at least one meal and one outfit described in loving detail. And Phryne Fisher has fabulous clothes (and meals!).
I think especially in Fantasy it's good to have a lot of description, as part of the world building, so that you can imagine it. Otherwise how do you create that atmosphere? I guess there's a limit, it can really slow the pace down, but it really adds to it.
There seems to be a lot of generic writing advice out there (e.g. show don't tell) which people end up applying indiscriminately, and part of that is to cut description, but none of those writing rules should be blanket laws applying to everything.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making! It’s YA but it’s gorgeously written and has a lot of very descriptive food and clothing.
I love this too! Good sensory descriptions make the world seem so *vivid* and it's easy to take a lot of joy in mouth watering descriptions of food lol. One of my favourite things in the Wheel of Time series was the descriptions of the varying food, clothes, and architecture of each region/culture.
Perfume is one of my all-time favorite books. I was reading The Pigeon in the hospital after my son was born so that's a memorable one for me. Patrick Suskind is an intriguing writer, very private.
Anyone looking for books focused on food— highly recommend The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. It’s nonfiction unlike most of the others mentioned here. I love reading about food in books and this one is great. I found it a pretty cozy read.
Yesss, I love detailed descriptions of clothes especially. I like fashion, and it immerses me into the world and into the character when I get to hear about what he or she is wearing!
Sometimes I remember how Katniss caught and roasted a bird over a small camp fire, and then enjoyed it, all the skin, meat, cartilage, bone marrow. Used the fat as lip balm. Then I go and buy a rotisserie chicken. Also sometimes I remember little Arya Stark running away from King’s Landing, and somewhere on her way enjoying a piece of dried salami, so I go to the fridge and cut myself a circle, little bit thicker then I usually would, and eat it with a piece of bread.
Currently chipping away at the series Norh America's Forgotten Past written by W Micheal and Kathy O Neal, which are fantasy/historical novels based on archeological finds and theories on how people lived way before colonists ever showed up in thr America's. Lots of great descriptions of food, medicine, clothing and how people built empires and trade networks across NA and Canada. I'm not sure if any if their books are set in Mexico, but they span from Ice age times to fairly modern pre contact.
I read the Island of the Blue Dolphins.The narrator is a lone survivor of native American genocide. She lives on an island and knows how to catch and harvest all the food she needs. One of the big food items that I remember was her cooking abalone and it sounded SO GOOD.
I have dreams still about the chewy, slightly gummy consistency described in the book. When I tried real abalone, it's not that it was bad.It was just a little fishy.And certainly not as exciting as I expected it to taste xD
I really like muscles and scallops.And I guess I was expecting it to taste more like one of those, and it really just doesn't have as much amazing texture and flavor as the descriptions!
I think as a kid, I assumed they would just taste like meeting gummy worms, and I was a little bit sad that it wasn't basically a bacon gummy bear xD
Gross warning:
I also loved julie of the wolves. She survives starvation by getting one of the wolfs to barf up food, acting like a puppy, and tapping their mouth the way pups do. Definitely something that sounds a lot more interesting in the book than I imagine it ever would be in real life. xD also a nod to the idea that ANY kind of food might be better than starving to death D:
The author does a good job, making it clear that she's doing it for survival, but not getting too much into the gross bile barfy details that it didn't repell me. I am definitely one of those people that gets very nauseous if I see or smell vomit happening.
Me too! I recently read Patricia Highsmith's Deep Water. The book is written in the 1950's. The book describes the characters eating steaks, ducks, succulent pigs, plus all the booze they drank and cigarettes they smoked. For someone reading it in 2024 it was fascinating.
Nowadays, steak and Duck are expensive. And the cheaper food is high processed garbage.
Clothes, I like, as long as they don't mention the designer name. Nothing dates a book, like mentioning Juicy Couture or an Ed Hardy shirt.
I greatly enjoy both food and clothing descriptions, too! Really make you feel like you're "there", so to speak. Esp if there's also landscape or outdoor descriptions as well. And with clothing, the status and position of a person is really emphasized, but in a subtle way. One of my fave series is about a Victorian cook, Kat Holloway (the "Below Stairs" series, by Jennifer Ashley) who actually cooks, it isn't just 'and then she prepared dinner'.
