Medium Raw : A Bloody Valentine To The World Of Food And The People Who Cook
by Anthony Bourdain

If you enjoy reading books, where the "f" word is very pervasive, then this one is for you. Why Bourdain feels that expletive is so necessary to state his point of view becomes old fast. Ten years ago, he wrote Kitchen Confidential and this is pretty much the same thing. It's just another rant about the food world with or without his involvement.
After thirty-eight pages, I got tired of reading about his boozing and drug addiction. How some reviewers think this book is more refined and he is mellower is a joke. I guess you have be a fan and I am certainly not one of them.
Don't bother picking this book up, anywhere.

The Art Of Eating In : How I Learned To Stop Spending and Love The Stove
by Cathy Erway

The author should just stick to writing blogs, which she does, anyway with: www.noteatingoutinny.com, where she writes about home-cooked food.
The information that is presented, in this book, is only mildly interesting.
Cathy Erway decides to do an experiment and not eat out in New York for two years. She loves to cook, anyway, and figures that it will be fun. Too bad the book wasn't fun. With three chapters to go and 42 more pages to read, I could no longer stomach it.
While recipes are included, at the end of each chapter, I wasn't interested in trying any of them.
There are many more better written books on food.

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House
by Meghan Daum

I would change to title to: "Life Would Be Perfect If I Had Never Checked This Book Out Of The Library."
I read the prologue and the first chapter and closed it up. The author is obsessed with looking for her dream place to live and is addicted to real estate.
Not very interesting and right from the beginning, I found the writing tedious and shallow.
Don't bother with this one.

The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice in Wonderland
by Jenny Woolf

What started out to be a fascinating analysis of Lewis Carroll, the writer of Alice in Wonderland, degenerated into a dry, repetitive, boring treatise that left many blanks. Carroll kept diaries, but from 1852-1862 these years have disappeared and so the author surmises or invents what maybe could have happened to Carroll at that time.
Another screwed-up author, who likes children (mostly female), never marries, is secretive, and lives alone.
The most bothersome thing, to me, was the excruciatingly, sloppy editing. Punctuation was horrendous with missing periods and incorrect placement of quotation marks.
Stay, very far, away from this one.

Schmucks!: Our Favorite Fakes, Frauds, Lowlifes, Liars, the Armed and Dangerous, and Good Guys Gone Bad
by Jackie Mason and Raul Felder

A comedian and a celebrity divorce attorney (oy vey) collaborate to write about everything and anything that pisses them off: Madonna, the French, Tom Cruise, the New York Times, Hillary Clinton, the ACLU, etc.
Each chapter is really a short vignette of one or two pages.
The book is pretty awful and very juvenile. Not funny, at all.
Don't bother taking this one off the shelf.

Enlightening the World: The Creation of the Statue of Liberty
by Yasmin Sabina Khan

Although two customers on Amazon gave this book five stars and thought it was so captivating and lively, I beg to differ.
It started out being very interesting. France was grieving over Abraham Lincoln's assassination, so a man by the name of Laboulaye, a legal scholar, wanted to celebrate the friendship between France and America. He enlisted sculptors, architects, and engineers to build a huge monument.
Alas, after 70 pages, I stopped reading the book. It became pedantic, dry and just not worth continuing.
The author is an independent scholar. Enough said.

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Industry
by Peter Hessler

I think I really should just give up on attempting to read any more books written by Peter Hessler. His first book, River Town was his best and he should have stopped, there. Oracle Bones was his second and I hated it. (My commentary is on this blog.)
Now, Hessler has a new book, which is basically about driving 7,000 miles across China. The most interesting sections are the people that he meets in the rural areas, the questions that are asked on the written driver's exam and how the Chinese, themselves, drive.
Hessler has been a reporter for years and it shows. He should just stick to that venue and forget about writing books.