Your Pasta Sucks

Your Pasta Sucks contains multitudes. It is a very funny memoir from a self-proclaimed Italian, Irish, Mexican homosexual. It also has family recipes that have a lot of ingredients and mostly take a while to cook. Photos are rather hit and miss. Nutritional information is non-existent. Admittedly, I wouldn’t recommendContinue Reading

Cellar Rat

Hannah is a twenty-something server working as a Cellar Rat, stocking bottles in a wine cellar, on her path to becoming a sommelier in NYC’s fine dining restaurants. Now a couple of decades later, she looks back at a career that was both a love affair and an addiction. HannahContinue Reading

Cosmic Bullsht

As you can tell from the title, Cosmic Bullsh*t, this book discusses some pseudoscience topics in demeaning ways. Mythology, religion, astrology, alien visits, time travel, and dystopian end time scenarios are all reviewed from a scientific perspective and found wanting. The humor interspersed within the science feels rather forced, moreContinue Reading

Rot

Rot discusses the physical and political reasons for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s and 50s. What caused so many to have to choose between emigration and starvation? Where were the rich British landlords when their workers were starving? However, it shines a harsh light on our current AmericanContinue Reading

Dimming the Sun

Despite inexplicable resistance to the science of climate change, our more drastic weather and the increasing frequency of large storms are heralding a change for the worse. If humans worldwide are unable, or unwilling, to reduce their carbon footprint, do we all just need to move north (or to MarsContinue Reading

How to Solve True Crime

How to Solve True Crime contains a series of true crime stories. They illustrate how detectives have used Occum’s razor, both successfully and not so successfully, to solve their cases. Occum’s razor is a scientific theory that encourages looking at the simplest solution first. It doesn’t prohibit expanding the investigation’sContinue Reading

ChatGPT Secrets

ChatGPT Secrets is the third book in a trio of books about ChatGPT by the same author. It is a good overview for rank beginners who have barely heard of AI and never used it. For those more experienced AI users, there are a few unusual ideas for using itContinue Reading

Vegan Japan

Vegan Japan is a cookbook that is filled with just that vegan Japanese dishes. While the cooking techniques are relatively easy, the ingredients may be a challenge if you don’t live in a large city. My daughter who lives near Los Angeles had no problem finding the ingredients in herContinue Reading

Atlas Obscura: Wild Life

Nature has created some wild things and Atlas Obscura: Wild Life describes them all! From heavy metal vultures called lammergeiers to the Himalayas’ Noble Rhubarbs, these living beings are fascinating to read about. The lammergeier wears “KISS-worthy eye masks”, eats skeletons and loves to dye themselves blood red. The NobelContinue Reading

The Gangs of Zion

Hmmm, well there wasn’t much in this book about The Gangs of Zion, other than that they exist. Instead this is a rather pompous autobiography about a black cop in a gang unit in Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1990s. In Utah, being black was unusual and being aContinue Reading