The most recommended omnivore books

Who picked these books? Meet our 9 experts.

9 authors created a book list connected to omnivores, and here are their favorite omnivore books.
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Book cover of Positively Vegetarian

Veronika Sophia Robinson Author Of The Mystic Cookfire: The Sacred Art of Creating Food to Nurture Friends and Family

From my list on conscious plant-based cookery.

Why am I passionate about this?

Veronika Sophia Robinson has eaten a plant-based diet for forty-eight years and knows what healthy and delicious vegan and vegetarian food should taste like. She has had extensive experience in cooking for others whether around her kitchen table or in a yurt with no electricity feeding up to fifty families for five days (for many years). The Mystic Cookfire is a tome of over 400 pages. It is an expression of her deep love and respect for food, conscious cookery, and intentional eating. Her second recipe book Love From My Kitchen is a collection of vegan, gluten-free recipes based on the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water. She’s delighted that her granddaughter is a fourth-generation vegetarian.

Veronika's book list on conscious plant-based cookery

Veronika Sophia Robinson Why did Veronika love this book?

I bought this treasure of a recipe book after dining at Demuths. The food was exquisite. A recipe book that’s based on meals which have been tried and tested over and over by a judicious public is different to other recipe books. In its time, more than sixty thousand people a year have eaten in Demuths. Surprisingly, many of those diners weren’t vegetarian but omnivores.  This book is a magnificent collection of the most frequently asked for recipes. Some of the best recipe books are those which don’t feature colour photographs: the focus is entirely on the written recipe and easy-to-find ingredients. This book remains unrivalled in the vegetarian-recipe field.

By Rachel Demuth,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Positively Vegetarian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the 1st recipe book that we self-published way back in 1997.
It's a collection of our most frequently asked for recipes at Demuths Vegetarian Restaurant in Bath.
It contains a wealth of vegan & vegetarian soups, starters, main dishes, salads & puddings.
Sixty thousand people eat in Demuths each year. Many of them are vegetarians but many more of them are omnivores.
The recipes are easy to make & delicious to eat when made with love & attention.
This book is for those who care for their friends & themselves because at the end of the day a…


Book cover of You'd Be Home Now

Dev Jannerson Author Of The Women of Dauphine

From my list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader.

Why am I passionate about this?

Two facts about me as a reader: I like books that deal with difficult issues, and I like reading a lot of them. There’s something about watching teens, for whom everything feels new, deal with the toughest stuff imaginable and come out the other side. I love a protagonist who has been through the wringer. Some people call these stories dark or morbid. I prefer to think of them as hopeful. My own writing history is as diverse as my reading habits. I’ve published in poetry, romance, and criticism, but these days I’m all about YA, like the politically-charged thriller I’m querying or my queer New Orleans ghost story, The Women of Dauphine

Dev's book list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader

Dev Jannerson Why did Dev love this book?

Bestselling Girl in Pieces author Glasgow knows her way around hard-hitting hyperrealism. (Plus, she writes beautifully about my once and future home of Tucson, Arizona.) In her latest, a modern take on Our Town, Emmy’s brother comes home from rehab, and Emmy prepares to fulfill the role she’s always had as the household rock and peacekeeper. But what about what she needs, and what if Joey has problems she can’t cover up? This novel’s depiction of drug addiction, and how its impact reverberates through families, is informed and unromanticized.

By Kathleen Glasgow,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You'd Be Home Now as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces comes a stunning novel that Vanity Fair calls “impossibly moving” and “suffused with light”. In this raw, deeply personal story, a teenaged girl struggles to find herself amidst the fallout of her brother's addiction in a town ravaged by the opioid crisis.

