Events › Food For Thought: A Culinary Book Club

Indulge in your passion for literature and cuisine at a unique book club where we combine the love of reading with the love of food! Each month, we'll dive into a new book and eat delicious snacks inspired by its themes. From fiction to non-fiction, our diverse selection of books will spark lively discussions as we share our impressions, thoughts, and interpretations. Don't miss out on this opportunity to bond with fellow book-lovers over a shared love of literature and food.

This month we will be reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.

In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell (The Tipping Point) aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers-to "analyze [those strategies], critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them," in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety. He uses a variety of examples from history and recent headlines to illustrate that people size up the motivations, emotions, and trustworthiness of those they don't know both wrongly and with misplaced confidence. He relates, for example, the story of a whole cadre of American spies in Cuba who were carefully handpicked by American intelligence operatives, all of whom turned out to be pro-Castro double agents. Gladwell writes in his signature colorful, fluid, and accessible prose, though he occasionally fails to make fully clear the connection between a seemingly tangential topic such as suicide risk and the book's main questions. In addition to providing an analysis of human mental habits and interactions, Gladwell pleas for more thoughtful ways of behaving and advocates for people to embrace trust, rather than defaulting to distrust, and not to "blame the stranger." Readers will find this both fascinating and topical. Agent: Tina Bennett, William Morris Endeavor.

We will be making Zucchini Cake to accompany our discussion of the book.

NOTE:
Registration (starting October 13th) is required and there is a $5 charge for this class.
Payment can be made via Eventbrite. A link will be sent to the email address you provide when you complete the registration process on this page.