Knight’s Reading List XXIII: November 2008

Okay, I only finished two books in November, and one of them didn't amount to much. But if you read only one book this month, and that book is Kitchen Confidential, this will be a great reading month for you. I'm adding Bourdain's blog to the sidebar on this blog. (It's also under the title of this post.)

Reading List:

Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential. 2000. xviii + 312 pages.
Davis, Lindsay. Poseidon’s Gold. 1992. 336 pages.

Non-Fiction:

Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential. 2000. 312 pages.

Do you know why you should never order seafood on Mondays? You know Anthony Bourdain, don’t you? He shows up on Top Chef from time to time as a guest judge, always looking for the edgy, the innovative, the risky. He has his own show on the Travel Channel, No Reservations, in which he travels to faraway lands in search of amazing dining experiences. Anthony Bourdain, celebrity chef, who loves eating homemade Brazilian sausages, fantastic Japanese sushi, or Filipino goat’s head soup. Well, before he was famous, he was a drug addict, he worked in all sorts of restaurants that failed or that deserved to fail, and he had a wealth of experience. Kitchen Confidential is where he shares all that with you. This is a fun book, this is a book with lots of clues to good management, and this is a book that gives you a feel for how professional kitchens work. Mostly this is a book about the many interesting people Bourdain has worked for and with in all those kitchens. Oh, and most restaurants order their seafood on Thursday, for delivery Friday. What you get on Monday is a bouillabaise or gumbo or Portuguese fish stew made with five-day old fish and shellfish. Bon appetit!

Fiction:

Davis, Lindsay. Poseidon’s Gold. 1992. 336 pages.

Poseidon’s Gold is also set in a kitchen: the kitchen of a low-class lunch counter in second-century Rome. Davis has written a series of these Roman mysteries starring the whiny Marcus Didius Falco and with precious metals in the titles. (Here's a Didius Falco fan club.) They aren’t bad, and they have some interesting tidbits about life in ancient Rome. But Lindsay Davis ain’t no Raymond Chandler, and she doesn’t make the interaction of Roman social classes sing to you the way Los Angeles sings in Chandler’s prose. Light reading.