Roasting in Hell's Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words and the Pursuit of Perfection; Gordon Ramsay (Harper, 2007, cover by FBC, ISBN978-0-06-119198-5).

When it comes to books about cooking, I prefer cookbooks. This is just as it is when it comes to television: I prefer a show like Alton Brown's Good Eats to Emeril, a show where I'm going to learn some techniques, some science, some background and history as well as be entertained.

Top Chef pretty much left me cold; I could not see how most of those people would survive in any ordinary business, let alone a kitchen where you need some modicum of cooperation. So when I first started seeing bits from a show called Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, I chuckled and moved on.

But...I came back. Gordon Ramsay, known equally well for his sharp tongue as well as a string of award-winning restaurants, swoops in on a failing restaurant and tries to turn it around. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he fails, and you are constantly amazed at the people who run and work in those establishments. What were they thinking of when they opened those businesses? Amusing stuff and you can probably do a Kitchen Nightmares Drinking Game where you take a swig for every bleeped out word and two swigs for every word that either isn't bleeped out or bleeped so poorly you can figure it out. more...

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John's Reading Report (February 200

Here's what I've read since my last report:

Bill Bryson's The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. I love his show No Reservations, and reading about life in the "culinary underbelly" was simultaneously fascinating and funny.

Orbit, John J. Nance. Surprisingly entertaining. I had low expectations, but the story grabbed me about half the way through and I couldn't put it down.

In progress:

Flashman, George MacDonald Fraser.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett.

On deck:

Suite Francaise, Irene Nemerovsky. One offered up by the Amazon algorithm based on product searches and past purchases. I hope it is as compelling as the author's own story.

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman. I've been meaning to read this for, like, forever.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.

Still about five months' worth of Analog magazine.

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Fred's Reading Report (February 200

Leap Year! An extra day of reading! Nope, just an increased number of hours at work, alas...

Books? 11, year-to-date.

Short works? 74, year-to-date.

Currently being read:

Poul Anderson: The Earth Book of Stormgate. Trader to the Stars. The Trouble Twisters. more...

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...that you've been reading too much Patrick O'Brian (contributed by various members of The Gunroom):

You start wishing people joy. "Wish you joy of your new car."

You blame your recent bad luck on lack of any backstays nearby to scratch.

Your arguments with your spouse now involve phrases like "Which I already took the trash out, didn't I?"

You've taken to eating toasted cheese.

You use the phrase "brought by the lee" in every day situations.

You call cleaning your house "a clean sweep fore and aft".

You've ever heard "Roast Beef of Old England" and found yourself getting hungry.

When you see an unusual beetle, you feel guilty for not putting it in your pocket.

All the metal in your house is polished really, really well.

(Lissun Chris Hopkins) more...

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I have books. Lots of books. My wife says way too many books. But, hey, it's better than some habits I could have!

Storage is always a problem. We have bookshelves throughout the house and a good chunk of the collection is in semi-permanent storage in boxes in the basement.

Via BoingBoing, something to make me wish for a house other than a ranch. Book storage in a staircase! Way cool!

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Via the Wayback Machine, pictures of Robert A. Heinlein's bomb shelter! This was the model for the bomb shelter featured in Heinlein's novel, Farnham's Freehold (click on the link for several sample chapters).

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Yes, I've read it before. Heck, I read it last year. And now I'm reading it again...twice...once (via audiobook) to hear the ebb and flow and to make mental note of places to read more closely and once (via the hardcover omnibus boxed set edition).

So join me as I participate in the 2008 Gunroom Group Read of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series. This will be the first (continually growing) entry, I'll update this as I work my way through. Bits are being posted at The Gunroom mailing list and I may snip bits of the responses as they come up from there.

In the meantime, may I entreat you (if you are interested in O'Brian, even vaguely) to join either The Gunroom or a newly formed Yahoo Group, Reading Jack Aubrey? The Gunroom is somewhat wide in its discussions, after all, it is about Patrick O'Brian "and everything else". But, if you can take the volume, you'll find a nice bunch of folks and learn much from what we call The All-Knowing List. Reading Jack Aubrey is focused on The Canon, and there are strict rules regarding spoilers, but the discussion there will benefit folks new to the series. more...

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The ever informative Ansible, Issue #247, is up!

Cory Doctorow announced the birth on 3 February of a daughter proudly named...Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow.

Oh my. Tell me that kid ain't gonna catch heck in school.

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John's Reading Report (January 200

OK, I am not quite the reading machine that Fred is, but I did do a little reading this last month:

I started and finished The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. I first read this about seven years ago, and it had a bigger impact on me this time around. If you've read this and know me well, you'll know why. I usually don't read "literary" SF, but this one is well worth it.

I also continue to read my regular monthly magazines as they come, and am continuing to work my way through the Ana-backlog.

