Bookish Log

Last five books read: ( more detailed reviews to come)

Heat– Bill Buford
Bill Buford gives up his day job to be a sous chef for Mario Batali. What ensues is a glorious romp through sweaty kitchens from NYC to Italy. Sexy, Raunchy, and terribly moving food writing. This is one of the best gritty food memoirs I’ve read since Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential What more could one ask for?

Soul of a chef-Michael Ruhlman
Ruhlman investigates what it takes to be a chef. From the Culinary Institute’s master chef exam to Thomas Keller’s French Laundry. This book dives deep into the drive for perfection that lies in every chef.

Garlic and saphires– Ruth Reichl
As the newly appointed food critic for the New York Times, Reichl dons a myriad of disguises to test how restaurants treat even the lowliest of guests. This book is laugh out funny, mouth-watering erotic, and deeply moving.

Braindead Megaphone– George Saunders
A thought provoking, emotion stirring and hilarious look at society through essays that are part satire and part journalism. I laughed in public while reading these. George Saunders is a personal favorite.

Slaughter-house five– Kurt Vonnegut
A classic war time book that remains relevant today. I read this in one weekend.

and in progress- Can’t you hear me calling?– Richard D Smith- a biography of Bill Monroe which I was reading while the Red Sox sweeped the Rockies in the World Series. This was entirely appropiate since Bill Monroe was an avid baseball fan and even played on a semi professional team while touring. ( larger review of this to come)

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Bookish Thing

OK, This was too intriguing not to do since my books seems to show up in places far removed from my room including but not limited to: my car and friend’s houses. They are also packed in boxes hidden under sheets ( the ones I had no room for) so I’m not exactly sure what I own anymore. If I thought I owned it, I listed it as a “on my shelf”
I got this from Alejna who got the idea from a bunch of other places. It’s based on Library Things list of 106 unread books. The instructions are as follows:

Bold what you have read, italicize your DNFs, strikethrough the ones you hated, put *asterisks next to those you’ve read more than once, and put a + cross in front of the books that are on your bookshelf.

(Note that DNF=”did not finish”)

A quick word on my large number of DNF’s and then I give you my list. When I finish one book I usually pick the next book based on my mood at the time. I gather up a bunch- sometimes as many as six or seven books and start them all. When one grabs me or I decide which one did I read it all the way through. So, just because I didn’t finish something doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, it just means I didn’t like it at the time. Sometimes it means I didn’t like it as in the case of… well, read the list and you’ll see.

It should also be noted that I worked in bookstores for nearly 10 years which is why there are so many books on this list that are on my shelves but I haven’t gotten to yet. ( the theory being you stock up on all the books you want while you can get a discount on them so when you don’t have a discount anymore and can’t afford to buy them you can read them)

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
+Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
+The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
+The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
+ A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
+Reading Lolita in Tehran
+ Memoirs of a Geisha
+Middlesex
Quicksilver
+Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
+ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
+ Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
+A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
+ The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
+ The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
+ The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
+To the Lighthouse
+Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
+ Les misérables
+The Corrections
+The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
+The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
+ The God of Small Things
+A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
+ A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
+ The Unbearable Lightness of Being
+ Beloved
+Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
+Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
+Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
+ Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
+ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
+ Watership Down
+ Gravity’s Rainbow
+ The Hobbit
+ In Cold Blood
+ White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
+The Three Musketeers

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Things you’ve missed

Music in my head: “Chick Habit“- April March

I’ve been remiss again in writing. I actually feel bad about it. This is not to say I haven’t had ideas that just haven’t been committed to the blogspace. I thought I would share some of things I’ve been meaning to write about and just haven’t got around to.

1) An incredibly uncensorsed review of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse so riveting it will snatch your balls off.

2) Responses to Aljena’s 5 questions (note: I have different questions to answer) Here’s a sneak peak at some of my answers: I love “The Simple Life” and
dress up as a spy? what? oh shit, you just blew my cover.

3) Some wierd things about me: My second toe sticks out longer than my big toe.

4) What it felt like to go to the gym for the first time in over a year and why I didn’t have the guts to go into the main area and secluded myself in the “small frames” room.

5) 2 outdated pieces that are no longer relevant: a) my feelings on opening day at Fenway and b) what it was like to go the Deval Patrick innaugural celebration and why I was disapointed.

6) and in progress: A no links barred completely un pc review of Chuck P speaking at the Coolidge.

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