If you aren’t obsessed by exquisite food, amused by toilet humour and punkish slapstick, and don’t find the lives of the overworked, overpaid, talented, corrupt, and derelict cooks who turn out delicate dishes in New York’s fancy restaurants to be of interest, stop here. If, on the other hand, you have nerves of steel (think Basil in the Fawlty kitchens), a strong stomach for blood, gore, and dripping, and high tolerance of cuss words and adolescent antics (think the BBC’s Bottom, or Men Behaving Badly), along with a love of haute cuisine sans frou frou, you will enjoy Anthony Bourdain’s tell all memoir, Kitchen Confidential.
Category: Non fiction reviews
A Review of Net Words by Nick Usborne
“Nobody is paying close enough attention to the words on ecommerce sites.” Do you do any kind of online writing? Manage a web site? Run an ecommerce site? Write articles, newsletters, even send action oriented e-mails? If so, you really…
Journey to Self-Realisation: A Review of Women Navigating Midlife by Robyn Vickers-Willis
Journey to Self-Realisation: A Review of Women Navigating Midlife by Robyn Vickers-Willis Feeling depressed, angry, bewildered, or just flat? Are you a woman aged between 35 and 50? You could be entering your midlife transition. This is not necessarily a…
A review of Lily Brett’s New York
Lily Brett’s New York is a lighthearted, easy to read book which looks at life in New York from the perspective of an Australian who has been living in Manhatten for over ten years.
A Review of Gabriel Gate’s Weekend on a Plate
A Review of Gabriel Gate’s Weekend on a Plate Gaté has a very delicate prose style, which is both casual and sophisticated, evoking clean white tableclothes, fresh coffee, crusty breads, quality wines, and herb rich meat dishes prepared with care.…
A Review of Peter Bowerman’s The Well Fed Writer
Reading The Well Fed Writer, you can’t help but feel excited and positive about the possibility of making a good living as a Freelance Commercial Writer (FLCW in Bowermanspeak). Bowerman’s many years of experience in sales and marketing, and obvious…
A review of Jenna Glatzer’s More Than Any Human Being Needs to Know About Freelance Writing Workbook
As Editor in Chief of Absolute Write (www.absolutewrite.com), and the published author of hundreds of articles, columns, reviews, features, profiles, interviews, brochures, and books on a wide range of topics, Glatzer knows her business. More Than Any Human Being Needs to…
A review of Dan Poynter’s Writing Non-Fiction: Turning Ideas into Books
The system is really quite ingenious, and makes a lot of sense. By setting up a manuscript in a way that looks quite like a book, prior to actually writing the book, you firstly create a kind of visual prompt…
A Review of the Describer’s dictionary by David Grambs
The reason I like this reference so much is that if I don’t find exactly what I’m looking for, I may very well find something I like better. Further, this is the kind of reference you can actually read. Open this book to any chapter (segment) on, say, “hair”. You’ll find several quotes about “hair” that are entertaining and may stir your own creative juices before you even get to the part that that lists adjectives for all kinds of– ahem– tresses, locks, strands, shocks, hanks, coils, tendrils, curls, ringlets or swirls.
A Review of Killing The Food Monster by Jason Stanley
What is a food monster, and why do you want to kill it? According to Dr Jason Stanley, the Food Monster is the compulsion to overeat, and it stems from deep psychological needs arising from early childhood. Approximately 95% of chronically overweight people have a food monster (and some normal weight folk too). If you do have a food monster, Dr Stanley says that most of the control type programs which weight watchers go on will be ineffective or will only work for a short while, because they deal with the symptoms of weight gain, not the cause.