Day 22 – The book that made you fall in love with reading
I honestly can’t remember a time that I didn’t love reading. My grandmother taught me to read at two and a half, and in my childhood, I read anything I could get my hands on. But maybe I should talk about the book that propelled me from strictly fiction and mostly kids novels to the definitively adult world, and that is Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything.

Those of you who are fans of Iron Chef America will know him as the white-haired and outspoken food critic, but for the rest of you, here’s a little background. A lawyer by trade, Steingarten decided one day to become heavily involved with food, on the critic side of things. This novel, with one whole chapter devoted to bottled water, is an interesting glance at the journey of a man who wanted to eat everything and overcame his food phobias to do so.

This was the precursor to my love for Anthony Bourdain, and it finally let me see what my mum (a chef by trade) and her work friends used to swoon over - food, glorious food!