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Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of literature absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of literature complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren: For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives]

2014:
January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness
February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita
March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
April: James Joyce -- Dubliners
May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude
June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States
July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine
August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August
September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice
October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October
November: John Gardner -- Grendel
December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel

2015:
January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities
February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1.
March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger
April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem)
May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row
June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood
(Hiatus)
August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me
September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone
October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant
November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl
December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road

2016:
January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome
February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon
March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang
July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Current:

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Available from amazon here (including ebook):

https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Confidential-Updated-Adventures-Underbelly/dp/0060899220


About the book:


Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly is a New York Times bestselling non-fiction book written by American chef Anthony Bourdain.

The book, released in 2000, is both Bourdain's professional story and a behind-the-scenes look at restaurant kitchens. The book is known for its treatment of the professional culinary industry. The commercial kitchen is described as an intense, unpleasant and sometimes hazardous place of work staffed by what he describes as misfits. Bourdain believes it's no place for hobbyists and all those entering this industry will run away screaming if they lack a masochistic, irrational dedication to cooking.

The book alternates between a confessional narrative and an industry commentary, providing insightful and humorous anecdotes on the cooking trade. Bourdain details some of his personal misdeeds and weaknesses, including drug use. He explains how restaurants function economically and the various restaurateur's tricks of which consumers should be aware. For example, he advises customers to avoid ordering fish on a Monday as the fish for Monday would be likely a remnant from the weekend or earlier. He also suggests avoiding beef well done: the meat is more likely to be from less-than-best grade as the substandard flavor would be masked in overcooking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Confidential_(book)

Themes and Background

I haven't read this yet, but you can find the original New Yorker article here:

quote:

Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It’s about danger—risking the dark, bacterial forces of beef, chicken, cheese, and shellfish. Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness. The members of a tight, well-greased kitchen staff are a lot like a submarine crew. Confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders, they often acquire the characteristics of the poor saps who were press-ganged into the royal navies of Napoleonic times—superstition, a contempt for outsiders, and a loyalty to no flag but their own.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher in “Down and Out in Paris and London.” Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen—free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humor, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom—doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

A year ago, my latest, doomed mission—a high-profile restaurant in the Times Square area—went out of business. The meat, fish, and produce purveyors got the news that they were going to take it in the neck for yet another ill-conceived enterprise. When customers called for reservations, they were informed by a prerecorded announcement that our doors had closed. Fresh from that experience, I began thinking about becoming a traitor to my profession.

. . . .

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this



Pacing

Just read, then post.


References and Further Reading

This spawned multiple television series and several other books, by Bourdain and other chefs as well. Feel free to cross-pollinate with any relevant discussion of other works.

Final Note:

Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!

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Flaggy
Jul 6, 2007

Grandpa Cthulu needs his napping chair



Grimey Drawer
Great book. Will re-read for this. The tv show with Bradley Cooper was awful.

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
Well that sounds interesting and also like a book I'd probably never have thought to read otherwise, so all right!

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Awesome. I'll start reading this weekend!

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
is this a joke

hog fat
Aug 31, 2016
my radical adherence to stoicism demands I be a raging islamophobic asshole. perhaps ten more days on twitter will teach me the errors of my ways
if you're going to assign a celebrity autobiography, assign one of the only salient ones: Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

hog fat posted:

if you're going to assign a celebrity autobiography, assign one of the only salient ones: Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald.

I don't see this as "celebrity autobiography" because writing this is what made him a celebrity. It wasnt written to capitalize on preexisting fame. By all accounts it's an actual good book.

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


I'm a little more than a hundred pages in. Thoughts so far:

If you don't care about the youthful drug-induced misadventures of an entitled prep-school criminal, skip the first fifty pages. Start with the section "Second Course." That's where he really gets into what a restaurant is, and what life in this world is like. Bourdain, I was mildly surprised to learn, wrote two novels before this book, but this was his first nonfiction. And it shows. The first few chapters are decidedly journeyman. And I don't care about his childhood, at all. It's not until he gets into his mid twenties, and his increasing heroin addiction, that his life starts becoming interesting. And as the book progresses into his life working at chaotic restaurants in New York, the book really starts to take off.

Enjoyable. This is really a look into the world behind the scenes of everyday life. If you live in a big city, then you've gone to all of the places he's describing in his book. There are the well run, almost sociopathic efficient, places that cut costs and do a basic job well, night after night. Then there are the failing vanity ventures; places for rich people to lose money. And then the tourist hotspots, which sound like hell. He describes it all very well, in a way that really brings them alive. If you liked the parts in Down and Out in Paris and London where Orwell was slaving away in the kitchens, you'll really like the descriptions here of a night over the stove.

There is a tension in this book between the artist and the craftsman. He keeps coming down in favor of the craftsman, the guy who just does the job, shows up on time, takes the criticism, and doesn't care about making something for the ages. The artist, he keeps telling us, wants to experiment and grow, which leads to failure. He would much rather be the guy who comes in, does his job, and goes home; than the guy who works magic but is unreliable.

Bourdain wasn't a celebrity when he wrote this. This book made him famous, so the guy on CNN eating chicken with Obama in Indonesia didn't exist yet. In this book he's still honest in a way that I don't think you'd ever get now. Here, he's a guy from a privileged background works in a restaurant because of the easy drugs, women, and cash. There's nothing more to it, at least initially. But there is an almost American "sublime" approach to it, when he starts really getting into food. This is a guy who can find something transcendent in a good steak, and as he starts developing as a writer, it starts coming through.