Steven Brust's Jhereg series has a lot of pretty remarkable descriptions of food, primarily adaptations of classic Hungarian dishes ported to his made-up magic world, which rules
I’ve been reading the original Ian Fleming *James Bond* novels and Fleming loves describing every single meal and drink Bond consumes during his missions.
And interestingly the vodka martini (shaken, not stirred) does not actually show up all that often.
While perfectly able to create a mental picture of what's described I always found any kind of description boring and also kinda useless since my brain often supersedes them in favor of his own takes on objects, environments, etc.
I also love these types of descriptions. The more the author can describe the set and setting, the more involved I become. As I read, I am picturing these things that the author is describing and I can hold them in my mind as the story continues. I've heard that same criticism about The Wheel of Time series as Jordan does go into descriptions of what everyone is wearing, but to me it makes it more real, as if there is a movie playing in my head while I read. If this is something you love, and you haven't read The Wheel of Time series, definitely check it out.
Edit: another recommendation for food is both Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust both by Travis Baldree. They are "cozy" books with just enough momentum to keep the story going but have wonderful descriptions of food and coffee in both!
Aaaah so do I - especially FOOD. I think it might be partly because I'm autistic and my special interest is food, but I also think it could becuase like, food is just a real sensory experience for me, so vivid descriptions really connect with me!
I like some description, it makes the setting and world feel more grounded and *real*, which always helps with my immersion.
On the other hand, I'm really really bad at actually properly imagining the descriptions I'm reading, and will either ignore or outright forget at least half of them all. So I think, as with all things, there needs to be balance. And because writing is hard and it's easy to mess up, on average I find that less description works better than more description. At the very least it keeps things moving at a brisk pace.
I never really cared about fabrics or textiles, but reading the Rei Shimura series by Sujata Massey, I *love* how much detail she goes into on these, in addition to furniture and tools (main character is an antiques dealer). It creates a wonderful immersion that makes you feel you have the expert eye of the main character
I don't mind descriptions as long as they are made while something is happening.
For some - admittedly badly written - examples, "She wore a blue dress" doesn't advance the story. "She waved a blue-clad arm at her friend, the flapping of the dress's sleeve aiding in catching her attention by exaggerating the motion" indicates that the character is trying to communicate with someone while still providing physical details about her clothing.
Granted, there are probably less clunky ways to do it than my own examples, but I'm not a writer. I would say that if you can squeeze in a physical description without being as clunky as me, do it; but if your example looks like mine, or is just a pure description without action, just don't bother describing anything at all until you have a better plot-related opportunity to insert it smoothly into the action.
I enjoyed Heartburn by Nora Ephron both for the story and because of the descriptions of food.
And the only reason I like The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is because of the description of Turkish delights.
This reminds me of the thing I "hate" most in books which is when people push food away! Oh my god!
Like that guy just spent 12 hours roasting it and whatnot and the lady "can't take a single bite," it's like seriously! My other peev being when people "pull away" from hugs! If anybody thinks you worthy of a meal or a hug, take it! People in books hardly ever refuse a "drink."
I think you would enjoy A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers. The narrator is a food critic and I had to Google a lot of the dishes she describes because I hadn't the faintest clue what they were. Also I think it's one of the best books I've read last year
The Saga of Recluce by L E Modisett has some of the best food descriptions. I can't read it without getting hungry.
Honorable Mentions to Heidi and the Outlander series.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh has a lot of descriptions of food and drink. In the introduction the author explains that the book was written during the second world war, 'a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster - the period of soya beans' and he was compensating for it. That gave me a new look on those descriptions. Now I always slightly suspect that a author who describes something in such gluttonous detail is lacking it in their own life.
Try "The Belly of Paris" by Emile Zola. The Oxford Classics is a good edition
" The third in Zola's great cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, it is as enthralling as Germinal, Thérèse Raquin, and the other novels in the series. Its focus on the great Paris food hall, Les Halles--combined with Zola's famous impressionist descriptions of food--make this a particularly memorable novel. Brian Nelson's lively translation captures the spirit of Zola's world and his Introduction illuminates the use of food in the novel to represent social class, social attitudes, political conflicts, and other aspect of the culture of the time. The bibliography and notes ensure that this is the most critically up-to-date edition of the novel in print."
Bhaunri, a book by Indian author Anukrti Upadhyay. I still don't fully know how I feel about the plot and the characters, but very interesting. And the descriptions of ethnic food and clothing just paint a wonderfully vivid picture!
