Padma Lakshmi: What’s on Her Bookshelf

The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s — a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age 12, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. This unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as “funny, lively, and un-put-downable” (USA Today) today as it ever was.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana Roo, fall ill with septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, John suffered a fatal heart attack. In that one moment, their partnership of 40 years came to an end. Joan Didion delivers a searing portrait of a marriage and a life – in good times and bad – that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost a husband or wife or child. In a work of electric honesty and passion, Didion explores how we all, somehow, will ourselves to survive.

Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle break down the classic foods of France into a logical sequence of themes and variations — from historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. Throughout, the focus is on key recipes that form the backbone of French cookery and lend themselves to an infinite number of elaborations. Mastering the Art of French Cooking features 524 delicious recipes and over 100 instructive illustrations to guide readers every step of the way.

In 1982, with the premiere of her now-legendary television program, Indian Cookery, Madhur Jaffrey firmly established herself as “the queen of Indian cooking” (Saveur). The show and this, its companion cookbook, helped to inspire countless home cooks to embrace real Indian food, many for the first time. In this stunning new edition, beautifully illustrated and featuring new recipes and a new foreword by the author, Jaffrey shares timeless dishes with a new generation. From dals, curries, and chutneys, to breads, rice dishes, and relishes, the 125 recipes in this book are a sweeping survey of the countless dishes of the subcontinent.

Throughout her career, Toni Tipton-Martin has shed new light on the history, breadth, and depth of African American cuisine. She’s introduced us to Black cooks, some long forgotten, who established much of what’s considered to be our national cuisine. In Jubilee, Tipton-Martin brings these masters into our kitchens. Through recipes and stories, we cook alongside these pioneering figures. With more than 100 recipes, Jubilee presents techniques, ingredients, and dishes that show the roots of African American cooking — deeply beautiful, culturally diverse, fit for celebration.

Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Carefully curated, these 200-plus poems feature Oliver’s work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.