I don’t read many celebrity kiss-and-tell biographies. Frankly, as someone who doesn’t watch much TV, I’m often in the dark about who the big celebrities are, and so why would I be interested in reading about their bed-time adventures? But when it comes to big names…

For example, Elvis?

OK! I’ve heard of him. Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess opens with the young author of this memoir wrangling her way into Elvis’s hotel room in 1956. All the important details are there: “I wore a simple body-skimming black shantung dress (my most slenderizing) with white stitching along the neck and cap sleeves, shiny black patent-leather pumps, and little white kid gloves.” Can’t you see her? And then there’s this moment: “He sized up the room and astutely realized I was the only female in it. He slunk directly toward me, slender in shiny black faille rousers and a sheer blue short-sleeved eyelet organdy shirt…”

I thought I’d give you quite a few quotes because this is the kind of memoir in which the author really remembers what she’s writing about. Not that I want to give you the impression that it’s all bopping from celebrity bed to celebrity bed (though I wouldn’t want you to miss the chapter involving Burt Reynolds).

This is really a book for people interested in food. Some people call them foodies. I think that word is infantile and over-used. I like food. I’m not a foodie, though. I would identify a foodie as someone who carries a little packet of olives and paté onto a plane while the rest of us make do with chicken…or whatever that airplane food is pretending to be. In other words, my body is not a temple to great food.

But on the other hand, I like to cook. I find good food a lot better than bad food. And I like the Food Network a lot. Even in college I used to watch Julia Child for fun. My mother was not like that. She read The Joy of Cooking and then got on with the business of life. I think I’m representative of my generation.

Gael Greene’s memoir is, in essential respects, something of a history of American’s attitude toward food. After she grew up and made her way out of Elvis’s hotel room, she became one of the most important restaurant critics in New York – the critic for New York Magazine. She was writing before nouvelle cuisine came around, with its discrete little mounds of food. She was right there when the California revolution came along. In short, this is a fascinating look at a life spent right in the middle of America’s huge change in attitude toward food. Her mother was the queen of Velveeta – she, on the other hand, includes a few recipes in her memoir for things like mushroom strudel, which likely would have horrified her mother.

But to go back to Elvis: this is a very odd, addictive memoir, and not just because of the descriptions of food. Ms. Greene is, to put it bluntly, along the lines of a sex addict, and her life reflects that. It’s not a book that describes sex, per se, but it is a book that describes her men. She had into a weird relationship with a porn star. She has many adulterous relationships and eventually ruined her marriage (don’t read this thinking you’ll find a heroine – she’s a very real, very witty, sometimes very stupid woman). It’s fascinating – like watching a train wreck happen before you, but she writes so wittily and so frankly that you’re along for the ride the whole way.

Here’s a true affirmation of my feeling for this book: I was flying from Frankfurt, Germany, to Dallas, Texas alone. No children. No husband. That’s nine hours. The stewardess appeared, told me that she has a little population control problem (given the number of drunk men wandering the aisles, I had already guessed that), and could she put an unaccompanied minor next to me for the flight? My heart sank.

Every time that charming nine-year-old stopped talking, or trying to get me to draw pictures, or play cards, I would pick up this book and dive back in. Finally, she said to me: “You like to read, don’t you?”

Yes. If only there were enough addictive books to get me through life with my nose in a book! I recommend this one for long plane rides, for long sickness, for lunch break…

-Eloisa