Password-protected posts contain heavy spoilers and are there to prevent accidental spoiling. They can each individually be accessed with the password "SPOILME(#of the post)". That means if the post is numbered #0000, the password is SPOILME0000 - SPOILME all in caps, no space in between.
Enter at your own risk. And have fun!
A startlingly original voice makes her literary debut with this wondrous coming-of-age story infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, adventure, and fascinating, dreamlike twists.
‘One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride…’
Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.
Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.
After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.
This is one of my favorite books by a favorite Malaysian author. It’s my in-person bookclub’s BOTM and I’m excited to discuss it with them!
The Quotes
“The problem with the dead was that they all wanted someone to listen to them.”
“It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.”
“The contrast between the realization of his neglect and the fondness I had for my father was painful”.”
“If I had known how easy it is to lose your life, I would have treasured mine better”.”
The Narrator(s)
The author herself. I love her! She’s got such a gift for writing and storytelling, and is also such a talent with voices!
My Thoughts
I’ve read this book and loved it before, but it had been a while and I had forgotten a lot of the details. Sometimes when I reread a book, I get scared that I might not like it as much as I used to, but if anything, I think I loved it more this time around!
It’s such a joy to read about my own culture and heritage, through the lens of both real life and folklore. Our culture is so filled with superstition, but also so rich in flavor and imagination, it’s sometimes difficult to explain it to people of other cultures. But Choo’s storytelling is wonderful and sublime, and her portrayal of 1900’s Malaya and the Chinese’s idea of the underworld is just perfect.
The story itself is wonderful too. I can’t stop using all the positive adjectives to describe this book. It’s good, amazing, incredible, gorgeous, delightful, magnificent. It’s all the things I love in a fantasy, historical fiction, folklore and mythology, romance… everything! I just love it!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Rose Daniels saw the single drop of blood on the bed sheet and knew she must escape from her macabre marriage before it was too late.
But escape was not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, lucking out with a new man. Her husband, Norman, was a cop, with a cop’s training, a cop’s technology, a cop’s bloodhound instincts. And even worse, Norman was – well, Norman. Rose knew she had been married to a savage brute. Now she realized she was being tracked down by a terrifying monster – but the only place she found to hide could be the most dangerous of all…
I’m reading all of King’s books and this one was very highly recommended.
The Quotes
“But she stayed where she was a moment longer, like an animal which has been kept in a cage so long it cannot believe in freedom even when it is offered.”
“This man saw women like her all the time, women hiding behind dark glasses, women buying tickets to different timezones, women who looked as if they had forgotten who they were somewhere along the way, and what they thought they were doing, and why.”
“For gals like these, paranoia was a lot more than a way of life; it was full state-of-the-art.”
“It’s best to be ruthless with the past. It ain’t the blows we’re dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.”
The Narrator(s)
Stephen King, and Blair Brown. Blair Brown does most of the narration, but Stephen King does the parts where we see from the eyes of the MMC. I loved both of them.
My Thoughts
This one came highly recommended even among Stephen King fans and I got curious. I know it’s about a battered and abused woman, and knowing that King’s works tend to explore the human psyche, I really wanted to see how he wrote about this very important and sensitive topic. I was not disappointed.
It’s interesting to me that some critics have said that King doesn’t write women well, because I haven’t found that to be the case in many of the books I’ve already read, and with this book focused on Rose as the main character and seeing things from her POV, I thought it was written incredibly well. All the fear, the hypervigilantism, the little things that women do to protect themselves that men never think twice about; they’re represented very well here.
As I said about King’s storytelling tendencies, this isn’t an action-packed, plot-heavy story but rather, an exploration of the human psyche, and in this case, the battered woman and the abusive husband. We see a lot of their thought processes, we feel a lot of their feelings, the evolution of their relationship instructs the evolution of their feelings, thoughts, and then actions. It’s scary and thrilling, but also really emotional. I loved reading about Rose as she navigated her journey. This book deserves its hype.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Long ago, Earth’s terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered.
Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel following fragmentary radio signals. They discover a system in crisis, warring factions trying to recover from an apocalyptic catastrophe arising from what the early terraformers awoke all those years before.
The next book in the Children of Time series. I enjoyed the first book, so I thought I’d read this one too.
The Quotes
“We’re going on an adventure.”
“Advance science as far as you like, the human mind continued to place itself at the centre of the universe.”
“An inclination to play God was part and parcel of wanting to go out and terraform other worlds, but good practice was to at least play nicely with the rest of the pantheon.”
