2023 #12: Kitchen Confidential (Bourdain)

 

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

cw: suicide

I wasn't prepared for the emotional journey I would take in listening to Anthony Bourdain read this book, originally published in 2000. Published at a time that didn't know Covid. Published at a time when sensibilities were altogether different. Published at a time, of course, when Anthony Bourdain was alive.

Of course what was raw and real and shocking in 2000 is still so today--perhaps more so. But it takes on new meaning to hear Bourdain's bravado in joking about suicide, his unabashed love for the rough and tumble culinary world, and his blasé attitude toward airborne illnesses, the like of which he never lived to see.

While certainly one could criticize Bourdain's own seeming acceptance of the sexism and toxicity that he says is innate to the "culinary underbelly", the fact remains there is a reality to this narrative. Listening to Bourdain read it we get less of a sense of the shock jock, and more of a "listen, here's how I lived it and how I know it and how I want to tell it". If we say we honor storytelling, I think we need to make room for a voice like this.

The guy is acerbic, occasionally charming, and at times, hilarious. He will make you rethink the days you order fish at a restaurant. He made a lot of enemies, no doubt. But one has to think there were many folks in the industry that felt very, very seen -- for better or for worse. One thing stays the same throughout, however--running underneath the heroin use, the outlandish sexcapades, the vocabulary that makes every sensible deceased grandma turn in their graves on endless repeat--there is a deep and abiding passion for food, and the "life." Bourdain was "all-in" and to what ultimate cost we won't ever really know as those stories died with him in 2018. It is worthwhile to listen to him tell you the story in his voice. Take a deep breath, lay your judgments aside--at least for the moment--and listen to the tale of a life...lived. 2018 Anthony Bourdain was probably not 2000 Anthony Bourdain, but that's the case for most of us. Kitchen Confidential is an amazing snapshot of a life that is tragically gone...one that went to "parts unknown" with "no reservations" without apology.

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CROSS-POSTED at Lady of Shallots

2023 #11: Small Teaching Online (Darby/Lang)

 

Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes by Flower Darby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a useful book, packed full of good tips, but could have been a bit more concise in places. I found myself wishing for a bit more empirical evidence that these things work, but I understand not all of them are tried and true (yet). For skeptics, some of it may seem idealized, but one can push past the sunny language and see the point Darby makes. For example: "When they see the relevance of coursework, the thread that ties everything together, students are more wiling to complete activities and assessments in a way that promotes meaningful learning. (23)" Well, we know that's not always the case, but Darby pushes us to honor the highest potential. I very much appreciated the application of "small teaching" approaches and the advocacy that online teaching can be (and should be) meaningful and interactive. At this point, even those who had to "emergency pivot" to online teaching during the pandemic should have figured out that it requires pedagogical considerations and isn't just a 1:1 transition. From that perspective, I found some of the cheerleading excessive, but not to the detriment of the book's value as a whole. Darby offers specific ways to implement UDL (Universal Design for Learning) practices (i.e. "Provide multiple topics and questions in online discussion prompts" and "Let students sign up for groups based on a topic they want to delve into"). There's a lot of general wisdom as well, that isn't just applicable to online teaching: "Giving the students something to do while watching a mini-lecture video, for example, encourages active listening and attentive processing of new information." (187). That seems obvious, perhaps, but I think there are times in my own teaching when I've just dialed in the lecture or the listening assignment, without really connecting it to its own specific learning outcomes. To be sure, it can be tough to give that extra 10% sometimes, but the idea of "small teaching" is based upon making these small changes, one at a time, for greater cumulative effect down the road. Darby makes sure to reiterate this in the final pages when discussing how we approach challenges. And perhaps the most important question Darby asks is: "How will you keep yourself motivated? How do you plan to assess the impact of your efforts? (225)". THIS is the missing piece. Teachers can read books and attend conferences, filling their hearts and minds with myriad exciting ideas...but what happens when those experiments fail? Do we just assign "x idea" to the scrap heap, or do we sit down and assess what went wrong and what are the adjustments that need to be made? That's where the space/time is really needed, and perhaps institutions of higher ed would be wise to consider pedagogy-specific guided sabbaticals, increased PRODUCTIVE and CONSTRUCTIVE faculty reviews, and mandatory (and compensated) faculty peer groups. Darby's offerings are helpful for the already-motivated teacher, but should also be embraced by administrators.