A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I don't see this as "celebrity autobiography" because writing this is what made him a celebrity. It wasnt written to capitalize on preexisting fame. By all accounts it's an actual good book.

Actually I'm pretty sure the guy who was famous for being on SNL didn't get his fame from his book.

hog fat
Aug 31, 2016
my radical adherence to stoicism demands I be a raging islamophobic asshole. perhaps ten more days on twitter will teach me the errors of my ways

A human heart posted:

Actually I'm pretty sure the guy who was famous for being on SNL didn't get his fame from his book.

think he's talking about Bourdain but the part about Norm's book being good is also true

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
Started yesterday and am almost a quarter of the way through, it's a pretty fun read, good writing voice.

Catching myself wondering how much of his advice about what to order in restaurants is specific to his time and location and how much can be generalized.

Flaggy
Jul 6, 2007

Grandpa Cthulu needs his napping chair



Grimey Drawer

Groke posted:

Started yesterday and am almost a quarter of the way through, it's a pretty fun read, good writing voice.

Catching myself wondering how much of his advice about what to order in restaurants is specific to his time and location and how much can be generalized.

Are you talking about the fish? Apparently, after googling it, Bourdain has changed his mind on the subject. Alot of articles out there debunking it as well.

Flaggy fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Nov 8, 2016

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
The fish especially, that advice seems to be based on the particularities of how the fish market works in a major US city. Not going to be directly applicable to, say, restaurants in smaller towns in Norway (where I personally am much more likely to find myself ordering food).

Flaggy
Jul 6, 2007

Grandpa Cthulu needs his napping chair



Grimey Drawer
http://lifehacker.com/anthony-bourdain-explains-why-its-okay-to-order-fish-on-1788716322

From the man himself.

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
Makes sense.

Finished the book yesterday, was a good and cool thing to read. I personally enjoy cooking and will gladly take a few hints and tricks along with all the funny anecdotes.

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Yeah, this was a good escapist book. Still working through it. Nothing much to say other than I like his anecdotes and how he tells them. He gets better at writing as the book goes.

404notfound
Mar 5, 2006

stop staring at me

Read this before, but popping in to say that it's great, and if you like it, you should check out his TV shows like Parts Unknown. They explore foreign cities (many that are well out of the way of typical tourist traps) and handle it with humble grace. The cinematography is awesome as well.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Need nominations for next month. Right now I'm considering _It Can't Happen Here_, _All the King's Men_, _The Man in the High Castle_, maybe _Watership Down_, maybe _On the Beach_.

Murgos
Oct 21, 2010

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Need nominations for next month. Right now I'm considering _It Can't Happen Here_, _All the King's Men_, _The Man in the High Castle_, maybe _Watership Down_, maybe _On the Beach_.

As On the Beach is the most depressing thing I've ever read and next month is already known for it's high suicide rates I would definitely recommend going with that. Thread humor is bound to happen.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Hrm maybe "Rhinoceros" by Ionesco

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Perhaps How to Survive a Plague by David France

Flaggy
Jul 6, 2007

Grandpa Cthulu needs his napping chair



Grimey Drawer
It is December, why not "The Stupidest Angel" by Christopher Moore. Unless that's played out/been done before.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Flaggy posted:

It is December, why not "The Stupidest Angel" by Christopher Moore. Unless that's played out/been done before.

Did it last year or the year before, I forget which.

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Need nominations for next month. Right now I'm considering _It Can't Happen Here_, _All the King's Men_, _The Man in the High Castle_, maybe _Watership Down_, maybe _On the Beach_.

Out of those I've previously (long ago) read _The Man in the High Castle_ and _Watership Down_ and would technically prefer another choice (although both were excellent).

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Hrm maybe "Rhinoceros" by Ionesco

Something cyberpunk

Finished the book. Bourdain is embarrassed about being born rich. He is incredibly class-conscious. It almost feels like he became a cook to vicariously enjoy the dirtiest, least glamorous job he could think of. Fun read, he's got a great voice, like a noir author describing vichyssoise.

Inspector 34
Mar 9, 2009

DOES NOT RESPECT THE RUN

BUT THEY WILL
I started to read this a year or two ago, but kind of stalled out around 2/3 of the way through. Does much change in the final bit of the book?

I found it pretty entertaining at first but then repetitive as he went to this restaurant or that and worked for this guy or the other guy again. I do want to finish it eventually, but might have to start at the beginning to reacquaint myself with what's going on.

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Naw, just start where you left off. The last third starts to be "random essays by A. Bourdain." He contrasts his own chaos with another (better) chef who maintains continuous order; his trip to Japan; etc.

Old Story
Jun 2, 2006

Oven Wrangler
Finished this today. I liked the book! Not much to add, but I'll echo the others in this thread: When he writes about the grind of cooking and managing kitchens the book is fun and informative, when he writes about his macho/criminal antics it's sorta boring.

I did go and get myself a decent chef's knife and made an attempt at baking my own bread after reading, so that's pretty good!

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
I already have a rack of Global knives and have been baking my own bread for years so am ready for some next level poo poo.

Have made a few attempts at making my own stock but so far the results have been a bit disappointing.

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Rudest Buddhist
May 26, 2005

You only lose what you cling to, bitch.
Fun Shoe
This was cool and good and I never would have checked it out if it wasn't for this thread.

Thanks again thread! (You also got me addicted to Knausgard)

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