I love to read about food in any book. When I was a kid I thought British food must be soooo delicious because of Harry Potter 😂 I still get excited whenever a book mentions food, even if it’s just something ordinary like bacon and eggs or ice cream soda. Books can also affect my preferences for food during the time I read them, for example, when I was reading The Winds of War, a book about WWII, my diet consisted of food from the Axis Powers solely! I ate so much German sausage, Japanese potato salad, Japanese beef tongue, Japanese fried chicken, and pasta (my record is eating pasta and meatballs four nights in one week!). Apparently my appetite decided to be very different from my political views 😂
I like when there are good descriptions of clothing, especially in a historical or fantasy setting.
Food from HP was the first thing I thought of when I read your title
I always used to snack when I read HP. I think it’s quite emotional as well since he had to hide food (from friends) in his cupboard and Hagrid always invited them for tea even though he wasn’t the best at cooking
On food the narnia books made Turkish delight sound like the greatest food on earth. I’ve been told it’s underwhelming so I haven’t tried it not wanting to tarnish that book memory.
Neal Stephenson can spend pages and pages of esoteric shit. How to best eat Captain Crunch. Space chains. Character development in digital realms. etc. Just so detailed. Love it.
Ya James bond on food he’s eating is well done and entertaining.
Oh, so, like, the exact opposite of Tom Bombadil ?
Tom Bombadil and Goldberry
You should read ‘Sunshine’ by Robin McKinley. Fairly generic vampire romance book but the protagonist is also a baker. Food is like a main character in It.
Definitely food and drink as well. I love to try regional or specific cultural dishes. I also like to read about sightseeing or real places. I once read a novel set in Freiburg. I marked all the food and places mentioned there because I want to travel to Freiburg myself someday
Historical facts
Any historical fiction with just, a bunch of random historical bits in along the way is great. Certainly it can be too much at times, The Baroque Cycle feels like less a plot or characters and more a series of random historical facts Neal Stephenson found interesting jammed together with random historical fanfic.
But anything short of that is great. I’m not even into sailing but I enjoyed learning all about old sailing vessels in the Aubrey and Maturin series.
Harry Potter books are like 90% slice of life and they’re a great comfort read
Pretty much all the social commentary in Pratchett’s writing. It might be good character building but it could just as easily not be there and the plots would all still work but that stuff is what makes Pratchett Pratchett.
From Men At Arms:
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
I don’t think I’ve ever read a better worded description of the concept of socio-economic unfairness.
i love when they describe chilly mornings, it is the ultimate cozy-maker.
I mostly read No Plot Just Vibes books at this point. Descriptions of clothes, food, minute everyday activities, overanalysing yourself and others, is just really enjoyable to me because it’s real. It also affects the way I write my diaries. I’d pick a good writing style over a good plot any time
When I’m reading dan abnetts books, i absolutely love how he sometimes starts describing what random people on that planet or in that city are doing, basically snapshots in the lifes of humans that aren’t plot relevant for the sake of setting a tone