I am also currently about a third of the way through Bill Bryson's The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. I got this for Christmas, and wanted to read it as soon as possible. While aimed squarely at the Boomer generation (with a birthdate in 1968, I fall in that awkward midpoint: too young to be a Boomer, just a little too old to be as Gen-Xer), this book is providing me ample laugh-out-loud moments, which are really good for the soul.

Still in progress:

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett. I'm going to have to re-read portions of this. My attention strayed from cognitive science during the Holidays to lighter fare. Now that we're back in the grim clutches of the post-Holiday work grind, I can get back to pondering existence and consciousness.

On deck:

Orbit, John J. Nance. A Christmas gift, and the next novel I'll be reading.

Suite Francaise, Irene Nemerovsky. One offered up by the Amazon algorithm based on product searches and past purchases. I hope it is as compelling as the author's own story.

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman. I've been meaning to read this for, like, forever.

Flashman, George MacDonald Fraser. Thanks to a plug by the Llamabutchers.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.

Still about five months' worth of Analog magazine.

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Fred's Reading Report (January 200

So, 31 days have January, so at this point (day isn't over):

Four books.

Thirty short works.

Currently being read...relatively actively...

Poul Anderson: The Earth Book of Stormgate. Trader to the Stars. The Trouble Twisters. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:41 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Mechanical animals and more!

I wonder if future models will allow us to look for giant squid...

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The list can now be viewed here.

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CNN talks about nine bookstores that are worth visiting for books and as a tourist destination. A friend adds a tenth. I've been to the Strand and City Lights and have shopped (online) at Powells and Tattered Cover.

The wallet cringes...

Addendum: How about the best bookstores world-wide? (Odd...no overlap!)

Addendum: Another suggestion...the Book Mill of Monatague, Massachusetts.

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This posting can now be viewed here.

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I've been doing some Lewis Carroll reading and related reading. Not only have I picked up the annotated Alice and Looking Glass again, but have found an annotated version of The Hunting of the Snark, several collections of Carroll's puzzles and a book on Carroll by Martin Gardner.

That last made me haul down a CD-ROM I bought a few years ago: Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games—The Entire Collection of His Scientific American Columns.

What a buy this was! On one compact bit of storage you have not one, not two, but fifteen collections previously available in separately published books.

If you like puzzles...this has got to be the bargain of the century!

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Why charge more for less? Here's an audiobook of Spider Robinson's The Callahan Chronicals from Blackstone Audio. Its runs $24.95 for the MP3CD version.

Now...you would think this would be cheaper. Here's the same book from Audible. For a download, since you are paying for the connection and you are paying for storage (either on your hard drive, your MP3 device or the cost of a blank CD), you would think the price would be lower. So why does Audible charge...$31.47? (O.K., you can get it if you join their "club" for $7.49. But there are terms and conditions that you might not want.)

I'm obviously "missing something obvious" (and yes, I'm being sarcastic).

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Now here's somebody with a lot of free time on their hands. From J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a reconstruction of The Battle of Helms Deep and The Battle of Pelennor Fields...using licorice, gummy bears, chocolate pretzels...

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So having a iPod (finally, I buy a gadet before it is obsolete!) and having had some "downtime" at the firehouse last night, I downloaded a bunch of these "podcast" things I've been hearing about. Still having a dial-up connection at home, large downloads are not really an option there.

The new revolution? A way of knocking old media off of the pedestal? Maybe, but probably not. There's an interesting contrast in the podcasts...and the better podcasts are those with money, talent and quality behind them.

Here's an example: William Gibson did a book tour to support his latest novel, Spook Country (still on my personal Mount Toberead). During the course of the book tour he gave probably a couple of thousand talks, interviews, readings and what not (or, it felt like that). I know I've read one of the key phrases he's been using this go round—how if you walked into a publisher in the 1970's and pitched a SF novel with a global pandemic (AIDS) and a climate problem (AGW), you'd be shown the door and they'd call security—several times now. Most of the interviews have hit that highlight a few others.

BoingBoing had Gibson on for one in their short-lived podcasting series (they then moved on to doing short video webcasts but I think that has died as well). It was short. Gibson seemed to be talking to them over a cellphone while outside, so you could hear wind. One of the people from the BoingBoing end of things was dialed in on something (internet telephone?) that had latency problems. Two of the others also had audio quality problems. They kept tripping over each other, and their guest, in asking questions and interjecting useless noise.

Contrast that with this interview done by Rick Kleffel at The Agony Column. The interview runs quite long so you get more than soundbites on how we're living in the future. The interviewer allows Gibson to speak, only interjecting himself when necessary to get things moving again. Gibson even contributes two readings from two novels.

Podcasting may be the radio of the future, but quality will show. I'll be returning to hear more from The Agony Column; on the other hand, I won't be sad about the demise of the BoingBoing effort for long.

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When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment empty. Then he realized (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock-coat were black; the face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, and also something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe. more...

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I don't have rafters from my house, otherwise I think this would be a great solution to my sprawling book collection!

(Via BoingBoing)

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