For all of Emory's life she's been told who she is. In town she's the rich one--the great-great-granddaughter of the mill's founder. At school she's hot Maddie Ward's younger sister. And at home, she's the good one, her stoner older brother Joey's babysitter. Everything was turned on…


Book cover of Long Gone

Jerry Grillo Author Of The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton

From my list on stories for baseball omnivores.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a baseball history fanatic who writes on a wide range of topics for work and pleasure, which I’m glad to say often are the same thing. I’ve been a journalist for many years, even covered a few World Series, and I’ve written stories for books published by the Society for American Baseball Research. I’ve also written a lot about music, science, business, and politics, for newspapers and magazines. I’ve been a playwright, fortunate to have seen my work staged in different venues. And I also wrote a book called, The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically True Biography, which I’m really excited to tell you about in the next section!

Jerry's book list on stories for baseball omnivores

Jerry Grillo Why did Jerry love this book?

This novel by one of my favorite writers, the late, great Paul Hemphill – an icon of journalism and storytelling in the American South – is a hilarious, vaguely autobiographical story of life in the low minor leagues. Hemphill perfectly captures the language, grit, rhythm, and flow of minor league baseball in the mid-1950s, touching on issues of worker’s rights, segregation, sex, love, teamwork, and courage, without preaching or being sentimental.

My favorite moment in the book (and the terrific HBO movie version, starring William Peterson and Virginia Madsen) is when a Klan roadblock stops the Stogies’ team bus because they want to lynch the team’s star catcher, Joe Louis Brown, the only black player in the league – one the Stogies suggests, “let ‘em hang Whisenant, he’s only batting .179.”

By Paul Hemphill,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Long Gone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A story with a heart of gold about love and the loss of innocence at the bottom of the most minor league in baseball-the class D Alabama-Florida League in the 1950s, with a sour old maverick manager, a yearning teenage second baseman, and a black catcher masquerading as a Venezuelan. "A first-rate novel."-Newsweek. "A sharp, unsentimental portrait of the minor league life...and Hemphill makes it all come to life, believably and memorably."-Sports Illustrated. "So good, so true, so funny..."-New York Times Book Review.


Book cover of Nothing Burns as Bright as You

Dev Jannerson Author Of The Women of Dauphine

From my list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader.

Why am I passionate about this?

Two facts about me as a reader: I like books that deal with difficult issues, and I like reading a lot of them. There’s something about watching teens, for whom everything feels new, deal with the toughest stuff imaginable and come out the other side. I love a protagonist who has been through the wringer. Some people call these stories dark or morbid. I prefer to think of them as hopeful. My own writing history is as diverse as my reading habits. I’ve published in poetry, romance, and criticism, but these days I’m all about YA, like the politically-charged thriller I’m querying or my queer New Orleans ghost story, The Women of Dauphine

Dev's book list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader

Dev Jannerson Why did Dev love this book?

What’s more all-consuming than being in love with your best friend? An uncontrolled fire, maybe–or a few of them. This turbulent romance between two teenage girls is told in prose poetry, and like the best novels in verse, every carefully formatted word carries weight. The narrative jumps back and forth in time, and it dives into the (main) narrator’s mind so intimately you’ll forget you don’t even know her name.

By Ashley Woodfolk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Nothing Burns as Bright as You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Five starred reviews!

From New York Times bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk, Nothing Burns as Bright as You is an impassioned stand-alone tale of queer love, grief, and the complexity of female friendship.

Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.

They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.

Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed. And…


Book cover of Strange the Dreamer

Dev Jannerson Author Of The Women of Dauphine

From my list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader.

Why am I passionate about this?

Two facts about me as a reader: I like books that deal with difficult issues, and I like reading a lot of them. There’s something about watching teens, for whom everything feels new, deal with the toughest stuff imaginable and come out the other side. I love a protagonist who has been through the wringer. Some people call these stories dark or morbid. I prefer to think of them as hopeful. My own writing history is as diverse as my reading habits. I’ve published in poetry, romance, and criticism, but these days I’m all about YA, like the politically-charged thriller I’m querying or my queer New Orleans ghost story, The Women of Dauphine

Dev's book list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader

Dev Jannerson Why did Dev love this book?

