David Worsley of Words Worth Books shares summer reads for foodies: Andrew Coppolino

As the August heat and dog days of summer roll in, here are a few book selections to enjoy while at the beach, relaxing in the shade on the backyard hammock or inside in the air-conditioned cool.

David Worsley, co-owner of Uptown Waterloo's Words Worth Books, provides three suggestions that explore the larger food culture around the globe and individual treatments of the author's relationship with eating, food and food culture.

Worsley makes an interesting connection between restaurants, food, reading and bookshops.

"Coming out of the pandemic, food writing, restaurants and bookshops have common cause. The conversations around books and authors is like the conversation around food and restaurants," he says. "What's new? And what are we eating?"

Answering, in part, his own questions, Worsley picks a trio of books that have impressed and intrigued from those among the Words Worth shelves.

Gabby Peyton, Where We Ate: A Field Guide to Canada's Restaurants, Past and Present (Appetite by Random House)

For 50 years, Where to Eat in Canada was published as an annual city-by-city guide to restaurants across the country; in the past several editions Waterloo Region restaurants found their way into the book.

Gabby Peyton's new book is a sort of retro guide, notes Worsley.

"Where We Ate is a history of Canadian restaurants, those that are still going, those that were storied in their day, those that brought something new or cool to the table. The presentation is gorgeous too," Worsley says.

"It's something you'd give to a foodie, to an historian, and something you'd give to someone who just makes a point of finding and developing who they are via restaurants and food culture. And it's just good fun."

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (Knopf Doubleday)

Worsley says that Crying in H Mart, a chain of U.S. Korean grocery stores, will satisfy readers looking for a food memoir that explores a personal relationship with food and culture.

"This is an indie rock musician, Michelle Zauner, who has explored her own history and ethnicity — what is it about me that makes me tick? The book focuses on her family's Korean restaurant," Worsley says.

It's a question that we've asked ourselves as a society and community numerous times as we've seen the deleterious impact COVID-19 has had on the restaurant industry.

"Who are we because of the food we choose to eat? Who are we because of the food we work with? What is it about food that makes us, us?" asks Worsley.

In an almost overwhelming social media era when the questions: Who will read this? and What will we read? have been front and centre, Crying in H Mart has a unique quality, according to Worsley. The Tik Tok subcommunity "Book Tok" has been partly responsible for its success by introducing the book to a younger generation — one that has been generally seen to eschew books and reading.

"Crying in H Mart was one of the first books to really blow up on the app," Worsley adds. "That's wonderful."

Stanley Tucci, Taste: My Life Through Food (Gallery Books)

Etched in my memory is the charming final scene in the movie Big Night during which New Jersey restaurateur Secondo, played by Stanley Tucci, cooks a late-night omelette in virtual silence with only the measured poetry of the cooking sounds audible. It's beautiful.

"Tucci knows food really well, and he knows fun too," said Worsley, calling Tucci's new book "a good gift for someone that will put a smile on their face and encourage them to go cook something good."

"It's him growing up and going to the school of hard knocks. That makes it a pretty standard-issue memoir. But he's not intimidating anybody with arcane knowledge around food," says Worsley. "This is a guy who simply loves food, what it means and how it makes him tick. This is a joyful piece of work centred around one very lucky guy's relationship with very good food."

That's bound to make for joyful summer reading.