Recently Acquired

Four Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (#19/40), Aaron Tieger

The Evasion English Dictionary, Maggie Balistreri

Artists in Times of War, Howard Zinn

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I also just finished Michael Ruhlman's The Making of a Chef, a not-quite gripping tale of journalist-posing-as-culinary-student at the Culinary Institute of America. It reads like an overlong puff piece for the weekend "Lifestyle" section of your local newspaper. The information is mostly interesting, but Ruhlman's prose is often misspelled and ungrammatical. His favorite grammar flub: "real" for "really." I'd rather read Anthony Bourdain. Or James Beard. Or MFK Fisher. Or Elizabeth David. Or John Thorne. Or Jim Harrison. Or Jeffrey Steingarten. Or Ruth Reichl. Or just about anybody on food, EXCEPT the local Eugene Register-Guard restaurant reviewer, Nonie Fish, whose dreadful, flat prose, and absolute lack of even the most basic knowledge of food infuriates me on a bi-weekly basis.