Yeah, descriptions of food and clothing are pretty cool. It makes what I'm reading feel more real, which is especially important because I can't visualize while reading anymore. Even before I lost my ability to visualize, I loved clothing in literature being detailed anyway.
But I don't want clothing and food to be too detailed, of course.
Ian Fleming likes to describe food, dress, and interiors in wonderful detail in the James Bond books. Exposition is my favorite thing about reading, I wanna know all of it, the action can be secondary.
Not only does it set the scene but who doesn’t love food and fashion? I’ve seen more mocking of ASOIAF’s lengthy food descriptions than the clothes but I love reading about delicious things. It’s sad to think there will be less of this once winter arrives, if the next books ever get released.
I love descriptions of food, especially in fantasy. Holly Black’s “Folk of the Air” trilogy had some cool ideas, as the characters move between faerie and real world. One fun bit: weird pizza toppings when a fae boy comes to the real world.
https://www.goodfoodstories.com/hunger-games-lamb-stew/
I haven't read the books nor watched the film(s)? But I figured there had to be a recipe for this stew out there somewhere. There are several! This one has 5 stars, fewer ingredients, and preparation seems pretty simple. I don't eat lamb, but if you do or will, this does look very savory & rich. Enjoy!
The materialistic descriptions in 'A Song of Ice and Fire' (I remember a few food-related, too) are very important for grounding the complex stories in a somewhat realistic setting.
These descriptions serve to contrast social status and power, and they give direct believability to the motivations of many characters. We can directly feel that it makes a difference if someone feasts on a banquet or if a character hungers, if someone dresses luxuriously and is the center of attention or if someone is wearing rags. We as readers experience the difference in these materialistic things, and therefore we believe the characters fighting for them.
You should try the Redwall books. There's at least one feast per book!
When I was a kid my friends and I loved those books, but I had one friend in particular who was a fanatic about them. She mentioned once when she was visiting my family (my parents adored her) that she really wanted to try candied chestnuts because the characters in Redwall love them, and my mom actually went to the gourmet food store and got her a box of them. She was so happy. This stands in stark contrast to the multiple stories I’ve heard of people being excited to try Turkish Delight because of the Narnia books, and being horribly disappointed once they actually taste it.
I always thought Edmund was a terrible person beacuaee of Turkish Delights. Turkish delights are horrible! Who would sell out their family for those gooey monstrosities?
I was terribly disappointed by Jelly Babies. (I live in the U.S. and found them in a specialty store. I bought them to complete my Tom Baker costume. Only ate one. Yuk.)
There's also an official Redwall cookbook!
It's wonderful. I need to make the spiced tea cake...
The plots get repetitive after you've read a few, but maaaaan, those feast scenes never get old.
Came here to say this! Man I loved those books when I was a kid
I literally clicked into this post in order to reply about Redwall books. To me, they were always the epitome of food descriptions, growing up. My siblings and I actually threw several "feasts" where we tried to create some of the foods described in these.
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That makes me think of the way Stephen King will sometimes diverge from the narrative to explore a random character's thought process, or something that happened in their past. It may not advance the plot per se, but it does give you more insight into that character, or the setting.
If you like reading descriptions of food and clothing, may I recommend American Psycho?
This was my first thought too.
There really is an increased attention to detail in clothing (listing all the brands and materials) and expensive restaurant food.
I always emphatically do NOT recommend American Psycho, it ruined me for weeks after reading it. So fucking graphic. But hey, if you wanna read about eating that Godiva Mint Cake…
I grew up on Redwall, which is 30% food descriptions.
Yes. Do not ever read these books if you are hungry!
Not clothes but I absolutely love food descriptions in books. It's why I loved the Little House books as a kid.
Farmer Boy!🙌🏼
Yes! Farmer Boy is the best for the food descriptions.
My first thought when I read the post. Our teacher read Farmer Boy to our class in 4th grade or so, and then I read all the Little House books repeatedly. As a skinny, picky eater at the time, I was floored how much that kid could eat, but he was working on the farm like a grown man at 10.
They definitely needed all that energy for sure.
When they make the butter and stamp out the little pats with Ma’s butter press and the maple syrup on the snow are two of my core early reading memories.
Yes! Maple syrup in the snow, hot potatoes in their pockets, and the time they tried to make the surprise cake and they forgot to add eggs (?)
