Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover’s Courtship, with Recipes Amanda Hesser
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Think Sex and the City – then substitute Carrie Bradshaw’s obsession with $500 shoes and bizarre haute-couture clothing for Amanda Hesser’s equally near-religious zeal for schmancy restaurants, exquisite dinner parties, and divinely-prepared food. In Cooking for Mr. Latte, food writer Hesser tells the story of her relationship with Mr. Latte, a guy who nearly doesn’t make it past the first date when he suggests they dine at the Manhattan equivalent of an Outback Steakhouse, then orders a latte after dinner, a food faux-pas that just about sends Hesser into a fit of horror. Through a series of hilarious, snappily vibrant vignettes, each centered on some aspect of cooking or eating, Hesser’s book is a diary of falling and being in love -- both with Mr. Latte, and with food (every chapter even ends with recipes that relate to the preceding story – each of which sounds absolutely delicious). Light, lovely, fast-paced and frothily fun, Cooking for Mr. Latte is the perfect beach read for anyone who can’t imagine love without good food, food without great love.

Good in Bed Jennifer Weiner
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Walk into any bookstore these days and you’re likely to see a display full of Bridget Jones-style wannabes: breezy, perky tales of successful, 20- to 30-something, sexy urban singletons desperately seeking love and the perfect magical, butt-shrinking dress. Having already read their prototype, I’ve generally found little reason to pick up any of these imitators. But when Good in Bed appeared on a list of possible choices for my last book club gathering, I gamely figured I’d at least check it out. Which is how I came to find myself curled up on a big comfy chair at my local Barnes and Noble, halfway through Good in Bed – and completely sucked in -- a mere hour or so after I first plucked it off the shelf. On the surface, Good in Bed looks pretty indistinguishable from any of the rest of the single-citygirl-seeks-love genre. It’s the story of a smart, talented, 28-year-old entertainment writer named Cannie, who has two main obsessions in her life: her weight, and her loser of an ex-boyfriend. Cannie’s two obsessions merge into one when she discovers that her ex is now writing a new column called Good in Bed for a major women’s magazine, and that the subject of his first piece, entitled “Loving a Larger Women,” is none other than Cannie herself. Weiner’s writing is nothing short of absolutely, completely charming: the dialogue is smart, zippy and very, very witty; the characters, especially Cannie, are earthy and funny and lovable. And in an age where Renee Zellweger’s 130-lb Bridget Jones is popular media’s notion of fat, Weiner’s decidedly plus-size – and in the end, a-ok with that – protagonist is just plain refreshing.

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