Epic fantasy can be a hard sell for me, but Laini Taylor’s intricate worldbuilding sweeps me off my feet. There’s a love story at the center of this duology, characters from different and equally tragic worlds, but there’s also lots of magic: moths who carry dreams, orphaned half-gods, and floating palaces of magic metal. Oh, and there’s a robust cast of ghosts. Need I say more?

By Laini Taylor,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Strange the Dreamer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

'Prepare to be enchanted' Sun

The magical Sunday Times bestseller by Laini Taylor, author of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy

*********

The dream chooses the dreamer.

Since he was five years old, Lazlo Strange has been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to go in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself - in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep to cut…


Book cover of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres

Frank Turner Author Of Try This at Home: Adventures in Songwriting

From Frank's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Musician And Music History Nerd

Frank's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Frank Turner Why did Frank love this book?

I’m deeply interested in the history of music and the industries that surround it.

This book is a magisterial and original look at the history of popular music in the late 20th century, told through a selection of different genres. I learned immense amounts about music I thought I was already quite knowledgeable on, and was introduced to swathes of new artists and ideas as well.

By Kelefa Sanneh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Major Labels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year

“One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal

An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop

Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us,…


Book cover of If I Never Get Back

Jerry Grillo Author Of The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton

From my list on stories for baseball omnivores.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a baseball history fanatic who writes on a wide range of topics for work and pleasure, which I’m glad to say often are the same thing. I’ve been a journalist for many years, even covered a few World Series, and I’ve written stories for books published by the Society for American Baseball Research. I’ve also written a lot about music, science, business, and politics, for newspapers and magazines. I’ve been a playwright, fortunate to have seen my work staged in different venues. And I also wrote a book called, The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically True Biography, which I’m really excited to tell you about in the next section!

Jerry's book list on stories for baseball omnivores

Jerry Grillo Why did Jerry love this book?

This has some of my favorite stuff in it: old-time baseball and time travel. A really clever, adventurous, and fun novel, with a great cast of characters, including some fictional and some from history, like the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869 (when the story takes place) and Mark Twain, and why not – this is, in some ways, a baseball version of Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. The book’s protagonist, a 20th-century journalist, Sam Fowler, lands in 1869 Cincinnati and winds up helping the city’s legendary professional ball club. Brock wrote a sequel some years later and it was good, too, but this one about the 1869 season is one I intend to read again.

By Darryl Brock,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked If I Never Get Back as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Time travel meets baseball in this “grand adventure” about a modern-day reporter who witnesses the birth of America’s favorite pastime (The Washington Times)
 
Contemporary reporter Sam Fowler is stuck in a dull job and a failing marriage when he is suddenly transported back to the summer of 1869. After a wrenching period of adjustment, he feels rejuvenated by his involvement with the nation’s first pro baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. But American sports isn't the only thing to undergo a major transformation—Sam himself starts to change as he faces life-threatening 19th-century challenges on and off the baseball diamond. With…


Book cover of The Boys of Summer

John Rosengren Author Of The Greatest Summer in Baseball History: How the '73 Season Changed Us Forever

From my list on stories about a single baseball season.

Why am I passionate about this?

My father used to take me to watch the Twins play at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, a twenty-minute drive from our house in suburban Minneapolis. As soon as the Twins announced their schedule each year, he would buy tickets for the doubleheaders. Our favorites were the twilight doubleheaders, when we watched one game by daylight, and the other under the night sky. Baseball was pure to me then: played outdoors on real grass. Seated beside my dad during those twin bills, I felt his love for the game seep into me and take root. All these years later, almost two decades after his death, that love remains strong.

John's book list on stories about a single baseball season

John Rosengren Why did John love this book?

This is one of those non-fiction books that reads like a novel. I wanted to keep turning the pages to follow the action and learn what it revealed about the characters. Technically the book covers more than a single season, but its nexus in the Brooklyn Dodgers’s 1955 season justified it as a selection for this category.