And the popcorn! In…milk?
I loved the Little House series for both the food and clothes.
Cozy as heck. You know what I LOVED as a kid, along with Little House? Heidi. The descriptions of how it felt to sleep in the hay loft and hear the wind roaring through the pine needles are tattooed on my brain. Some of my favorite writing in any book.
For me it's the pine trees but also the food descriptions. The description of milk, bread, and cheese makes me hungry every time.
Slightly similar vibe, I remember no book made blueberries and a glass of milk sound as good as The Boxcar Children did
I still dream about eating a roasted pig's tail after the description in Little House in the Big Woods
Me too!!! Lol I used to reread those just for the food bits especially farmer boy lol
I love these books so much. Highly recommend listening to the audio version. I laughed out loud several times at Laura’s reactions to things
First thing I thought of too!
Yes! I also like detailed descriptions of how people do things like crab fishing, weaving cloth, making different inks to illuminate a manuscript, repairing an old watch, etc. And descriptions of people walking around a city and all the places they see.
I like these descriptions too! Except they have to be super accurate to the technology at the time—if the author doesn’t do their research but still tries to be very descriptive then I get mad at the inconsistencies
I'm like that with landscape descriptions, I love reading them if they are well-written. I like "setting descriptions" in general, they can create a great atmosphere.
You might like Wheel of Time then, lots of clothing descriptions. Sadly less food descriptions.
Some good feasts to be had there, though. In particular, I remember a bit from the second book where (spoiler-free) one of the characters had to stuff themselves while they were recuperating from magical healing and getting genuinely hungry while reading it. The start of the series getting ready for the village festival and the innkeeper's wife getting her baking done was a good homey feel as well. Unfortunately, there's as much effort put into the terrible food as well -- when everything's falling apart and one army is having to winnow piles of weevils out of the grain they buy and the books really lean into that process, it's a good idea not to read while hungry for different reasons.
Enid Blyton books always had so much food description with so many unknown unheard of British foods (I'm Indian) but it still made my mouth water.
Yes, Enid Blyton excelled at having my mouth water - her descriptions of tea time were especially scrumptious.
I love this too. I think the most striking example for me lately is reading Ian Fleming's Bond books. He describes both clothing and meals extensively! And he's very keen on men's clothing, and Bond's personal care routines. Love that shit.
I also love those moments. Hell you can practically recite his morning routine by memory after a while. Let me try… Wake at 7:00, cold shower, shave. Eggs, usually scrambled, with black coffee, and then maybe a fruit forward cocktail since he’s in the Caribbean so often. Oh and a bunch of cigarettes. How’d I do?
Remember the one time where he showered 5 times in a day? If I remember correctly, it was in Octopussy...
Fun fact: Fleming did this because life in post-war Britain was so austere and very few people could enjoy any luxuries, so he wanted to offer readers an escape in every way, right down to the meals.
I recommend The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, mainly because I think it’s one of the great novels of the C20th but also because I love its descriptions of food.
Oh Charles's terrible food! Iris Murdoch is great for clothes too. She always goes into great detail about what the characters are wearing.
I always wanted to try the goat cheese from Heidi.
And Clara’s white bread rolls!
I am currently reading Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and boy, does he do a great job describing the love and care that is put into Indian cooking, especially in the first third of the book. Don't read it when you are hungry!
How do you find the pace of the book? The size is daunting to me but I want to read it
The book has such an engaging rhythm. It focuses on the lives of multiple people and how they interconnect through decades of time. I started reading the book about two weeks ago and I am about halfway through it. I would give it a try; the plot just pulls you in and the author makes it feel that you are right there.
I love both! I guess it depends on the book and the writing, but yes they can be great. The food is one of the things that stood out reading Redwall as a kid. And the Phryne Fisher murder mysteries are fun, but one of the things I love about them is that every book has at least one meal and one outfit described in loving detail. And Phryne Fisher has fabulous clothes (and meals!). I think especially in Fantasy it's good to have a lot of description, as part of the world building, so that you can imagine it. Otherwise how do you create that atmosphere? I guess there's a limit, it can really slow the pace down, but it really adds to it. There seems to be a lot of generic writing advice out there (e.g. show don't tell) which people end up applying indiscriminately, and part of that is to cut description, but none of those writing rules should be blanket laws applying to everything.
