When a light such as Anthony Bourdain is extinguished too early, there's a desire to revisit his work and try to grasp for just a moment a little bit of that lost light. That is what reading Kitchen Confidential is like, two months after his tragic suicide.
Bourdain was a troubled but gifted young adult who grew, truly grew, to be an influential and curious traveler and culinary mind. In Kitchen Confidential, you can see the beginnings of his later works - No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Through his early stories of personal and financial failure and his burgeoning influence as the Chef of Les Halles, it's just possible to see the thread of the force he would become.
To say he's gone too soon is an understatement. It's a loss for the world at large that this voice of understanding and global fellowship is now silent. The things I enjoyed most about his shows, was his unending curiosity of the people and the culture of whatever location he was visiting, and also his gratitude for the hospitality he was shown. He was un-entitled and warm. In Kitchen Confidential, you see hints of that, especially in the chapter detailing his trip to Tokyo, where he confesses to the ultimate travel sin of McDonalds and Starbucks. ("See, this famous chef is just like me when confronted with strange food!")
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and its look at the inside workings of a kitchen. I am saddened all over again at Bourdain's death. But am thankful for the gifts he gave us along the way.
4.5/5 Stars.
Here's a good plan for when you have finished an audiobook and all your other audiobooks are still on hold at the library and you're unlikely to get one for a few more weeks - you go to your Goodreads "to-read" list and you start searching to see what is available.
What is not a good idea, is to go to your library's "available now" section of audiobooks, because then you will wander blithely into picking a mediocre novel by a famous author who once "stunned" the world with a provocative explosively popular novel over a decade ago.
I think I was living in Italy when Dan Brown's The Davinci Code came out and I bought it from my Air Force Base's BX Store (in hardback!) and proceeded to read it in about three days. It was not Brown's first book to feature Harvard professor and symbologist Robert Langdon, but it was certainly his most popular. From it a movie with Tom Hanks was made, and since I love Tom Hanks, I saw that too. But although I went back and read all of Brown's earlier work, I haven't read anything published after The Davinci Code.
So I walked into Inferno knowing that Robert Langdon was back, and this was apparently a fourth Langdon novel (I entirely missed a third that came out some time ago). And well, my impression of Inferno is that I didn't miss much. In this one, Langdon wakes up in a hospital room, having been shot in Florence, Italy and he has retrograde amnesia covering the past 48 hours. Pursued by unknown assassins, he and a young English doctor, Sienna Brooks, must follow the path left by a madman prior to his suicide. The man, a famed geneticist named Bertran Zobrist - significantly obsessed with Dante and an impending global catastrophe represented by overpopulation - has left a video of himself placing a virus in a subterranean lagoon set to deploy in the next 36 hours.
Langdon and Brooks must attempt to locate the virus before it is too late. Of course not all is as it seems, including the virus and Brooks herself.
I get it, by this point, Brown has the formula down that makes him money. Link up some obscure locations and facts, underlay a conspiracy and shadowy groups that operate on the margins, and have Langdon go on a treasure hunt of sorts to find the pieces. Voila, publishing gold. Really at this point Brown likely has so much money, more books are not necessary, but the publishing contracts don't fulfill themselves I suppose.
But this one felt a little more lifeless than the Davinci Code. A little more rote. It was sort of like a chase scene combined with a Rick Steve's guide and somehow had an underwhelming baby. The evil guy was seriously weird and twisted, but actually not that evil. The symbols were detailed and well researched, but for all that I'm not really sure they served a purpose other than leading us on a 400 page scavenger hunt.
Was I entertained? Yes. But since I wasn't on the beach or an airplane, this felt like too little work, for too little reward. I did end up recently watching the movie and several things were changed from the book, including the entire ending. (you can rent the movie here).
3/5 Stars.
Great read! This book took forever to receive from the library and it's more than 20 years old! That's how you know a book has some kind of extra quality that takes it out of the realm of popular and into a more sustainable category when it begins to weave a tale of lasting characters and universal truths.
