I've completed my first book of this challenge-Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat.  It talks about the physical and social history and evolution of various implements and cooking methods.  It's an excellent survey and I highly recommend it.

In January I read 

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives 

Which I much enjoyed and, for now at least, put in the reader's choice category. I posted it and mailed it off. I am now reading Stephan Greenblatt's The Swerve: how the world became modern. He's an excellent writer and spins a fascinating story about the rediscovery in 1417 of classical writer Lucretius's on the Nature of Things - the only extant copy found in a monastery. 

Janet E