Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain

A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—now with all-new, never-before-published material.

New York Chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir/expose. Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls “twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine.”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

This book is a total whirlwind to read. I first picked it up one winter break in college, and it immediately grabbed me until I was done just a day later – it was just impossible to put down. I’ve since come back to it a couple times (especially interesting as the restaurant industry has overhauled itself in the past decade or so) and recommended/gifted it to countless people, and I have to say, it’s still as good as it was that first time through.

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Books I Enjoyed but Rarely Talk About

I love book social media. Blogs, bookstagram, Twitter, the book subreddit…you name it, I’m on it and I love interacting with the different communities and seeing what everyone’s reading. Inevitably, though, each community tends to flock around the same handful of books – bookstagram’s always looking for the next trendy read and has It Books of the moment like Circe or Three Women, while /r/books tends to be more scifi/fantasy focused and has favorites like The Hitchhiker’s Guide and Master and the Margarita.

Sometimes they become a bit like echo chambers as people repeatedly recommend the same books, so I appreciate this prompt for reminding us to highlight great books that don’t get discussed as much. So below, three books I read or reread in the past year and enjoyed immensely.

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