New Bourdain Travel Book; Megxit Gooses Sales?
Plus: Buy Fanny Farmer's house (for $1.2 mil)
Howdy cookbook fans!
A lot of new faces this week, so here’s a quick introduction to Stained Page News (seasoned readers, feel free to skip to the good stuff below). My name is Paula Forbes, I’m a cookbook author and critic with over a decade of experience reviewing cookbooks—I have been critic at Eater, Epicurious, Lucky Peach, and more. I’m based in Austin, Texas, and I wrote a cookbook called The Austin Cookbook that came out in 2018.
This newsletter covers cookbook news for cookbook nerds. I talk about new releases, book deals, cookbook authors, industry stuff, and I link to a lot (a lot) of fun and weird and wacky internet writing about cookbooks and recipes. Sometimes, not always, the issue ends with a recipe from a new release.
Free issues come out every Wednesday-ish. That’s what you’re reading now. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you’ll also get an issue every Friday-ish. Those tend to be deeper dives, seasonal previews, book deals, that kind of thing. You also unlock the ability to comment on posts.
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Okay, on with the show! (And big thanks to Smitten Kitchen for the mention.)
Bourdain Travel Guide Coming This Fall
This fall, Ecco will publish the book Anthony Bourdain was working on when he died: World Travel: An Irreverent Guide will be “a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favorite places—in his own words.” Supplementing the text are essays from friends and family, as well as contributions from Woolever and illustrations from Tony Millionaire (who did the cover, above). People has more, as does Ecco, but I heard about it first from food writer Daniela Galarza on Twitter. (Not a cookbook, but cookbook adjacent.)
Markle Cookbook Sales Spike?
“Annoy the idiots, buy the cookbook”: Meghan Markle fans are rallying people to buy her charity cookbook to combat bad press in the face of Megxit. (If you don’t know what Megxit is, here’s an explainer.) The Duchess (?) wrote the foreword to Together: Our Community Cookbook [Clarkson Potter 2018], a collection of recipes from immigrant families affected by London’s Grenfell Tower fire. Harper’s speculates this has goosed book sales; I don’t have access to those numbers but Together is currently ranked #1 in Middle Eastern Cooking, #2 in Celebrity Cookbooks, and #157 overall on Amazon. So, maybe?
Check this out!
Wanna buy Fanny Farmer’s former home? (Yes, that Fanny Farmer.) It has a pool! [Realtor.com via Patch]
Gladys Bourdain, NYT copy editor and Anthony’s mom, has died at 85. [NYT]
A family’s copy of The Joy of Cooking turns out to be packed with grandmother’s long-lost handwritten recipes. [Chicago Tribune]
“I was working in the kitchen at a bar in Ann Arbor, slinging burgers, and my mother took matters into her own hands (without asking me), writing to both Julia Child and Craig Claiborne (the author of the New York Times Cookbook) to ask them what her daughter should do if she wanted to become a chef. Craig wrote her back and said I should go to cooking school.” —Sara Moulton on one way to decide to go to culinary school. [Total Food Service]
CBSNewYork tours used cookbook store Bonnie Slotnick’s. There’s a video but I couldn’t get it to embed, shrug emoji.
Behind the scenes with celebrity chef Michael Symon’s ghostwriter, Douglas Trattner. [Cleveland Jewish News]
The best vegetarian cookbooks of all time, according the Healthy-ish. [BA]
Recipes as science writing. [Scientific American]
Why we can’t get enough celebrity mom cookbooks. [Romper]
Is Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course “the best dessert cookbook in history”? [AJC]
The local cookbooks of Asheville, NC. [AVL Today]
That’s it y’all! Hope you’re having a great week. As always, send me scoops. And see some of you on Friday.