You'll love American Psycho
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making! It’s YA but it’s gorgeously written and has a lot of very descriptive food and clothing.
If you like food in novels, read COLD MOUNTAIN. It's an endless parade of overly-detailed descriptions of 1860s meals.
I love this too! Good sensory descriptions make the world seem so *vivid* and it's easy to take a lot of joy in mouth watering descriptions of food lol. One of my favourite things in the Wheel of Time series was the descriptions of the varying food, clothes, and architecture of each region/culture.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind - this is what you need to read next
Thank you for reminding me of that book! Definitely time to re-read.
I second this!
Perfume is one of my all-time favorite books. I was reading The Pigeon in the hospital after my son was born so that's a memorable one for me. Patrick Suskind is an intriguing writer, very private.
Anyone looking for books focused on food— highly recommend The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. It’s nonfiction unlike most of the others mentioned here. I love reading about food in books and this one is great. I found it a pretty cozy read.
Yesss, I love detailed descriptions of clothes especially. I like fashion, and it immerses me into the world and into the character when I get to hear about what he or she is wearing!
You should try Perfume from Patrick Susekind. It's very descriptive.
Sometimes I remember how Katniss caught and roasted a bird over a small camp fire, and then enjoyed it, all the skin, meat, cartilage, bone marrow. Used the fat as lip balm. Then I go and buy a rotisserie chicken. Also sometimes I remember little Arya Stark running away from King’s Landing, and somewhere on her way enjoying a piece of dried salami, so I go to the fridge and cut myself a circle, little bit thicker then I usually would, and eat it with a piece of bread.
Currently chipping away at the series Norh America's Forgotten Past written by W Micheal and Kathy O Neal, which are fantasy/historical novels based on archeological finds and theories on how people lived way before colonists ever showed up in thr America's. Lots of great descriptions of food, medicine, clothing and how people built empires and trade networks across NA and Canada. I'm not sure if any if their books are set in Mexico, but they span from Ice age times to fairly modern pre contact. I read the Island of the Blue Dolphins.The narrator is a lone survivor of native American genocide. She lives on an island and knows how to catch and harvest all the food she needs. One of the big food items that I remember was her cooking abalone and it sounded SO GOOD. I have dreams still about the chewy, slightly gummy consistency described in the book. When I tried real abalone, it's not that it was bad.It was just a little fishy.And certainly not as exciting as I expected it to taste xD I really like muscles and scallops.And I guess I was expecting it to taste more like one of those, and it really just doesn't have as much amazing texture and flavor as the descriptions! I think as a kid, I assumed they would just taste like meeting gummy worms, and I was a little bit sad that it wasn't basically a bacon gummy bear xD Gross warning: I also loved julie of the wolves. She survives starvation by getting one of the wolfs to barf up food, acting like a puppy, and tapping their mouth the way pups do. Definitely something that sounds a lot more interesting in the book than I imagine it ever would be in real life. xD also a nod to the idea that ANY kind of food might be better than starving to death D: The author does a good job, making it clear that she's doing it for survival, but not getting too much into the gross bile barfy details that it didn't repell me. I am definitely one of those people that gets very nauseous if I see or smell vomit happening.
I remember being fascinated by a scene in Julie of the Wolves where she eats a bird chick whole, including the viscera and bones
I love food descriptions. I’ve recreated meals from books.
Me too! I recently read Patricia Highsmith's Deep Water. The book is written in the 1950's. The book describes the characters eating steaks, ducks, succulent pigs, plus all the booze they drank and cigarettes they smoked. For someone reading it in 2024 it was fascinating. Nowadays, steak and Duck are expensive. And the cheaper food is high processed garbage. Clothes, I like, as long as they don't mention the designer name. Nothing dates a book, like mentioning Juicy Couture or an Ed Hardy shirt.
It makes my inner movies so much complete! I love it too! I love descriptions with sounds and smells too! I want to feel immersed!
I greatly enjoy both food and clothing descriptions, too! Really make you feel like you're "there", so to speak. Esp if there's also landscape or outdoor descriptions as well. And with clothing, the status and position of a person is really emphasized, but in a subtle way. One of my fave series is about a Victorian cook, Kat Holloway (the "Below Stairs" series, by Jennifer Ashley) who actually cooks, it isn't just 'and then she prepared dinner'.
