Eating Your Words

The best way to discover new cultures and places in my opinion, apart from actually visiting them, is reading about them and eating their food. It's like having a little holiday, and you don't have to leave your couch or your PJs. I had a little "holiday" of that sort this weekend, one of toast and tahini and trackies and books.

After reading a book set in a foreign place I'll often want to try some of the food that is eaten there--even if it's not actually mentioned in the book. After reading Saundra Mitchell's Shadowed Summer (a fantastic ghost story and a really quick read) I got a sudden craving for beans and rice, even though I'd never eaten bean and rice and it wasn't even mentioned in the book. Beans and rice is delicious. I made a cheat's version with tinned kidney beans and bacon, but still. Yum. I love books set in the South, like Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches Chronicles and To Kill a Mockingbird and R. A. Nelson's gorgeous novels. Plus there are TV shows like HBO's True Blood, which is partly set in a restaurant with actual booths. (Below left, the interior of Merlotte's.) I love booths but we just don't have them here! How I want to sit in a booth and eat a "coke float". We call them spiders and my cousins and I used to eat vanilla ice cream and coke spiders at my nanna's on hot Sunday afternoons.

But it's not just books set in America that make me want to eat. (OK, that wasn't a jibe against you Americans. I just tend to read a lot of books set there!) Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl made me crave hawker noodle dishes on the streets of Bangkok. Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, set on the Greek island of Corfu, makes me think of olives and frosty pink watermelon slices. The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini and Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody, while heartbreaking stories, make me want to eat flatbread and spiced meats from Middle Eastern street vendors. A friend make Yorkshire puddings for a dinner party a few weeks ago and I was so excited to try them after reading so many of James Herriot's vet novels as a teenager.

Cat told me on Twitter she just has to eat stew with chucks of bread and cheese whenever she reads fantasy adventure novels, which made me laugh and also made me think about all the oatcake-munching and jerky-chewing that goes on in those books. I remember once trying to make mead, which is a type of honey wine, after reading about it one of those pseudo-medieval fantasy books. I was about thirteen so it wasn't alcoholic. I think it had fruit and honey and cinnamon in it and it was rather delicious. Then earlier this winter I spotted Maxwell's Mead (see right) in a bottle shop and had to try it. It's so good by itself or with ginger beer.

Have you ever read a book that makes you want to eat or cook something either mentioned in it or from the same region?

**EDIT** Since posting this I have read a gut-wrenching post on Saundra Mitchell's blog detailing her reaction to Professor Scroggin's thoughtless attack on the Republic School reading list. Please visit her blog and offer your support, or use the #SpeakLoudly hashtag on Twitter to search for more information on this issue (if you haven't, you know, had your blog reader explode all over your face with posts about this in the last twelve hours).

Review: The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi

Emiko is New People, a windup girl, heechy-keechy--a Japanese genetically-engineered entity conditioned to obey. Dumped in Bangkok by her owner, Emiko must remain in hiding from the white shirts--officers of the Environment Ministry--who would mulch her for being an illegal piece of trash. The owner of a seedy nightspot becomes her patron and uses her in sadistic performances in order to help pay for the bribes he must give to the white shirts. There seems to be no way out for Emiko until a farang, a foreigner, tells her of a place that New People can live in peace. The foreigner, Anderson, is a calorie man for AgriGen, hunting fruits and vegetables thought to be extinct in Thai marketplaces: bio-terrorism has shrunk the worlds biodiversity to a mere puddle. Though she's thought of as little more than a piece of genetic trash, Emiko will play a pivotal role in future of not only Bangkok, but the human race itself.

I was very impressed by The Windup Girl. Paolo Bacigalupi has created a complex, believable, and--naturally--grim view of the future. The best dystopian novels have their roots firmly planted in what the world is like today, and extrapolate forwards in time. What if all major crops were genetically engineered and controlled by multinationals? What if most biodiversity was wiped out by bio-terrorism?

Because this is a YA blog, a word about the content. The Windup Girl is a book for the adult market and contained all the aspects of books aimed at adults that I dislike. Highly complex socio-political structures. Numerous characters introduced at what seems like warp speed. My poor befuddled brain! Sadistic and violent sexual scenes or acts. Not one--not one--likable character, or at least a character you can gun for. Emiko, the titular character, was far too wretched to be likable.

That said, I did very much enjoy this book. While I dislike sexual violence in books (it's probably redundant to say I dislike it--it's not there to be enjoyed) the scenes were critical to the story and never gratuitous. And it never hurts to stretch the brain with a more complex story now and then. Bacigalupi can write vivid and engaging prose, and while the characters themselves aren't endearing, his turn of phrase certainly is.

I wouldn't recommend this book to young adults, or to anyone getting very excited about all the new YA dystopian books that are coming out this year, including Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker (excuse me while I SQUEE!) Dystopian books for young adults are infused with a lot of hope, and while The Windup Girl isn't an overly depressing read, without ruining the ending I'll say it has a lot in common with the Brave New Worlds and Nineteen Eighty-fours of dystopian fiction.

Ship Breaker is out May 1. Dannie has already given it a rave review.

See Thea's review on The Book Smugglers for a discussion of why The Windup Girl is not steampunk, despite making it onto Best Steampunk Books of 2009 all over the interwebs.