Russ Parsons knows flavor when he tastes it, and he knows that the best flavor usually isn’t found on the supermarket shelves, where produce is dyed, processed, preserved and sugared beyond recognition. A noted food-and-wine columnist for The Los Angeles Times, Parsons has put together a book entitled How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table.

Parsons appeared on Fresh Air from WHYY and discussed his eternal quest for flavor. He says strawberries are perhaps the fruit that has most suffered from the grower’s efforts to make them more easily transportable. “Strawberries in their original form are very fragile, and over time…[farmers] have been taking measures to make the berry more resilient, and it’s gotten to the point now where you have strawberries that, if you try to cut them with a fork, you would actually bend the fork.” He also tells you more about artichokes than you’d ever care to know.

Listen to the full interview, and read an excerpt on the aforementioned artichoke.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan showed up on Fresh Air from WHYY yesterday to discuss three books she believes should be staples of your summer. Yes, you.

The first, Hilma Wolitzer’s Summer Reading, Corrigan thought at first glance was “a bald appeal to book clubs across the land.” The story centers around a secluded woman whose only job is to lead book club discussions, specifically for a group of Hamptons women, the Page Turners, who convene every so often and gossip about novels of their choosing. Wolitzer uses them as a vehicle to examine how reading can, says Corrigan, “both enlarge and warp the world views of susceptible readers,” and makes examples of three women from markedly different social standing. Notable also is the clever incorporation of plot elements from novels the Page Turners read into the primary plot.

Andrew O’Hagen comes in second with Be Near Me, set in a rainy Scottish town on the Irish Sea. Father David, the town’s priest — “a lonely aesthete,” says Corrigan — takes up company with two rebellious teenagers, whose casual interest in debauchery and illicit behavior, awakens memories of a more madcap life spent at Oxford in the 60s. A reverse coming-of-age? Fascinating!

The anchor of Corrigan’s list, as well as everyone else’s, is Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, which follows two virginal newlyweds to their honeymoon, during which time they become paralyzed in equal parts by performance anxiety and the repulsive mechanics of the consummate act. The great irony, as Corrigan points out, is that the groom, Edward, is a student of “the great man theory of history,” but neither he nor his new wife can transcend the constraints of their own personal histories, crippling the marriage from the outset.

Read or listen to the article here. NPR has also made an excerpt of McEwan’s novella available, which you may view here.