You and I eat the same.

At least, that’s according to Chris Ying (and he’s right, if you’re *also* eating fruit snacks at your desk right now).

It’s also the title of Ying’s 2018 book, You and I Eat the Same: On the Countless Ways Food and Cooking Connect Us to One Another, which is our February pick for the Austin360 Book Club powered by the Texas Book Festival. The book suggestion came to us from TBF Logistics and Volunteer Coordinator Nicole Wielga, and Ying was featured at the 2018 Festival around the same time the book was released.

Ying is the cofounder and former editor in chief of Lucky Peach and is currently the editor of the MAD Dispatches book series, which aim to unpack a topic from the world of food and encourage readers to think about food in new ways. You and I Eat the Same is the first installment in the Dispatches series and discusses the way food can transcend cultures. For example, the first chapter is titled “Everybody Wraps Meat in Flatbread” (true) and later in the book we read a section titled “Cilantro is Everywhere” (also true).

We’ll be discussing the book in the Austin360 Book Club Facebook group on March 9 (so you get a bit of extra time to read, since February is a short month). Congrats to Ashley Jernigan, who was the 1,000th member to join the Facebook group and won a copy of “You and I Eat the Same” to celebrate!

Our friends at Austin360 will also be stocking the Austin American-Statesman & Texas Book Festival’s Little Free Library near the bat observation area just off of the Ann & Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake with a few bonus copies of the book, so if you’d like to snag that book (and other great picks curated by Statesman and TBF staff), swing by the Little Free Library! If you’re having trouble finding it, you can search for it here.

If you’re still looking for a copy of the book, you can find it at BookPeople or at the Austin Public Library.