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Tom Straw Channels Anthony Bourdain In His Delightful New Book
Every now and then, you hear a concept for a book and it instantly hooks you. This is one of those books. What if an Anthony Bourdain-type celebrity chef who hosts a TV travel show is also a CIA spy? Hooked? Well, I was. You see, I really enjoyed Bourdain’s writings, his TV shows, and his way of seeing the world. His shows were appointment television. His books—always get the audio because he reads them—were bought on day one. So it should come as no surprise that when Tom Straw’s new book was announced, I got it on day one. Prepare the Narrator Sebastian Pike is the Bourdain stand-in in…
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How Long Before You Give Up on a Book?
I’ll be brutally honest: if I’m not enjoying a book, I pull the rip cord and parachute to the next book. This includes the books in my SF book club. The other guys used to push forward, slogging through the mire of a bad book. Not me. Life’s too short to read bad books. Before I started Project Hail Mary, the latest novel by Andy Weir, one of my friends made an observation: “I think Andy knows how to write one book.” Uh-oh, I thought. Having not even started Project Hail Mary, my hand was already primed to pull the rip cord. Then again, Weir’s first book was pretty good.…