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mg_in_md_'s review against another edition
3.0
This book checked the box for the "Read a food memoir" category in the 2016 Book Riot Read Harder challenge. However, I had it on my "to read" list prior to embarking on the challenge. While I've enjoyed watching Cat Cora on various cooking shows, I didn't know much about her or her upbringing aside from the fact that she was a southern chef with Greek roots and thought it'd be interesting to learn more about the first-ever female Iron Chef. The memoir is a raw, unflinching look at Cora's life and how it shaped her rise as a professional chef. The memoir moves along briskly, offering an honest and open accounting of her life. In some ways, the memoir seemed to focus more on the personal life over the professional one but it is clear how decisions impacted both. I appreciated Cora's candidness and approach to telling her story--she highlighted the positive and negative with the same matter-of-fact-ness and demonstrated her ability to analyze each event, learn, and move forward.
brighteyes1178's review against another edition
3.0
I'm glad I stuck with this book. I originally bought it to preview for my AP Language class but quickly discovered that it was ghostwritten, and that didn't work for my assignment. Anyway, there's a slow part near the beginning that almost made me put it down but I kept going because I want to send it to my sister, and it did indeed get better. What I liked most about this book was Cat Cora's emphasis that success and fame is not linear, that there are ups and downs, that reality TV is so fake and that there are real emotions behind the people we're avidly watching and that what we see is not those things.
readingwithhippos's review
4.0
I've long been intrigued by Cat Cora. She always seemed sassy and fun whenever I saw her on Iron Chef America, super petite but packing tons of energy. When I saw she had written a memoir, I knew hers was a life I wanted to know more about.
And what a life she has led so far. I got winded just reading about it—all the cross-country flights for TV appearances, countless restaurant openings, stints in culinary school and internships abroad. Cora has worked unbelievably hard to become one of the best chefs in the country (or would she say the world?), and it's paid off handsomely for her, even though the spark that drives her was kindled at least partly from hardship.
Cora hasn't led a perfect life; in fact, I was surprised at how colorful her account is, and how honest she seems to be about her rowdy past. She may have a wife and four children now, but in her twenties and thirties she was clearly of the “work hard, play harder” mindset. She weaves in some great behind-the-scenes stories of when tempers—hers included—flared in the kitchen along with the gas. There's a good balance in the narrative between her personal and professional lives, and as she makes clear, when you're in the kitchen six days a week, the two have a way of blending together.
This memoir would be a great gift for the foodies in your life, or really, anyone who likes finding out what makes other people tick.
With regards to Scribner and NetGalley for the advance copy. On sale September 15.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
And what a life she has led so far. I got winded just reading about it—all the cross-country flights for TV appearances, countless restaurant openings, stints in culinary school and internships abroad. Cora has worked unbelievably hard to become one of the best chefs in the country (or would she say the world?), and it's paid off handsomely for her, even though the spark that drives her was kindled at least partly from hardship.
Cora hasn't led a perfect life; in fact, I was surprised at how colorful her account is, and how honest she seems to be about her rowdy past. She may have a wife and four children now, but in her twenties and thirties she was clearly of the “work hard, play harder” mindset. She weaves in some great behind-the-scenes stories of when tempers—hers included—flared in the kitchen along with the gas. There's a good balance in the narrative between her personal and professional lives, and as she makes clear, when you're in the kitchen six days a week, the two have a way of blending together.
This memoir would be a great gift for the foodies in your life, or really, anyone who likes finding out what makes other people tick.
With regards to Scribner and NetGalley for the advance copy. On sale September 15.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
attytheresa's review
5.0
Cat Cora's voice is clear as a bell, and her story completely engaging. Food drifts in and around the events of her life, from her adoption into a Greek American to her family life with her sons and wife, always there but not distracting from the events that shaped her path.
Cora tells the difficult stories of abuse in childhood at the hands of a son of a family friend, to her struggle with her sexuality in the deep south, to her struggle against alcoholism in such an uncompromising manner as to be blunt to the point of starkness, ultimately reading as acceptance: Here Cora is, warts, bad ass chef, and all! And she slips us some great glimpses behind the scenes at Iron Chef America. Do they really have no advance knowledge of the secret ingredient? Read and find out!
A Christmas gift from a friend who is also partaking of the 2016 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge, it fits my read in a day category.
Cora tells the difficult stories of abuse in childhood at the hands of a son of a family friend, to her struggle with her sexuality in the deep south, to her struggle against alcoholism in such an uncompromising manner as to be blunt to the point of starkness, ultimately reading as acceptance: Here Cora is, warts, bad ass chef, and all! And she slips us some great glimpses behind the scenes at Iron Chef America. Do they really have no advance knowledge of the secret ingredient? Read and find out!
A Christmas gift from a friend who is also partaking of the 2016 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge, it fits my read in a day category.
cook_memorial_public_library's review
4.0
A 2016 staff favorite recommended by Cyndi.
Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Scooking%20as%20fast%20as%20i%20can%20cora__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=gold
Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Scooking%20as%20fast%20as%20i%20can%20cora__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=gold
liralen's review
3.0
So...I'm not a foodie in any way, shape, or form. I'd never heard of Cat Cora prior to reading this book and had to look up Iron Chef to figure out exactly what it meant that she'd been an Iron Chef. Still, I like food memoirs and queer memoirs and so on, so on paper (pun totally intended) this works well for me.
There's a reason, though, that I have a shelf called 'fame first, book second': celebrity memoirs (and occasionally [b:fiction|9535351|Modelland (Modelland, #1)|Tyra Banks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311403288s/9535351.jpg|13168092]) are a whole different ballgame. I've read some legitimately good ones and some legitimately enjoyable ones (not always the same thing), but much of the time they seem more an attempt at further branding than anything. Case in point: the writing here is fine, perfectly competent and all (aided, no doubt, by the ghostwriter), but there's no real story; in places it feels like an attempt to stuff every life event into the book, and in other places it reads like a résumé. Would have been a lot more interesting to me if she'd focused really closely on one or two experiences. Some interesting points about knowing that she was a lesbian in the southern US in the early 1980s, though: I didn't even fantasize about being truly, deeply in love with a girlfriend because I knew I could never have it. It would be like a straight chick hoping to marry a rock star or the Prince of Wales (28). Lots of places, still, where that hasn't really changed.
The book ends on something of a downer—less because that's the intent, I think, and more simply the story arc beyond my life so far is pretty thin. The timing is perhaps unfortunate, though—.
There's a reason, though, that I have a shelf called 'fame first, book second': celebrity memoirs (and occasionally [b:fiction|9535351|Modelland (Modelland, #1)|Tyra Banks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311403288s/9535351.jpg|13168092]) are a whole different ballgame. I've read some legitimately good ones and some legitimately enjoyable ones (not always the same thing), but much of the time they seem more an attempt at further branding than anything. Case in point: the writing here is fine, perfectly competent and all (aided, no doubt, by the ghostwriter), but there's no real story; in places it feels like an attempt to stuff every life event into the book, and in other places it reads like a résumé. Would have been a lot more interesting to me if she'd focused really closely on one or two experiences. Some interesting points about knowing that she was a lesbian in the southern US in the early 1980s, though: I didn't even fantasize about being truly, deeply in love with a girlfriend because I knew I could never have it. It would be like a straight chick hoping to marry a rock star or the Prince of Wales (28). Lots of places, still, where that hasn't really changed.
The book ends on something of a downer—less because that's the intent, I think, and more simply the story arc beyond my life so far is pretty thin. The timing is perhaps unfortunate, though—