The 2026 Desk Book Club Selections

The Newsletter Workshop 2.0 is TOMORROW, December 2; the Food Essay will be five weeks starting January 13. Members can find links to restaurant maps, discount codes, and more here. Become a member for $5 monthly or $30 annually.

I launched our book club in 2024, and ever since, it’s been one of my favorite parts of the newsletter. I try to mix up new books and older work, fiction and food studies. This time, I’m even adding a cookbook for good measure. With the book club, what I want to do is provide an impetus to think about how we eat from different angles and perspectives, as well as motivation to visit or re-visit texts you might not have had reason to read beforehand. (The notes and conversations are open only to members.)

Check out the full Book Club archives. You can also browse the various sections of From the Desk, including recipes, recommendations, lectures, and more.

NOTE: This month, I will only publish on the first three Mondays. We’ll be back to the normal twice-weekly schedule in the New Year.

For next year, our bookstore partner will be New York City’s Kitchen Arts & Letters. They’ll keep the books in stock for us, if you’d like to purchase. They’re also exclusively offering signed copies of my forthcoming memoir of food and place On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, which is out on April 14, 2026.

With each of these books, I’ll be sending out my notes and suggested secondary readings, and we’ll have a virtual meeting to discuss them. For many of these, the authors will be joining us. These are topics that are pertinent to the work I do that I think people will have fun discussing. This is what I’ve chosen for 2026: