Because Books Are Important As Well

Cafe Drake is a broken record on the topic of essential reading practices; without literary references and inspiration our own kitchen would be a much duller place we're certain. Short days and long nights, coupled with cold winds and now nightly frosts, direct us to our favorite culinary season of slow braises and long roasts.

Situated within a century-old building Cafe Drake regards a hot oven as a friend and ally against icy draughts, and while heating up the kitchen (and thus home) for extended periods we find a good book the coziest of companions (not counting Sailor Page of course). We continue to plow through the oeuvres of Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym - two recent favorites from these satiric and sharp-tongued ladies include, respectively, The Driver's Seat (Spark) and Quartet in Autumn (Pym). Both novels supplied Cafe Drake with the acid so needed to perk/cut up the rich, indulgent dish we call Life.

Returning to former wunderkind Bret Easton Ellis, we lapped up the bitter undernotes of his 2006 masterpiece Lunar Park, a dark, supernatural-tinged/unhinged study of dinner and cocktail parties gone mad. If you ever wonder what happens to that friend who's always the last to leave . . . this is the chilling read for you.

No we haven't yet bought or borrowed Lorrie Moore's October 2009 published novel, but we're late to the party re: her economic yet insightful prose, and after one short story collection which left us breathless, Cafe Drake is slurping up the equally succulent prose of an earlier tussle of stories, Like Life.

Morbid by nature, macabre by choice, Cafe Drake seized - for 15 years in a row - the 18th installment of Ellen Datlow's (editor) intelligent and always gruesome Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Hey, all good cooks need an appetite suppressant now and then.