Berendt said he was not writing a story about Savannah for Savannah, but rather about Savannah for people who had never heard of Savannah before. And he certainly delivered. In the realm of narrative non-fiction, this book is one of the best. Titillating characters, a murder, a trial, a trial, a trial and a trial - this book wraps them all up and manages to make them all relate to one another.
Berendt visits Savannah on a weekend holiday and decides he needs to set up shop there to really get a feel for the city. He's right of course, you can't visit a city and really understand it, you do have to live there. And on the way he introduces us to a cast of characters that couldn't have been made better even if the book were fiction. In fact, the best part is that none of this is fiction.
Jim Williams is a wealthy, and a bit eccentric, antiques dealer who is charged with murder in the shooting death of his young lover. Joe Odom is a charming penniless piano player/lawyer, and The Lady Chablis is a black drag queen with a huge personality. The first half of the book introduces us to these and other minor characters. The rest of the book details mostly the trial, retrial, retrial and retrial of Jim Williams for the death of Danny Hansford.
The book occasionally started to feel a little stale, but these moments were far and few between. I can see why the book has done so well, and left such a lasting mark on Savannah and people's view of Savannah. After reading the book I set out to watch the movie. Aside from Chablis, who was a real treat, the movie felt kind of flat, which was very surprising. (Watch it yourself here).
4/5 Stars.
I wanted, really wanted, to like this book. I like stories of personal growth. I like stories of the outdoors. I had never heard of the Pacific Crest Trail and the idea intrigued me. But, Strayed, or I should say, an emotionally damaged and young Strayed, is a harsh travel buddy. She does get more likeable as the book goes on, but I just got annoyed with her all the time. She admits to so much of the things that really bothered me about her, but somehow it didn't entirely help in this case. The honesty was fine, but it didn't make me want to hang out with her more.
I know this has been made into a movie and I've heard from people that the movie was disappointing after reading the book. I may check it out just to see how it's done, but I'd have to be pretty bored to do so.
The story starts out with Cheryl on the trail and then weaves back to the points in her life that led her to try backpacking more than 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. The narrative weaving worked well. The portions detailing Cheryl's life growing up fit well where they were put into the narrative. I actually am curious about what she did after she exited the PCT. I admire her determination to do something radical to completely change her life.
In the end, I'm glad I read this book. But it just wasn't as fun or as interesting as I'd hoped.
3/5 Stars.
This
was a fun book turned on a goofy premise. The story follows Emma, a 29
year old woman who is (understandably) a bit obsessed with one James
Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser of the Outlander series (and now TV
show - seriously, look up Sam Heughan and I dare you not to drool, see below and you're welcome).
Emma, having had no luck in love or life is in need of a serious life
shake up and decides to sell all her worldly possessions and head to
Scotland to find her very own Jamie.
Since Emma has very little
money and a vast lack of world experience, surprising given her living
in Chicago (see I'm totally biased, I think people from Chicago have to
have the world travel thing figured out), she is going to do the trip on
the cheap. Emma came across as a bit naive throughout the story,
although she does have enough self awareness to admit to this after the
fact.
I would be more annoyed with Emma's "need to find a man to
complete myself and save me" attitude if she didn't vocalize the fact
that women needed to be stronger characters in their own story. In the
end, this is what Emma becomes, a stronger protagonist in her own story.
I like the backdrop of using the Outlander books as a foothold for the
blog turned novel concept, which is not actually a blog turned novel.
The
book is fun and entertaining and a good summer read. I listened to this
one on audible though and I have to say the narrator's accents were a
bit forced and stereotypical. Let's just say one of the commenters on
Emma's blog is Japanese and well.......the butchered English in the fake
accent and what I can assume is the attempt at English as a Second
Language syntax are a tad on the offensive side.
I love that
Diana Gabaldon was pleased with this Outlander inspired work, since I've
read before that she dreads and disapproves of fan-fiction. This isn't
fan fiction in the strictest sense, so if Herself gives it a pass, all
to the better.
This book was a solid 3/5 Stars.