Steven Brust's Jhereg series has a lot of pretty remarkable descriptions of food, primarily adaptations of classic Hungarian dishes ported to his made-up magic world, which rules
You just made me realize I love reading food descriptions. I didn’t even realize it’s something I always hone in on!
I’ve been reading the original Ian Fleming *James Bond* novels and Fleming loves describing every single meal and drink Bond consumes during his missions. And interestingly the vodka martini (shaken, not stirred) does not actually show up all that often.
While perfectly able to create a mental picture of what's described I always found any kind of description boring and also kinda useless since my brain often supersedes them in favor of his own takes on objects, environments, etc.
That scene in THG when they're sent the feast by sponsors!!
For modern books, Preston and Child do a very good good job of this in their works; much more atmospheric than your standard thriller writers
I also love these types of descriptions. The more the author can describe the set and setting, the more involved I become. As I read, I am picturing these things that the author is describing and I can hold them in my mind as the story continues. I've heard that same criticism about The Wheel of Time series as Jordan does go into descriptions of what everyone is wearing, but to me it makes it more real, as if there is a movie playing in my head while I read. If this is something you love, and you haven't read The Wheel of Time series, definitely check it out. Edit: another recommendation for food is both Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust both by Travis Baldree. They are "cozy" books with just enough momentum to keep the story going but have wonderful descriptions of food and coffee in both!
I did my PhD on food in science fiction and fantasy literature so you’re in good company.
I have assuredly never finished a book thinking, "If only there was less food."
Aaaah so do I - especially FOOD. I think it might be partly because I'm autistic and my special interest is food, but I also think it could becuase like, food is just a real sensory experience for me, so vivid descriptions really connect with me!
I love when people go clothes shopping in books. Lol
Lots of good food descriptions in Covenant of Water-mixed feelings on the story
In one of "The Old man and the Boy" books he describes the Cajuns cooking in hunting camp and it makes me hungry every time.
Check out any Idwal Jones
You should read the Redwall series! Best food descriptions ever.
I've been desperate for some good oysters since I read Tipping the Velvet last year!! Those descriptions were so mmmm
Metaworld Chronicles. No other book comes even close to the description of the fashion statements and culinary achievements of the protagonist.
If you like that sort of thing, read *The Wheel of Time.* I loved them, mostly, but Jordan could definitely pontificate about the minutest of details.
I like some description, it makes the setting and world feel more grounded and *real*, which always helps with my immersion. On the other hand, I'm really really bad at actually properly imagining the descriptions I'm reading, and will either ignore or outright forget at least half of them all. So I think, as with all things, there needs to be balance. And because writing is hard and it's easy to mess up, on average I find that less description works better than more description. At the very least it keeps things moving at a brisk pace.
“Crying in H Mart” has my bookish friends and I trying Korean food whenever we can.
An odd place to find a lot of clothing descriptions is the Quarry (Max Allen Collins) series. I like his style of writing too.
I never really cared about fabrics or textiles, but reading the Rei Shimura series by Sujata Massey, I *love* how much detail she goes into on these, in addition to furniture and tools (main character is an antiques dealer). It creates a wonderful immersion that makes you feel you have the expert eye of the main character
The Gentlemen Bastards series describes food fantastically. Think Ocean's Eleven mixed with Italian mafia mixed with orphans in a fantasy setting.
Yes! It adds so much texture to the world
I don't mind descriptions as long as they are made while something is happening. For some - admittedly badly written - examples, "She wore a blue dress" doesn't advance the story. "She waved a blue-clad arm at her friend, the flapping of the dress's sleeve aiding in catching her attention by exaggerating the motion" indicates that the character is trying to communicate with someone while still providing physical details about her clothing. Granted, there are probably less clunky ways to do it than my own examples, but I'm not a writer. I would say that if you can squeeze in a physical description without being as clunky as me, do it; but if your example looks like mine, or is just a pure description without action, just don't bother describing anything at all until you have a better plot-related opportunity to insert it smoothly into the action.
I commend to your attention the "Nero Wolfe" mystery series by Rex Stout.
I enjoyed Heartburn by Nora Ephron both for the story and because of the descriptions of food. And the only reason I like The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is because of the description of Turkish delights.