Roger Kahn gave us a classic that reads with the same urgency today as it did decades ago.

By Roger Kahn,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Boys of Summer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Described by Richard William of The Guardian as 'the best sports book of 2013, and the best sports book of all time', The Boys of Summer is the story of the young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the Brooklyn Dodgers team that broke the colour barrier with Jackie Robinson.

It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for…


Book cover of The Arrow

Dev Jannerson Author Of The Women of Dauphine

From my list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader.

Why am I passionate about this?

Two facts about me as a reader: I like books that deal with difficult issues, and I like reading a lot of them. There’s something about watching teens, for whom everything feels new, deal with the toughest stuff imaginable and come out the other side. I love a protagonist who has been through the wringer. Some people call these stories dark or morbid. I prefer to think of them as hopeful. My own writing history is as diverse as my reading habits. I’ve published in poetry, romance, and criticism, but these days I’m all about YA, like the politically-charged thriller I’m querying or my queer New Orleans ghost story, The Women of Dauphine

Dev's book list on dark, gritty YA for the omnivorous reader

Dev Jannerson Why did Dev love this book?

A normal high school in Wisconsin disappears, along with everyone in it. Stranded on an alien planet, the accidental voyagers must figure out who (or what) they’re up against, how best to survive, and whether there’s any way to return. Meanwhile on Earth, their stunned families struggle to cope with what they’ve lost.

The Woods, my favorite comic series of all time, is split into nine volumes, and the first hits the ground running. With Lord of the Flies-level social politics and a high body count, this sci-fi saga is not for the faint of heart.

By James Tynion IV, Michael Dialynas (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Arrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On October 16, 2013, 437 students, 52 teachers, and 24 additional staff from Bay Point Preparatory High School in suburban Milwaukee, WI vanished without a trace. Countless light years away, far outside the bounds of the charted universe, 513 people find themselves in the middle of an ancient, primordial wilderness. Where are they? Why are they there? The answers will prove stranger than anyone could possibly imagine. As fans of James Tynion IV's work in the Batman universe (Batman Eternal, Red Hood and the Outlaws), we were eager to publish his first original comic series. Plus, The Woods gives us…


Book cover of The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

Jerry Grillo Author Of The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton

From my list on stories for baseball omnivores.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a baseball history fanatic who writes on a wide range of topics for work and pleasure, which I’m glad to say often are the same thing. I’ve been a journalist for many years, even covered a few World Series, and I’ve written stories for books published by the Society for American Baseball Research. I’ve also written a lot about music, science, business, and politics, for newspapers and magazines. I’ve been a playwright, fortunate to have seen my work staged in different venues. And I also wrote a book called, The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically True Biography, which I’m really excited to tell you about in the next section!

Jerry's book list on stories for baseball omnivores

Jerry Grillo Why did Jerry love this book?

In the 1960s, Ritter interviewed a bunch of guys who played major league ball in the early days, from the 1890s through the 1930s (or so), with lots of stuff from the Deadball Era. The result is this marvelous book filled with priceless tales told by the men who knew, played with (and occasionally fought with) Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Nap Lajoie, and the immortals from that era. Anyone who wants to understand what baseball was like in 1903, or there-and-then-about, must read this book. Reading this book is like sitting on a porch in a rocking chair next to grandpa while he tells stories that you actually want to hear.

By Lawrence S. Ritter,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Glory of Their Times as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Easily the best baseball book ever produced by anyone.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“This was the best baseball book published in 1966, it is the best baseball book of its kind now, and, if it is reissued in 10 years, it will be the best baseball book.” — People

From Lawrence Ritter (The Image of Their Greatness, The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time), comes one of the bestselling, most acclaimed sports books of all time, The Glory of Their Times—now a Harper Perennial Modern Classic.

Baseball was different in earlier days—tougher, more raw, more intimate—when giants like Babe Ruth…