Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations

While the topic of food has frequently crept into the works of prolific writer and humorist Blount (Alphabetter Juice), this latest marks the first time he’s fully sunk his teeth into the subject, offering course after course of essays, poems, and songs about all things edible. Culled from segments on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and fragments from his column in Garden and Gun magazine, along with whatever has captured his interest, the book consists of (and is best read in) small, manageable chunks covering everything from Southern hospitality (in which he defends the polarizing vegetable okra) to the proper appreciation of a good steak (“eating a steak should be like wrestling a worthy opponent”), and the nobility of a cork’s presence in a whisky bottle. Eminently quotable, informative, and entertaining, Blount makes for a genial host, regaling the reader with story after story. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Mar.)