Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Bourdain uses his trademark snark to pull back the curtain separating dining rooms from kitchens. He thrusts us headlong into the often tense, eccentric, and extreme New York restaurant subculture. Ever wonder what the servers and cooks say about patrons? Diners are not the only ones judging.
Where do restaurateurs and their crews go after they clear the last table and the night’s adrenaline means sleep will not come for hours? What does the staff do when the wise guys come for their protection money and the general manager is out on a multi-day bender? How do the members of this subculture cope with the pressures, and what happens when they can’t? You won’t find your grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe in this sophisticated tell-all.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Tim O’Brien weaves a collection of character-driven vignettes related to the Vietnam War through sentimental items, war-born camaraderie, and trauma. These “things” serve as powerful totems in the lives of those O’Brien describes, and the moment you realize how his stories connect has the effect of tossing an ice cube down your shirt. The Things They Carried is a brilliant example of a “collection of short stories in novel form.” O’Brien writes, “Vietnam was full of strange stories, some improbable, some well beyond that, but the stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane.” You will turn the last page of this book and want more.
david cooper writing 
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