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So you've bought Alinea for your favorite wannabe gastro-physicist and The River Cottage Cookbook for your farm-to-table friend. At a loss for the other foodies you're shopping for? Here are the three books that top my own wish list.

For the locavorous turophile: American Cheeses: The Best Regional, Artisanal, and Farmhouse Cheeses, Who Makes Them, and Where to Find Them by Clark Wolf. American cheese certainly doesn't mean processed and cellophaned anymore, but for many it does still just mean Humboldt Fog and Maytag Blue. No disrespect to those two venerable cheeses; it's just that there's much more out there hidden amid our amber waves of grain. Luckily, we've got Clark Wolf to unearth these treasures. More than a primer, American Cheeses qualifies as an ode.

For the literary-minded homebody: Second Helpings of Roast Chicken by Simon Hopkinson. As the title implies, this unassuming volume serves up more of what Hopkinson offered in last year's sleeper hit, Roast Chicken and Other Stories. It's hard to say whether the well-curated recipes or the charmingly told narratives appeal more; luckily, both abound.

For the kitchen experimentalist: The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of American's Most Imaginative Chefs by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. Another sequel of sorts, this follow-up to Page and Dornenburg's award-winning tome on wine pairings, What to Drink with What You Eat. could have been titled What To Eat with What You Eat. I, for one, am a sucker for lists, and in this book, lists abound. In an entry on avocados, for instance, I learn that the ingredient complements a range of flavors from arugula to yogurt, with over five dozen in between. The idea? To equip the home cook to innovate, but logically.

.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.

If you're reading Slashfood right now, chances are that you're a foodie. In my experience, if there's anything a foodie likes besides eating/cooking, it's reading a book about eating/cooking. These are a few of the books I consider the best cooking books, but we all have strong opinions on this subject. What are some of the cooking books that you think should be on the list?

1. Larousse Gastronomique , the classic food encyclopedia.
2.Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking
3. Cookwise (I can't wait for Bakewise) From Shirley Corriher
4. Julia Childs' classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking
5.The Bread Bakers Apprentice by Peter Reinhart
6.Jeffrey Hammelman's Bread: A Bakers Book of Recipes and Techniques
7. The United States of Arugala is a history of American foodie-ism by David Kamp
8. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

If you're a Vayniac, you already know that Gary Vaynerchuk came out with a book called 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World. Marisa announced the book here at Slashfood about a month and a half ago, and I just got my hands on a copy a few weeks ago.

I didn't put it down until I had at least looked at every single wine on the list. It's Gary first list of favorite and recommended wines, and it's chock full of enthusiasm, energy, and genuinely great recommendations.

Here are some ways this book can be useful for you:

• Exploring wine if you've never really tried wine before and have no idea where to start.
• Choosing great wines for specific occasions from Gary's very cleverly organized and insightful lists for any event.
• Finding the best wine for that flavor profile you really like (best dry Reisling, best "fruit bomb" red, etc.).
• Learning how you can become better at recognizing what you like about wine and what wines you're passionate about (hint: drink more wine!).
• Understanding that wine can be fun, and that it doesn't have to be serious or snobby.

What I really love about this book is the genuine authenticity that just reverberates from everything that Gary has to say. Each individual wine write-up is like getting to read an episode of Wine Library TV, chock full of enthusiasm, honesty, and insightful wine wisdom. The only thing I would change about the book is that, for a truly ignorant wine novice like myself, it's hard to tell which wines are white or red, etc., which is important for me since I have a hard time really enjoying reds and wanted to go through and pick out all of the wines that I knew I would want to try right off of the bat. A quick cheat sheet or wine primer at the beginning of the book (Petite Sirah is red, Reislings are white, etc.) would have been really helpful for me.

Overall, the book is well written, very straightforward in Gary's typical style, and I think it has potential to really help the everyday wine enthusiast reach a level of immersion in the wine world that many of us don't think we can reach. It can be expensive to start out in wine and buy a bottle of everything, especially if you're back at square one when the wine isn't a quality example of the genre you're trying to explore. This book makes jumping into every corner of the wine world a real possibility for every wine drinker, and that is something really worth sharing. Keep a copy handy for your own trips to the liquor store, and give a copy to a wine-loving (or wine-curious) friend!

I am a budding foodie and reluctant food blogger. I've only recently joined Slashfood, and unlike many of my colleagues, I don't have any particular knowledge about the foodie world. I don't watch the Food Network (that would require me getting cable, and nyaaaah). I don't know much about fine cuisine. I wouldn't know a truffle from a button mushroom (or maybe I would, if somebody would buy me a truffle). And indeed, although I love food, love being in the kitchen and (trying) to feed my friends and family, the learning curve is daunting.

But I want to learn! And since I'm at least another year away from actually taking a cooking class, I've done what most writers do: I've hit the books. I thought I'd share them with you, while I'm educating myself on all things culinary.

Food is the new black. Or at least it seems that way, given the mass media interest in food and its preparations. It's not hard to compile a sizable reading list. I've culled mine mostly from suggestions on the food blogs, and here they are, in no particular order. The list isn't complete by any means, but it's a start.