“Senkovi’s personal theory was that the pressure of being in the middle of the food chain was an essential prerequisite for complex intelligence. Like humans (and like Portiid spiders, had he only known), octopuses had developed in a world where they were both hunter and hunted. Top predators, in Senkovi’s assessment, were an intellectual dead end.”
The Narrator(s)
Mel Hudson. I continue to enjoy her narration.
My Thoughts
This book went simultaneously faster and slower than I expected, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like so many things happened, but they happened slowly, and most of it was anticipation waiting for things to happen than things actually happening.
There are new sentient organisms in this book, in addition to the spiders from the first book; octopuses and slime parasites. The slime parasites were scary and the octopuses were mysterious, and I feel like we still haven’t gotten to know either of them well yet. There seems to be a continuity with the books though, so I am curious to see what happens with them in the next book. I’d love to see their adventures and everything they learn and whatever comes out from that!
I am also happy to see the way the humans and spiders work together in this book, two species evolving together and learning to live together, work together, etc. I loved seeing it on the page. These books span centuries and generations of life, so we don’t always have the same characters from the start of the story, but the stories and characters really bury themselves into your heart, even so! I’m excited to read the next book and see what happens next!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop.
At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.
When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio—an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes—are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.
This is the fourth book in the Wayfarer series. I’ve read the first three and loved them, so of course I’m reading this one too!
The Quotes
“And sometimes fear is good. Fear keeps you alive. But it can also keep you from what you really want.”
“Because I didn’t want to. And when it comes to a person’s body, that is all the reason there ever needs to be. Doesn’t matter if it’s a decision about a new pair of legs or how you like to trim your claws or—’ she gave Pei a piercing look ‘—what to do about an egg. I didn’t want to. You don’t want to. That’s it.’ Speaker leaned forward. ‘That. Is all. It ever needs to be.”
“He’d been taught that if one person had more than another, feeling guilty about it was the least productive reaction. The only proper way to approach such inequities was to figure out how best to wield them, so as to bring others up to where you stood.”
“This did not mean that laws and rules were not helpful, or that explanations should not be sought, but rather that there should be no fear in changing them as needed, for nothing in the universe ever held still.”
The Narrator(s)
Patricia Rodriguez. As perfect as the first three books!
My Thoughts
I don’t know why I enjoy forced proximity stories, I’m not sure I’d enjoy it happening to me in real life, but I think I love seeing how people interact with each other in “what if” scenarios and Becky Chambers is just so good at writing diverse people. I loved the other books in the series too, but in a way, I feel like it’s a disservice to link them together as a series. They’re very different books, set in the same universe and with relating characters, but the stories are just completely different.
What is the same, is the exploration of different cultures and beliefs, and even physiology of all the different species, and the way they learn about each other and respect each other’s cultures. I love the conversations especially about their differences and similarities. I love it all! I find it so fascinating, learning about each different species’ language and how things are expressed and/or translated, how their beliefs and practices are shaped by their culture and physiology because of what their bodies allow them to do or not do, there is such a rich world-building here!
I love all the characters. Every one of them were so distinct and had such interesting personalities. I don’t know if there’s going to be a book 5 but I feel like I can’t get enough of these books and these characters, and even though we see new characters every book, I still want to keep reading about every one of them. Small mentions of past characters make me so happy! I’m so glad I finally caught up with the series, and I do hope there will be more. I still loved this one and I’m sure I’ll love any new stories set in this world!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies the city of New Crobuzon, where the unsavory deal is stranger to no one–not even to Isaac, a gifted and eccentric scientist who has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before encountered. Though the Garuda’s request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger. Soon an eerie metamorphosis will occur that will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon–and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it evokes.
This has been on my TBR for years and years and years! It was recently a buddy read so I thought it was a good time to finally read it.
The Quotes
“Art is something you choose to make… it’s a bringing together of… of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.”
“I wish that there was nothing to hold me here, that gravity was a suggestion I could ignore.”
“She was intelligent enough to realize that her excitement was childish, but not mature enough to care.”
“Old stories would tell how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act–to Weave–was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.”
My Thoughts
I tried reading this book twice before, both times on audio, and found that I couldn’t follow it because of the made-up words, names, and places. I always meant to try again with a printed copy, and I finally did this time. I got so much more out of it; more understanding, more immersion, more focus. And the buddy read with the ongoing discussions were a huge part of my experience as well.
