I don't know about you, but cool autumn days make me want to curl with a cup of Darjeeling tea, a crisp Jonathan apple and a good book. And if that book just happens to have food as its theme, so much the better. Here are some food-related titles to chew on:

Believing that not nearly enough is written about the emotional aspects of food, editor Amanda Hesser invited well-known writers to contribute essays to her new column in the New York Times Magazine. She told them to write about an important time in their life that involved food and had only one rule: no sentimentality. The best essays are collected in her book Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table. You'll read about Yuyun Li's obsession with that great Western contribution to world culture: Tang; Tucker Carlson's summer job puncturing defective cans at the B&M baked bean factory in Portland, Maine; and Manil Suri's not-so-successful attempt to introduce his Indian parents to the wonders of French cuisine. It's a delightful and, yes, non-sentimental collection.

Another collection sure to please is American Food Writing, edited by Molly O'Neill. Covering some 250 years, the selections run the gamut from Thoreau on the delights of watermelon to Eric Schlosser on the horrors of fast food. It's an eclectic assortment of America's best food writing.

And speaking of eclectic, Mark Kurlansky has gathered food writing from around the world and across history in his book, Choice Cuts. The usual suspects are here: M.F.K. Fisher, James Beard, Alice B. Toklas and some you wouldn't expect: W.H. Auden, Pablo Neruda and Alexandre Dumas.

Like Amanda Hesser, author Sallie Tisdale believes, "food has always meant more than feeding ... [it] is bonding, sacrament, joy." And in her book, The Best Thing I Ever Tasted, she explores these ideas with a particular eye on Americans and our relationship with food. Peppered with history, memoir and personal opinion, the essays in this book make for interesting and provocative reading.

Known as the "Indiana Jones of food writers," Robb Walsh has explored the world (and his hometown of Houston) trying di?erent foods and writing about them. Not merely content to gag down spoonfuls of durian (stinkfruit) in Thailand, Walsh delves into the fruit's history, its biochemistry and the psychology of why anyone would relish a fruit that smells of rotten eggs. In Are Your Really Going to Eat That?, Walsh gorges on cabrito in Monterrey, Mexico, travels the Trail of Sauerkraut in Alsace, and dives into the Vietnamese hot pots in midtown Houston and into his own feelings about that ill-fated war. Walsh is not only a culinary thrill seeker, but a master story teller as well.

More titles
The Art of Eating; With Bold Knife and Fork; The Gastronomical Me; and How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
Comfort Me with Apples; Garlic and Sapphires; and Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser
The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must Have Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten
The Raw and the Cooked by Jim Harrison
The Tummy Trilogy by Calvin Trillin

For food fiction readers
Belle in the Big Apple by Brooke Parkhurst
Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs
Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
La Cucina by Lily Prior
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

You can find these movies and many more at any Jefferson County Public Library location. Talk to your librarian for more recommendations.