Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Let me preface this post first. I adore Anthony Bourdain. No one can convince me otherwise. I will not bend to another opinion and I will not look the other way from this unruly, opinionated, coarse and crass wonderful human being. My husband and I worship Bourdain with a passion and he was the only celebrity death recently that actually made my husband visibly sad. He means that much.

Okay, adoring rant now over. 

I got Kitchen Confidential for my husband as a Christmas gift a number of years ago and he devoured it so quickly over the remaining holiday time. He was obsessed the unforgiving, no-shits-given recollection from Bourdain. He's been trying to get me to read it for a while and I finally agreed to the audiobook version for our travels this fall. Question: HOW DID I WAIT SO LONG?!

The audiobook we got is the one actually narrated by Bourdain and that made it 100-million times better. He has such a voice, an inflection, that makes you feel like he is sitting there right beside you after a long shift regaling you with his own personal war-stories like you've been best buds for years. Listening to him read his own words and his own stories was like a hug -- and I needed it.

I knew going in that Bourdain had quite the upbringing in the culinary world and his road to foodie stardom was rough, but man, he really was no-holds-barred in this book. I loved it! It was funny, raw, crass, dark and everything I'd hoped and more.

He wrote about cooking on the line in the 70's and meeting some of the other cooks that he would look to for the rest of his career. The stories about those men and women were some of the funniest in the book. He wrote about going on job interviews, and fucking them up. Actually, he wrote about how he fucked up a lot of stuff up, but how those experiences made him stronger and he learned and he never gave up.

You hear about how the world of cooking can be dirty, mean and downright appalling and Bourdain was here to tell you its all true. Maybe we really all needed to hear it, buck up and carry on. The people that buy, cook, and prepare our food are some of the most grueling, skilled and badass people around. 

I will never run out of great things to say about this book, but I will stop because I have just two words:

READ IT.

Book Club 2.0 - - - Galatea by Madeline Miller

Ooo round three of book club is in full swing now! For our October pick we went with a short story: Galatea by Madeline Miller, acclaimed author of Circe and The Song of Achilles.

It ended up being really amusing, because despite knowing it was a short story, we were all quite surprised at how short it actually was. When I was finished it, I kept hoping there was more because it was so engaging!

The average rating was about a 7 out of 10, which is pretty good for us!

We surprisingly also had a lot to say about a short story. The first thing we discussed was the use of 'fuck' in the story. Janean thought it was anachronistic and took her out of the story, but Jane countered that it was more intentional and purposeful the way it was written with the swear in there. I agreed with Janean and noted that a different word could have been used and still kept the idea around what was happening to Galatea in the story.

As per usual we talked about whom our favourite and least favourite characters are, and while the cast of characters is small, we all agreed that the sculptor, doctor and nurses were the worst. And for some of us, the doctor and nurses were the epitome of bad because of the role they played in Galatea's confinement. They are perpetuating the problem of keeping women down in the context of the book's setting. We all agreed this is a piece of feminist literature; there was no doubt.

There really wasn't a favourite because you're not meant to like Galatea, her purpose is mostly for pity. I felt the most sympathetic to the sculptor's newest piece of the 10-year-old girl. Galatea even apologizes to her and calls her 'daughter'. The whole scene is heart-breaking. Others brought up Galatea's actual daughter and how she represents hope and potential but that there is also nothing more to her story. What happens to her? What does she become?

We also talked about the ending, which came to me as a shock when I read it. I was not expecting it. I can't remember if it was Jane or Janean who mentioned that Aphrodite was the one who brought Galatea to life, so it only made sense that when she returned to the sea she would be turned back to stone, her original state, because the sculptor took advantage of the gift she had given him.

Overall, I loved this story! Many of the other girls in the club have read her other books and loved them, so perhaps I also need to get on that train and give them a try too.