Where do I even start, this book is huge with so many different elements to talk about! The worldbuilding, the exploration of different species and the way they live and work together, the criminal world – the petty criminals and crime lords being worlds apart as well, the government and the enforcers and spies, the remade, the Weaver, the AI constructs, the moths! It seems like a lot and yet, it feels so natural, like I can believe that this world exists, and I can see why Mieville is in a league of his own, this is a masterpiece!
It started out slow but it was still so interesting because there was so much to explore about this world and the characters. And even though it was slow, I could already feel the tension building from the beginning, and then all of a sudden everything happened all at once and it was just nonstop tension. I honestly don’t think I could talk about how amazing it was to see every single thing unfold the way they did and how I felt. It got so intense towards the end and I have so many feelings, I’m still processing.
I know this is definitely going to be one of those books where I get something new out of it every time I reread it again and I’m looking forward to that (though not anytime soon!). I wanted to give up on the book so many times because it’s so huge and I’m going through some really hectic times but I’m glad I persevered and finished! It’s completely worth it!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lived a quiet life working at her stepfather’s bakery. There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. One night, she went out to the lake for some peace and quiet. There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts.
Big mistake.
Vampires never entered her mind. Until they found her. And set upon her, and took her to an old abandoned mansion. They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to a wall-within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight, who is also chained. She knows that it is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when light breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is the vampire, Constantin, who needs her to help him survive the day, to protect him from the sun with her magic…
This is a reread. I’ve read this book twice before and it’s one of my favorite vampire stories. I also really love the author’s works.
The Quotes
“What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing–a very hard thing… But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?”
“It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don’t have a life.”
“You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you’re scared enough. I was scared enough.”
“He was a vampire. I was a human. We weren’t supposed to have any bonds between us, except straightforward generic ones of murderous antagonism and so on.”
The Narrator(s)
Laural Merlington. I had a really hard time with the low vampire voices. I could barely hear them and couldn’t make out what they were saying. I had to get a copy of the ebook and refer to it periodically.
My Thoughts
I love this book. I have loved this book, and I still love this book. Listening on audio was not the best experience, unfortunately, because I couldn’t make out what some of the low voices was saying, but I still love the story. I read it for the first time maybe 20 years ago and I thought it was one of the more interesting vampire stories, and 20 years later it’s still true for me.
The relationship between Rae and Constantin is a constant push/pull, and I love that vampires aren’t seen as dashing, romantic bad boys in this world but rather dangerous, animalistic creatures of prey. I mean, to an extent, Constantin is romanticized a little bit but to a reasonable degree in comparison to so many other vampire stories.
There are so many reasons why I love this book; the interesting world-building, the vampire lore, the rich character backgrounds. When the book first came out years ago, I hoped there might be more books set in this world, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any so far, and the author hasn’t published any new books in the last decade. Still, there are plenty of books in her catalog I haven’t read and I love rereading the ones I’ve read. I never get tired of them.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother–daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .
I watched the tv adaptation a few years ago and loved it and always meant to read the book eventually.
The Quotes
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
“She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them.”
“I’ll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.”
“Where do we follow the rules, and where do we justify breaking them? Do our pasts determine what we deserve in the future? And is it ever possible to leave your past behind?”
The Narrator(s)
Jennifer Lim. It was absolutely perfect.
My Thoughts
I feel like a lot of my love for this book might have been carried over from my love for the tv adaptation. I remember a lot of key moments in the show and the vibrancy of the actors who play the characters and pictured some of the scenes as I was reading the book. This rarely happens with me but in this instance I think the show was just so good that it stayed with me, and dare I say, I think the show was better than the book. But not by much because the book was really good too.
Reading the book served to make the differences in class and privilege among the characters a lot more jarring to me. Their internal thought processes and justifications, their reasons for doing the things they did, made such a stark contrast when put into words in the book.
There have been some criticisms about the book trying to bias us towards certain characters that may or may not necessarily be right in their own actions, but I personally feel like that’s missing the point. It’s not about who’s right or wrong, all the characters did/have done questionable things, but rather, it’s about privilege. The ones who have money and privilege have more options, more connections, more ways to get themselves out of trouble, and more grace from public opinion. The poor don’t have the luxury of better options, nor grace from public opinion. They are maligned for “making bad choices” when “good choices” are just not available to them.
I love that this story highlights that, but I also think that people who have privilege may not recognize this aspect of the story because they don’t always recognize their own privilege. It’s written so subtly and masterfully, the characters are so complex and their thought processes feel so true to life, it’s just an amazing book and I loved it.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.
When the expedition’s leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.
I love big books, and I love horror, and I love historical fiction, and I love books about exploration. This book seemed like a culmination of many things I love.
