Sound Bites by Alex Kapranos
This is an innovative rock band tour story/culinary adventure. People have written about food on the road and being on the road with a band, but as far as I know, Alex Kapranos is the first to write about eating food on the road while touring with his band. The lead singer/guitarist of Franz Ferdinand writes amusingly about food-as-adventure. Each very short piece is chalk full of vibrant descriptions that are simple and evocative and draw upon his knowledge of food that he gained during the time he spent as a commis chef. The book is amusing to read. He eats marrow bone in New York, deep fried pizza in his home country, Scotland, sushi in San Francisco, and some very oddthings in other countries around the world including deep fried insects and durian.
-->More information at Library Thing.
I was supposed to be Christmas shopping yesterday evening when I strolled into my local bookstore. I thought I might check out Amy Sedaris' new book on entertaining guests. But it was apparently nowhere to be found. Instead of pursuing the book into the hidden areas of the bookstore, I perused the new hardbound fiction. Then I moved on to the general fiction shelf where I was promptly drawn to look for one of the elusive books by Christine Schutt, my current author-obsession. Since discovering her book A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer last Summer, I have asked every literary-minded friend and acquaintance if they have heard of her work, and as of yet, no one has. I like that she remains my literary secret, though a secret she is not considering that her book Florida was nominated for a National Book Award. It was this book that I came across yesterday. And I couldn't resist the temptation to buy it for myself, though I really did have intentions of buying things for others. But really, I want to share Schutt's work with everyone and no one. I want to share it with everyone because I want them all to experience her work like I have. But I am hesitant to share my knowledge of this author's magnificent prose because I know that most people will not have the same riveting experience that I did upon first discovering her work.
I started reading this book almost a year ago. I knew there was a reason why I had put it down, and I remembered that it had something to do with the subject-matter, but remembering that the prose had been well-crafted, I recently pulled it off my shelf again. At first it was almost enthralling, despite having forgotten the beginning which I did not bother to re-read. But soon after falling into its prose, adept at conveying the nature of obsession in all its simple horror, I realized that it was beginning to work as a spell and it was pulling me into its web. I wanted to extricate myself from the story, to cleanse my mind of the events that were beginning to weigh heavy somewhere inside myself.