I was the kind of kid who was always reading at the dinner table, obliviously dipping the corner of my Judy Blume novel in the macaroni until my mother told me to "put the book away!" Eating and reading still go together for me - I eat alone in restaurants a lot while traveling for work, so I always carry a book to keep me company. This week I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which, at almost 1,000 pages, is a bit awkward to hold aloft above my plate. So I really enjoyed reading a piece in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review, in which Leanne Shapton asks various authors to name the book they most enjoy reading during solo dinners. The results are often unexpected. "Bright Lights, Big City" author Jay McInerney is the only writer to cite a food-related book - A.J. Liebling's gastronomic memoir "Between Meals." "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" author Junot Diaz chooses Michel Faber's "Under the Skin," though he says the aliens-eating-humans scenes will turn you into a vegetarian. Israeli writer Etgar Keret says reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" had him laughing and crying into his food at a Chinese restaurant.
Do you have a favorite book to take to restaurants for solo meals? What are you reading over the dinner table this week?
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