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levisburger 's review for:
World Travel: An Irreverent Guide
by Laurie Woolever, Anthony Bourdain
God, what an absolute slog to get through. Where to start..
First of all, marketing this as a Bourdain book is false advertising at best and utterly manipulative of a close colleague/friend in the immediate aftermath of their death at worst. Sorry for the mouthful, but it’s true.
Essentially what this is, is an EXTREMELY formulaic look at dozens and dozens (50-70) cities that Tony travelled to
‘written’ by his assistant after his death.
Tony’s own writing (just rehashes of voiceover and other comments from his TV show) are scattered far too sparingly throughout.
To call the rest of it formulaic doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Every single one of the above-mentioned 50-70 cities has a section that reads pretty much word-for-word as follows:
Getting to X city is easiest through Y airport. To get from Y airport to X city, you can take the train (Z dollars) or a cab (typically A-B dollars).
It’s literally that formula every single time, plus the same style of repetitive writing for each section of relevant public transport, potential tourist sites, food, etc.
Not only is this information mind-numbing, I imagine at least 90% of it would already be inaccurate even though it was published only a handful a years ago.
I imagine the only person who decides to put such inane information into a book is one who just has to fill the pages to complete their cash-grab.
First of all, marketing this as a Bourdain book is false advertising at best and utterly manipulative of a close colleague/friend in the immediate aftermath of their death at worst. Sorry for the mouthful, but it’s true.
Essentially what this is, is an EXTREMELY formulaic look at dozens and dozens (50-70) cities that Tony travelled to
‘written’ by his assistant after his death.
Tony’s own writing (just rehashes of voiceover and other comments from his TV show) are scattered far too sparingly throughout.
To call the rest of it formulaic doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Every single one of the above-mentioned 50-70 cities has a section that reads pretty much word-for-word as follows:
Getting to X city is easiest through Y airport. To get from Y airport to X city, you can take the train (Z dollars) or a cab (typically A-B dollars).
It’s literally that formula every single time, plus the same style of repetitive writing for each section of relevant public transport, potential tourist sites, food, etc.
Not only is this information mind-numbing, I imagine at least 90% of it would already be inaccurate even though it was published only a handful a years ago.
I imagine the only person who decides to put such inane information into a book is one who just has to fill the pages to complete their cash-grab.