Well, I had a nice post planned for today, something about the difference between self-awareness and self-absorption. Instead, I’m writing about food again, this time quoting from another book, Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite
I mentioned this book in another post, over a year ago, and I was reminded of it by a little phrase that popped into my head: “one tiny chop.” I knew the words were from this book, and I was determined to find it and put it into
The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery and Meaning in an Ordinary Church by Margaret Visser, originally published in 2001, now available in hardback, paperback, and Kindle versions. Link is to Amazon page.
In this book, the historian and anthropologist Margaret Visser takes the reader through a Roman church, Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura), exhaustively describing the architecture, history and current activities centered on this ancient structure. Sound boring? Oh believe me, it’s not. It is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read, and I’m so sorry that we didn’t visit this church when we went to Europe back in 1993. We’ll do so someday! I had read the book many years ago (it came out in 2001) and then again in 2013 when we went on our big driving trip to LA.
Just finished a fascinating book mostly about food and our relationship to it. Frank Bruni, who was the restaurant critic for the New York Times from 2004-2009, spent most of his life battling his weight. He grew up in an Italian-American family that put great emphasis on having mounds of food available at any and all times. If there wasn’t enough food on the table to make it sag, then there wasn’t enough. As Bruni moved into young adulthood he tried amphetamines, forced vomiting, and other extremely unhealthy measures to control his weight. After college he became a journalist, and at one point he was following George W. Bush on his campaign trail. He calculated that there were eight meals served daily to the press corps in an effort to keep them (literally) fat and happy so that they’d report positively on the candidate.
