Project Smoke: Seven Steps to Smoked Food Nirvana, Plus 100 Irresistible Recipes from Classic (Slam-Dunk Brisket) to Adventurous by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everything you ever wanted to smoke, plus a bunch of tips. Very clear guidelines on the tools you need and what food to buy. A great intro paragraph or two on why Raichlen likes this food and why his recipe works. Also, sometimes some alternate ways to cook - like grill vs smoker or hot vs cold-smoking. Note, this one is not for tyros. Newbies would be better served by Raichlen’s BBQ Bible or Meathead’s book: Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A good read for October, I guess. I didn’t really know what this book was about at all. I’d gotten it during a free ebook Friday for B&N years and years ago. The title made it sound like it was a detective noir or something. Nope. It’s about a young adult who hung out with a bunch of bad characters and was betrayed and sent to hell. In other words, it’s a revenge story.

Cook It in Cast Iron: Kitchen-Tested Recipes for the One Pan That Does It All by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve only made a couple recipes from the book, but I love a lot about it. I like the technical section that opens the book. I really like all the descriptions that preface each recipe. It gives you an idea of what they tried and how it screwed them up - key since everyone I know who’s a really good cook improvises. So why end up making a mistake they already made? It also gives context to the recipes and where they come from. I added a good chunk of the recipes to my to-cook personal wiki. I’ll adjust the stars later if the recipes turn out to be hard to follow - but that usually isn’t the case when it’s something from America’s Test Kitchen. (This is from the Cook’s Country side of the house)

Weber’s Big Book of Burgers: The Ultimate Guide to Grilling Backyard Classics by Jamie Purviance

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What it says in the title and more. It’s burgers, dogs, etc. All the stuff you think of when you think of prototypical non-nerdy American grilling. Lots of good recipes with lots of variation - including lots of variations on veggie burgers that aren’t mushroom-based. There are a few even I (an avowed carnivore) would like to try. If I had to fault the book it would be that, unlike Meathead, America’s Test Kitchen, or Milk Street - there’s no context to the recipes. You just have recipe after recipe. No mention of why the ingredients work or where Jamie Purviance got the recipes from. I’ve grown to really appreciate this context and how it helps me appreciate the recipe and understand how it was put together so that I understand how best to modify it as I go through iterations.

Barbecue Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades–Bastes, Butters & Glazes, Too by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Raichlen has put together a great book on all the things that add flavor to our grilled, BBQ’d, and smoked foods. As is his style, he adds a biography for each of the recipes that explains where it comes from or where he discovered it and what it goes well with. He also includes a few recipes that include both the meat and the accompaniment. I wish he had more pointers to recipes from Project Smoke or the Barbecue Bible to help provide more illustrations of what goes well together. A lot of it was “this goes well with grilled beef”, but I wish I had just a few more examples of which flavors go well together. Especially when talking about bastes and butters that would likely be combined with rubs, seasonings, or other flavorings. Speaking of which, he has lots of sections with definitions and I now know the difference between those.

Raichlen’s Burgers by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What I like about this book is that Raichlen gives a little biography about each burger recipe. I’ve got tons of new recipes to try. I also like that he’s got some recipes for sides and sauces at the end. It’s not as comprehensive as some of his other books, but I got it free in exchange for getting his newsletter, so I wasn’t expecting too much.

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once again Will Wheaton knocks it out of the park as narrator.

Kushner does a great job telling the story of The Johns who created Doom. I was just a kid when those games were coming out and while my dad didn’t mind us playing Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, my mom wasn’t cool with it. So most of this was on my periphery and it was great to read the history of how transformative this game was and what a genius Carmack was with his engine work. I wish the book was an update version that covered the VR work Carmack has done recently - it ties in perfectly with the threat Kushner was pushing about VR and Snow Crash and how Doom was the first step in that direction.

The Mongoliad: Book One by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book grew on me slowly. At first I was intrigued, but wasn’t hooked. But eventually I grew to really love both the Gansukh/Lian chapters and the Korean/Japanese fighters’ chapters. The historical fiction is Neal Stephenson at his best and I did eventually enjoy the chapters with Cnan and the Shield-Brethren.

To some degree the western chapters are a medieval road trip/quest story. The Gansukh chapters are a palace intrigue story. They don’t really overlap other than both have Ogedai Khan as a central character.

Weber’s Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking with Live Fire by Jamie Purviance

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a good book with a lot of useful info if you’re into charcoal grilling and BBQing. It also has a lot of recipes. I’ve tried a few and I found them tasty. Added a bunch to my list of recipes to try. If this were my first BBQ cookbook, I probably would have rated it a 4 or 5. It has beautiful photos of the end result and a dozen recipes by award-winning grillers and pitmasters. But I’ve been spoiled by Meathead’s cookbook. Meathead’s cookbook is incredibly comprehensive and he used to work in the newspaper industry so he’s a wiz at explaining things to the reader. Compared to that book, this one is OK. It’s also a lot less scientific - relying more on hand tests than thermometers.

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be fair to Mr. Brown, I find it hard to fairly rate second books in a trilogy. They have to both be the middle part of what is essentially one large story split into 3 books (or pdfs or epubs) and also as a standalone book have a beginning, climax, and resolution. So this tends to leave them a little unfulfilling. I’ve noticed (and mentioned in a few reviews) that with most modern trilogies the first book is more of a complete book in order to get the reader hooked into the series. The second one seems to be disappointing because it can’t resolve anything or else there wouldn’t need to be a third book. So this book might have a lower rating than I would rate the trilogy as a whole.