Couple Quick Book Reviews

okay, so in the interest of procrastinating stuff for a few moments, here are a couple more book reviews.

Harvest of Sorrow - Robert Conquest.

I almost didn't write this review up and it will likely be very short. This book affected me deeply and left me uncharacteristically depressed during the whole time I was chugging my way through it. In fact it was so difficult that I read two lighter books during the course of the one (I almost never do such a thing). Perhaps it is the culmination of Koba The Dread & Gulag Archipelago together that was so awful.

Regardless, it is very well written and is basically the definitive "western" history of Collectivization and the terror famine of the early 1930s. Brutal. Brutal. Brutal. The cold hard death of millions of people. As he says, twenty people for each letter in the book.

I was really glad to finally finish this one. Don't know how to really rate it though. Too depressing for three lemons but far too good to get anything less. 3/4 lemons then.
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A Cook's Tour - Anthony Bourdain

This was a really good read as a travelouge/foodie thing. Crushed this one out fast during HoS. Not quite as good as Kitchen Confidential, a little more scatterbrained (for instance he returns several times to Vietnam. All in all though he has some great food oriented trips to various countries/regions (Vietnam, France, Portugal, Japan, Russia, California, Cambodia, Mexico etc...).

Seems to me, if you are a chef who knows a lot of chefs you can do really good for yourself traveling around the world and getting hooked up. This book is proof of that. While I enjoyed all of the countries the only place in the book (other than CA) that I'd been to is Russia. I'd be interested in how other people were able to compare their food/eating trip some of the other places because his trip through Russia was a LOT like my food memories. He nailed it spot on.

2/4 lemons
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One Man's Wilderness - Sam Keith

The chronicle of Dick Proenneke's first year living on Twin Lakes in Alaska as taken from his journals. This one was fabulous and fast closely tracks the video often on PBS. Pretty much a doctoral course in building a cabin and living alone way out in the boonies. It is really short (took well under a day to read) but deeply satisfying. Short review for a short book. :)

3/4 lemons

yeah yeah, music books videos bitch!