Allen Pierleoni

A tableful of foodies and I were talking about guilty pleasures and "best of" lists the other day. We agreed on the obvious – both lists are personal and subjective.

Every now and then, a publishing earthquake shakes things up. An author comes out of nowhere with a title that goes viral, riding best-seller lists like they were roller coasters.

Robert Crais is a master of crime fiction, with his 15th Elvis Cole-Joe Pike mystery-thriller just out.

TIMES BEST-SELLER LISTS COVER IT

Landing on any best-seller list can skyrocket a writer's career, but the lists published by the New York Times are undoubtedly the most coveted by authors and publishers.

Things didn't start off so hot at the 13-week-old T&R Taste of Texas barbecue joint, but got better as lunch went on. Way better.

Sometimes we discover a dish that's so different and tasty we have to point it out. That would be the French toast made with panettone at Dianda's Italian Bakery & Cafe.

"I can do breakfast for dinner, but not dinner for breakfast," said my lunch pal, warily eyeing my plate of sautéed salmon with eggs, crispy-soft red potatoes and thick, addictive slices of toasted bread, fragrant with fresh rosemary.

The stacked boxes of books that form the 6-foot-high bunker here at Reading Central are once again overflowing. Let's move some of the nonfiction titles out so the incoming avalanche can continue.

Since it started up in April, the San Francisco digital publishing site www.byliner.com has specialized in long-form narrative nonfiction.

We were on our way to El Papagayo in Carmichael, lunch pal Don Burns at the wheel. He's the public information coordinator for the Sacramento Public Library, and knows something about eating.

'Tis the time of year when the marketplace is overrun with seasonal children's books. There are so many choices for stocking stuffers that it's hard to know where to begin. One strategy is to close your eyes and point.

As the holiday season approaches, and time and tempers run short, just remember the magic words: "Please" and "thank you." If you think that's corny, then here's an option – sage words from … somebody or other, who once said, "Good manners will take you far."

We drove to the back of the shopping center and found the year-old 7 Sisters near the Kmart big-box store.

Does anybody place cups of coffee on their coffee tables anymore? We think big books are more likely to end up there, so we want to suggest a few that are suitable for holiday gift-giving.

Big portions of good food at fair prices. We found that rare triumvirate at the 5,500-square-foot Plates Cafe in the Depot Park commercial complex.

Soul food for Sunday brunch? Well, yeah, that'll work.

We found some intriguing nut butters on a recent visit to the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op.

Two lunch pals and I scooted into a roomy booth in the upstairs dining room. A fast-moving server appeared with oversize menus.

Turn away for just one minute and another Thai restaurant seems to have opened its doors. Fine by us. The cuisine is more healthful than, say, a pizza or a plate of fried chicken or carnitas tacos, and at its best it can be sublime.

We borrowed the title of a Ramones song to serve as our mantra this summer: "Hey Ho Let's Go." And we did, visiting a cornucopia of restaurants during weekend road trips around Northern California and into Nevada.

We're no strangers to the concept of having "champagne taste on a beer budget." We also know one of its relatives, "prime steak taste on a hamburger budget."

Thunder boomed and lightning lit the sky around Lake Tahoe last weekend, but it stayed dry at the Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort long enough for an important announcement aimed at the 3,000 foodies in attendance.

The recent Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook-off was really a Godzilla-size throwdown at which 24 professional cookers competed for cash, trophies and bragging rights.

Let's start with this: Any dish that has chef Mai Pham's name associated with it will be good. But some dishes are "more good" than others.

"One Book" programs are popular in cities around the United States each year, and usually they're very successful.

Champagne flowed and cigars smoldered as 15,000 car-lovers crowded the impeccable grounds of the Pebble Beach Golf Course for the 61st Concours d'Elegance, held Aug. 21.

On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorists carried out four suicide attacks against the United States. The most devastating of them was the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, which has since become the symbol of the tragedies.

We've been hopping from place to place recently, tasting this and that. Let's share some top dishes:

A walk in the woods near Lake Tahoe was just the thing to stir our appetites. That morning, we'd taken the Fallen Leaf Lake road off Highway 89 (just past Camp Richardson) and driven back to the Glen Alpine trailhead, near Lily Lake.

'Romance fiction is brain candy, not brain surgery," said best-selling romance novelist Jill Shalvis of Truckee.

Eleven months after construction crews broke ground, the $7 million, 10,000-square-foot Sacramento Greyhound bus terminal opened last week to much fanfare.

In early June, we asked you to share your summer reading lists with other readers. What books would you be spending time with on the beach, in the mountains or during that flight to the East Coast? You responded with dozens of titles.

Taking a table inside the tiny French Po-Boys One reminded my lunch pal and me why regional dishes are regional in the first place. In this column's experience, you can't duplicate a chicken-fried steak outside of Texas, or a Cuban sandwich outside of Florida.

When it comes to who's reading what, book industry experts agree that popular fiction – also called genre fiction – has the widest audience.

Sometimes a restaurant's sense of place meshes perfectly with its menu. That's true of Bulls, where I sat at a high-top table with lunch pal Gloria Glyer.

Summertime brings boxes of books here to Reading Central. In a recent batch, we found a few themes, as well as some solo titles worth a mention.

Sometimes the world of books meets the corner office of casual lunchtime dining.

With chain supermarkets seemingly on every other corner, it's easy to forget how good the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op can be.

You know the old joke: "I'm on a seafood diet – I see food and I eat it!"

Father's Day is barreling toward us on Sunday, and this is my way of telling you that we men view it differently than women view Mother's Day.

Since its opening in 2003, the Town Center in El Dorado Hills has steadily grown its dining scene.

Consider the hamburger. It's simple in concept, yet seemingly endless in variety.

Author appearances and book events in the Sacramento region.

Pet owners are a special breed – passionate, dedicated, proud.

It figures that Sacramento journalist-moralist William T. Vollmann would choose Japan as his most recent project. The National Book Award-winner has always favored the biggest canvases for his unique style of long-form reporting. For instance, his examination of California's Imperial Valley, "Imperial" (among his 20-some titles), is 1,300 pages.

Nobody takes readers to war better than New York Times bestselling historical-fiction novelist Jeff Shaara. His sweeping, epic tales of world-altering events have long been the special favorites of military veterans and those on active duty, as well as of non-military readers who just want compelling dramas that made history by playing out on real-life stages.

If you're an amateur sleuth up against an assortment of murderers and other scoundrels, a wise choice for a sidekick would be a tenacious basset hound.

Fortunately for diners who like to mix it up, more restaurants are offering small-plate options in addition to their standard menus.