Image Credit: Anthony Bourdain Facebook
Image Credit: Anthony Bourdain Facebook
Ah, Tony.
A man who travelled around the world doing whatever the fuck he wanted and taking us along for the ride has gone and left a real hole. He was, among many things, a fantastic writer – a real lyrical storyteller – and that’s why I’ve chosen A Cook’s Tour for the book club’s July read.
He helped us all see life, culture, family, literature, politics and food in ways we may not have before, and it makes for both stunning watching and reading. Hell, even the preface in this book is entertaining af. What a life lived.
Let’s read about it.
Anthony Bourdain, life-long line cook and bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential, sets off to eat his way around the world. But being Anthony Bourdain, this was never going to be a conventional culinary tour.
Bourdain heads out to Saigon, and travels deep into land-mined Khmer Rouge territory, dines with gangsters in Russia, experiences a medieval pig festival in Portugal, explores the Basque All Male Gastronomique Society in San Sebastian, heads to rural Mexico with his Mexican sous-chef, goes on a pilgrimage to the French Laundry in the Napa Valley, and returns to his roots in the tiny fishing village of La Teste, where he first ate an oyster as a child that sparked his love for all things food… and that’s just HALF of it.
Ok I’m not going to pretend this will be easy (unless you have an e-Reader then slide on in), as I’m sure copies in shops and libraries have been snapped up post-haste. I’ve had my copy for a while, and I found it at my local op shop. There are copies on on Amazon, plenty on Kindle at Amazon, and on eBay, and there’s tons on Abebooks but they take a while to ship. Check your local library, the website of your State Library, and ebook borrowing sites online. Hard copies are out of stock but on order at Booktopia, there’s a handful at Book Depository. For in-store in Melbs, I love Brunswick Bound and Readings, but it should be available in your local, or they can get it in.
This is super-chill, read what you want, as much or as little as you want, participate however you want kind of book club. Maybe challenge yourself a little because that is a good thing, but let this not be a burden.
We’ll pick a book per month and discuss it both on the blog and in the Facebook group (and for locals, in real life, over a beverage and platter of some type).
You can share at any time anywhere with the hashtag #vmbookclub and you can tag me @veggie_mama. I am also open to suggestions at any time, and I look forward to us maybe getting out of our literary comfort zones and always learning something when we do, even if we don’t like the book itself. Or the author. Or Tuesdays. Or broccoli.
See you back here at the end of July for a bookish chat about A Cook’s Tour!
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