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2023 #10: Selections from Music: Function and Value (eds. Malecka ad Pawlowska)

 

Music: Function and Value : Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Musical Signification, Volume 1 by Teresa Malecka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read:

VOL. I
Eero Tarasti, "The Concept of Genre: In General and in Music"
Rafaelle Longo, "The Semiotic Player. Notating Time in Graphic Scores."
Grisell Macdonel, "The Musical Work and the Existence of the Performer: Existential Semiotic Analysis of the Sonic Aspect."
VOL. II
Ivana Miladinović Prica, "Rethinking the Concept of Time in the Postwar American Experimental Music--Feldman's Art of Immediacy
Marta Szocka, "Intertextual Links of Graphic Notation in the Works of George Crumb"

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2023 #9: Hemlock at Vespers (Tremayne) - Sister Fidelma #9

 

Hemlock at Vespers by Peter Tremayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some of these short stories are shorter than others, but the volume as a whole contains something for everybody: unrequited love, medieval Church politics, power trippers, vengeance...etc. Tremayne weaves in medieval superstition ("Our Lady of Death"), religious allegory ("At the Tent of Holofernes"), and politics between the Irish Catholic church and Rome (in the seventh century). Favorites include "Hemlock at Vespers", "The High King's Sword", "The Poisoned Chalice" and the relatively concise "Invitation to a Poisoning." In this collection Tremayne displays the variety of scenarios he manages to invent in Fidelma's world, although Fidelma's character takes a back seat in most of the stories. Most interesting is the personal aspect of "At the Tent of Holofernes", where we get a bit of a look at Fidelma's life in the past. Fans of Brother Eadulf will be disappointed by his absence, but Tremayne explains the chronology in the Foreword, which is helpful for those who follow the series order.

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2023 #8: Smoke In the Wind (Tremayne) - Sister Fidelma #11

 

Smoke in the Wind by Peter Tremayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was truly on the fence about this one. I'm keeping it for the Historical Note that prefaces the book and serves as a Welsh and Irish pronunciation guide--absolutely terrific. I loved the multicultural aspect of the story: Saxon, Welsh, Irish and as usual, the historical context is robust and well-explained. What failed me here was the mystery itself. Perhaps there were too many strands. The typical Fidelma exposé was a bit too contrived--she seemed to have a lot of historical knowledge about specific people's lives and I'm not sure where it all came from. There are several murderers and I thought the more nuanced ideas of "culpability" added a lot. But the story did not really hold my interest because I had a hard time keeping track of who or what I was supposed to care about. That said, the last chapter or so seemed to pick up speed and focus, and I enjoyed Fidelma's dramatic "reveal" more than I usually do. Tremayne teases a bit more out of the relationship between Fidelma and Eadulf here too, but fully ignores it at times unless it is convenient. Eadulf struggles with his own identity as a Saxon in this story, and that provides a really nice bit of character definition, but Fidelma's struggles were not wholly convincing, even when explained at the end in the Epilogue.

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2023 #7: Lincoln in the Bardo (Saunders)

 

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was such an...experience...as an audiobook, I'm having a tough time imagining it in print. In truth, it is ALMOST five stars for me, fostering imagination and creativity in the genre of "historical fiction" in a way few other books have done. But there were times that the 100+ person cast of voices felt like sensory overload, and there were perhaps a few too many gratuitous sexual references and nineteenth-century f-bombs. In terms of that latter item, I think the audiobook did not help -- the discontinuity in emotional energy across the roles was jarring and sometimes annoying. And yet, there were times when sex and cursing added to the...well, not quite dystopia...the bardo. "Bardo" was something I knew little about--evidently a Tibetan Buddhist concept of a state between death and rebirth. I think that actually helped my experience and understanding of the narrative as I had NO expectations. The initial delve into the pastiche of non-fiction quotations was a bit off-putting, but I stuck with it, remembering a similar sense when reading my first David Foster Wallace essay in Consider the Lobster. When the narrative returns to this framework it is much more effective, holding up a mirror to historical reception, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

This is a story about a father and a son. This is a story about a president and our narratives. And maybe we can consider historical narrative as its own bardo--shaping and moulding a new creature for whatever legacy of rebirth we deem to give it.



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