Books I Read October 3rd, 2023

This week I made some really laughably awful errors at work and read the following books.

Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line by Michael Gibney – A detailed description of a day in the life of a sous chef in a popular Manhattan restaurant. Engaging in its minutia, part of my homework.

Casanova's Homecoming by Arthur Schnitzler – The eponymous cad contemplates his decline on the road to his native Venice. Didn't hit me like Late Fame.

The Guinea Pigs by Ludvik Vaculik – Impenetrable surrealistic Czech satire. Apart from its broadly anti-Soviet theme I confess I couldn't make heads or tails of this.

Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton – An anarchic childhood and misspent youth leads to owning a beloved Manhattan restaurant. More homework. Hamilton led a rich life and is a perceptive writer and I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of this, but the long final section about her Italian husband and adopted family kind of lost me.

Ambigous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane – A fictionalized retelling of the author's youth and education, first in a Senegalese madrasa, then in a French Lyceum, and the of the conflict between Western modernity and African/Islamic spiritualism. More a series of philosophical discourses than a novel per se, though I found these to be measured and thoughtful despite being a pretty strict (if unhappy) atheist.