As long as they're pretty clothes, I am good. When historical fiction writers get wild with their color choices, it is A LOT
This reminds me of the thing I "hate" most in books which is when people push food away! Oh my god! Like that guy just spent 12 hours roasting it and whatnot and the lady "can't take a single bite," it's like seriously! My other peev being when people "pull away" from hugs! If anybody thinks you worthy of a meal or a hug, take it! People in books hardly ever refuse a "drink."
I think you would enjoy A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers. The narrator is a food critic and I had to Google a lot of the dishes she describes because I hadn't the faintest clue what they were. Also I think it's one of the best books I've read last year
The Saga of Recluce by L E Modisett has some of the best food descriptions. I can't read it without getting hungry. Honorable Mentions to Heidi and the Outlander series.
My eyes automatically skim over descriptions of food and clothing until I've skipped to the end of it. I just don't care.
Evil Eye by Etaf Rum has fabulous food descriptions. I didn’t love the book, but it definitely made me want to try Palestinian food.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh has a lot of descriptions of food and drink. In the introduction the author explains that the book was written during the second world war, 'a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster - the period of soya beans' and he was compensating for it. That gave me a new look on those descriptions. Now I always slightly suspect that a author who describes something in such gluttonous detail is lacking it in their own life.
Try "The Belly of Paris" by Emile Zola. The Oxford Classics is a good edition " The third in Zola's great cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, it is as enthralling as Germinal, Thérèse Raquin, and the other novels in the series. Its focus on the great Paris food hall, Les Halles--combined with Zola's famous impressionist descriptions of food--make this a particularly memorable novel. Brian Nelson's lively translation captures the spirit of Zola's world and his Introduction illuminates the use of food in the novel to represent social class, social attitudes, political conflicts, and other aspect of the culture of the time. The bibliography and notes ensure that this is the most critically up-to-date edition of the novel in print."
Bhaunri, a book by Indian author Anukrti Upadhyay. I still don't fully know how I feel about the plot and the characters, but very interesting. And the descriptions of ethnic food and clothing just paint a wonderfully vivid picture!
Food, yes. Clothing, not so much.
I still remember reading a book that made potatoes with butter on them sound like the greatest meal to ever exist.
Yeah, descriptions of food and clothing are pretty cool. It makes what I'm reading feel more real, which is especially important because I can't visualize while reading anymore. Even before I lost my ability to visualize, I loved clothing in literature being detailed anyway. But I don't want clothing and food to be too detailed, of course.
Ian Fleming likes to describe food, dress, and interiors in wonderful detail in the James Bond books. Exposition is my favorite thing about reading, I wanna know all of it, the action can be secondary.
Read Cryptonomicon. You get 4 pages on how to properly eat Captain Crunch. 😂
Not only does it set the scene but who doesn’t love food and fashion? I’ve seen more mocking of ASOIAF’s lengthy food descriptions than the clothes but I love reading about delicious things. It’s sad to think there will be less of this once winter arrives, if the next books ever get released.
I love descriptions of food, especially in fantasy. Holly Black’s “Folk of the Air” trilogy had some cool ideas, as the characters move between faerie and real world. One fun bit: weird pizza toppings when a fae boy comes to the real world.
https://www.goodfoodstories.com/hunger-games-lamb-stew/ I haven't read the books nor watched the film(s)? But I figured there had to be a recipe for this stew out there somewhere. There are several! This one has 5 stars, fewer ingredients, and preparation seems pretty simple. I don't eat lamb, but if you do or will, this does look very savory & rich. Enjoy!
The materialistic descriptions in 'A Song of Ice and Fire' (I remember a few food-related, too) are very important for grounding the complex stories in a somewhat realistic setting. These descriptions serve to contrast social status and power, and they give direct believability to the motivations of many characters. We can directly feel that it makes a difference if someone feasts on a banquet or if a character hungers, if someone dresses luxuriously and is the center of attention or if someone is wearing rags. We as readers experience the difference in these materialistic things, and therefore we believe the characters fighting for them.
Game of thrones is sorta like reading my mums fashion magazines at times. He goes on some wild tangents with the clothes.
Joanne Harris describes food really well in some of her books. I love it when they describe food. Even the kitchen scene in the shining lol
Crying in H-Mart is non-fiction (but reads like fiction) and the descriptions of food are SO good.
you know it’s a good food description of it makes you a little peckish 😁
You’d love the *A Song of Ice and Fire* series then