The best food and cooking "read" is M.F.K. Fisher. Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher may have been the best American writer of any genre and, happily, wrote mostly of food, cooking, and life. And had an extraordinary life to back it up. If you happened to have noticed she wrote The Cooking of Provincial France for the Time-Life series, don't hold it against her. The editors gutted her prose of almost all that was interesting.
The best beginning is The Art of Eating.
Amazon.com: The Art of Eating (9780764542619): M. F. K. Fisher, Joan Reardon: Books
It is a compilation of several of her best foodie writings, and it will save you the trouble of reading just one of them and feeling compelled to hunt down the others. While not a "cookbook," some of the pieces contain a number of recipes.
You can pick it up for next to nothing on Half.com:
Half.com: The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher (1990, Paperback, Reprint)(9780020322207): M. F. K. Fisher: Books
The list of her writings is here:
M.F.K. Fisher