Graeme Strachan > Recent Status Updates

The book is fun but it’s wildly raving towards an ending that it’s not earned, tossing side characters aside like the author just got bored of them.

Kind of fun, even if the central romance seems to just sort of happen out of nothing.

Still trucking on

Picked this up again, had to reread a couple of stories that I’d quite forgotten I’d read. I made pencil notations on a few, think I’ll do that for them all.
Helps keep track.

Interesting how this shapes up to the TV Show and the movie adaptation.

Going through a "clearing up" to try and get all the books I've had part-read out of the way at the start of the year.

I didn't realise there were a handful of short stories collections I was only partway through. Crazy.

London's writing is evocative and dark, but also occasionally a little predictable towards the end.

This really has forgone any attempt to make its case by the end, ascribing just about anything to “Caste” without actually making any more than a tenuous link and ignoring other factors almost entirely.

A pity.

I’m getting the impression, as the books slides more and more into personal anecdotes, that Wilkerson may indeed be something of a pain in the butt to be around.

The Haunted man ends drably

Turns out I was further through this audiobook than I thought. It’s VERY repetitive, if not substantially deep.
There’s something superficial about the way this is told. Despite some of the academic writing (word salad) in some sections, it’s fairly lowbrow in terms of its actual aims.
Weighing a prevalence of examples over actually tying them to the point.

The Haunted Man really is a bit of a chore.

Thus far a little disappointing.
Instead of a rich academic argument about how racism should be viewed as Caste systems, the book is far more interested in simply retelling stories of racist atrocities committed against (mostly) African Americans in the USA during slavery and Jim Crow segregation eras.

It’s also quite repetitive, and a little too “word salady”.

A nice compendium of Dickens’ Christmas writings. His pickwick papers pieces do feel like dry runs for Christmas Carol.
The Sexton who is kidnapped by Goblins is basically just Scrooge’s story massively condensed.

Had forgotten how funny Christmas Carol is though.

Getting a bit Twilighty.

Way too much chat about tea.

Cosy fluff. Not bad for it.

Continues to be frank and funny.

It’s not really the “memoir” you’d expect as there’s not much of connect the dots outside Bourdain’s work stories. E.g. he mentions various girlfriend, then mentions he has a wife.

Will be interesting to hear if there just isn’t much to the man outside the kitchen.

Still funny, still insightful.
I definitely don’t ever want to work in a kitchen now.

Depressing reading. It’s amazing anything gets done in Parliament.

As with any great memoir of a famous person, it’s insightful.

In this case, that Bourdain was in many ways kind of a difficult asshole, and probably a nightmare to know, while at the same time being a charming brilliant chef, and raconteur.

I can see the fingerprints of this book all over TV shows like The Bear and films like Boiling Point.

Purge to be shocking, in fact just… makes sense.
Parliament is nonsense.

I started this on holiday, and read 90 pages on the plane, then didn’t touch it again since.

It’s fascinating, and strange. Reminds me that I really must read more Thomson. The Five Gates of Hell is an amazing book.

Creepy

For all the length of the book, it feels a little like I'm reaching toward the end too fast.

I again sense this is a book that benefits from repeat readings.

The section on Italian attitudes to unwritten "food rules" (usually with no explanation beyond "that's how it is done") is painfully accurate.