When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.
In this author-curated rendition, Tanya Bush—pastry chef, co-founder of the literary magazine Cake Zine, and author of Will This Make You Happy—shares her favorite food-inspired books.
As a professional baker and writer, Tanya Bush understands what it means to savor something—be it a delectable meal or a book you can’t put down. She has undeniably bridged a gap between the culinary and literary worlds as the pastry chef at Brooklyn’s Little Egg, as part of the team behind the dining/reading series Table of Contents, and as a co-founder of Cake Zine, which explores art and culture through the lens of food.
“I feel well-fed when writing makes me feel like I’m inhabiting rather than observing,” Bush tells Marie Claire over email. “I also like books that aren’t entirely legible on first encounter, that require slower contemplation. The same is true for a dish.” “Of course, I love something straightforward, that is obviously delicious, an ice cream sundae. But I’m equally sated by complexity, something that makes me think about the technique and craft behind it, that has me interrogating the choices that led to this particular confluence of flavors or textures—a dish that requires a few bites before I grasp it.”
Similarly, she explains that her love for writing and baking comes from the same place: “There are no rules to abide by, but boundless room for play in the margins.”
With that philosophy in mind, Bush whipped up her debut book, Will This Make You Happy, a narrative cookbook with recipes from a year in baking, intertwined with a story about pulling oneself out of 20-something malaise. “I wanted to show the striving and the failures that precede competence,” she says. “The recipes are written from a more self-assured place, while the narrative remains in the present tense, so the reader experiences what it feels like to be in the process of finding yourself. ”
Because Bush has both developed and devoured plenty of food writing, we asked her to share her favorite books about chefs, the culture of food, and home cooking. See her picks ranging from twisty thrillers to heartfelt memoirs below.
"A marvelously strange novel that purports to be a gourmand’s treatise, with roving interludes on bellinis and the philosophy of pleasure, before revealing itself, almost imperceptibly, to be a story about murder."
"I love a single-sitting book, and this novel is sensuous and transportive while remaining spare and economical…hard to pull off! It follows a self-taught cook finding his place in a restaurant kitchen, offering little wisdoms like: 'right away, cooking entails other people; it entails the presence of others contained within the cake like the genie in the lamp.'"
"Perhaps I have a preoccupation with food and murder, but this book about a seductress accused of killing men she feeds is utterly propulsive and the hungriest a novel has made me in years. It inspired a snack I love: fresh white rice drizzled with soy sauce and a pat of the eponymous salted butter."
"Oh Laurie, my north star. So comforting to read her chiding, incisive, and hilarious writing. I often think about the scene where she labors over a pasta that turns out so gluey even her stoned friend suggests going out to dinner. I love reading a chapter before bed each night, pure comfort."
"So strange, twisting, and immersive. Zhang describes food in such embodied, sensory detail that I feel like I am right there beside her chef narrator, folding cream into shortcakes even as the world surrounding her succumbs to dystopia."
"As the culture of food becomes increasingly saturated, monetized, and hard to parse, I turn to Ruby for guidance. She untangles the moral panic, diet fads, and wellness dogma shaping how we eat, which is heady stuff, but what she writes goes down like a milkshake. I’ve been able to make sense of my own appetites through her work."
"My dear friend and chef Evan Hanczor gave me this book, a theological meditation on food and living by a priest. I return to it in small snippets when I’m feeling down. 'One real thing is closer to God than all the diagrams in the world.'"