The Quotes
“The beauty of being dead, he knows now, is that there is no pain and no sense of self.”
“Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities.”
“Every time I believe I know one of these men or officers, I find that I am wrong. A million years of Man’s Medicinal progress will never reveal the secret condition and sealed compartments of the Human soul.”
“Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?”
The Narrator(s)
Tom Sellwood. Loved his narration!
My Thoughts
Although this story is based on a real lost expedition that happened, I wasn’t sure how much of it would stay true to life and what would be embellished. I was also unfamiliar with the true events so I wouldn’t have realized where the story diverged, which maybe added to my enjoyment of the book as I was taking everything at face value. I loved a few of the characters, hated a couple of others, and found myself rooting for the ones I loved and wishing horrible things on the bad guys.
I loved the whole experience of reading this book. It started really slow-paced, but it kept building and building and building on the tension and in the end the slow burn was so worth it. I read it as a buddy read with my online bookclub and one of the things I said is that this is one of the best books I’ve read and I loved the writing, but I don’t think I’ll ever want to read it again because of how intense it is.
Give me enough time to forget the experience and I may read it again, but right now I’m still reeling from all the feelings.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it and what led them there.
We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?
Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.
Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.
It was the BOTM for my in-person bookclub, member’s choice.
The Narrator(s)
Hayley Campbell, the author herself. I really enjoyed the narration and listening to the book through her voice. It’s technically scientific nonfiction but I also think it’s a little bit of a memoir about her own journey researching the book, and I loved that she shared her personal experiences through the journey.
My Thoughts
Our in-person bookclub had a very deep and meaningful discussion about this book, our own thoughts on death and dying, and how we felt about the book and death. Personally, this book blew me away, I’ve always been morbidly curious about death and the business of death, but I didn’t expect the author to also delve into the emotional aspects of those who work in the business.
There are so many things we don’t think about until it affects us, but at the same time, this is one of those things that when it does affect us, we’re not necessarily in the right frame of mind to think about them. I love that Campbell have so much compassion and empathy for those who work with death and the dying, and I love that she puts a spotlight on the topics that we typically avoid.
One of the criticisms that came up as our bookclub was discussing the book was that Campbell inserted her own emotions and judgement a little to much while interviewing some of her subjects. I agree in that particular instance, but I also think that it was her way of trying to understand it. That doesn’t excuse it at all, because I personally feel that she did push a little too hard and I didn’t like that she did that. I did like that she got emotionally invested and personal in the book, but I think there should be a balance between being professional and letting her interviewees tell their story, and inserting her own emotions and judgement into their stories.
It is still a very good book and I learned so much. I loved it so much, I bought my own copy so that I can reread it over again. There really is a lot to be gained from reading this book, morbid as it is, and I would highly recommend it to anyone!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Now in paperback, the eye-opening book that was nominated for a 1998 James Beard Foundation award in the Writing on Food category.
In the winter of 1996, Michael Ruhlman donned hounds-tooth-check pants and a chef’s jacket and entered the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, to learn the art of cooking. His vivid and energetic record of that experience, The Making of a Chef, takes us to the heart of this food-knowledge mecca. Here we meet a coterie of talented chefs, an astonishing and driven breed. Ruhlman learns fundamental skills and information about the behavior of food that make cooking anything possible. Ultimately, he propels himself and his readers through a score of kitchens and classrooms, from Asian and American regional cuisines to lunch cookery and even table waiting, in search of the elusive, unnameable elements of great cooking.
I am a foodie and I have a weird fascination for food writing. I also have a couple of books by Michael Ruhlman that I haven’t read yet. This book happened to be available from my library so I dove in!
The Narrator(s)
Jeff Riggenbach. It was great!
My Thoughts
I loved the writing and the storytelling. I got so immersed in the whole book as I was reading that it just transported me away from real life and into a culinary dream world. It made me think about food and cooking so much more deeply; my relationship with food, the way I approached cooking for myself and my family, the appreciation I have for food and food culture. I loved the way the author talks about food and cooking and his own appreciation for food and his experience of working in the kitchen.
It almost made me want to sign up for culinary classes but I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t do well as a professional cook. I love food, and I love cooking, but as Ruhlman’s teacher talks about in the book, I don’t think I have that drive to cook for others professionally and to always show up no matter the weather and the occasion (and unlike Ruhlman, I’m totally fine with that!).
I love Ruhlman’s candidness and the way he talks about his experience with such transparency. I love the way he is so passionate about food and cooking, and I love the way he really makes me feel like I’m right there. I want more of this and I hope to come back to this book again in the future.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
