I have absolutely nothing to tell you about cooking-wise, because I spent the entire weekend devouring this book. It is the best thing I've read all year, and, people, I read for a living. Bill Buford, the former fiction editor for The New Yorker, worked as an unpaid grunt in Mario Batali's kitchen at Babbo and then traveled to Tuscany to apprentice under master butcher Dario Cecchini. The account of his time in the kitchen at Babbo and in Italy is beautifully written, hysterically funny, and totally, utterly captivating. It's the kind of book I wish wish wish never had to end.

And if I didn't already have an insatiable desire to eat at Babbo - just once! - I certainly do now.