As we did in 2021, we're attempting to again increase book coverage in the community. After a review posts, we try to do a discussion with the reviewer. This go round, we're talking to Trina about her "Cookbooks and Air Fryer Cauliflower in the Kitchen" book reviews and Isaiah's about his book review "Do not read ENDLESS HIGHWAY at AMAZON." Before we start, though, let's point out that you have each done 3 book reviews so far this year. Okay, Trina, you reviewed two cookbooks, why did you pick the ones you selected.
Trina: Sure. I covered Brittany Davis' THE GREATEST SEASONINGS RECIPES and Chae Mia's SPICES: DISCOVER THE FASCINATING HISTORY OF SPICES AND THE USAGE OF SPICES IN CUISINE. In my August 26th "Sweet and Spicy Chicken in the Kitchen," I wrote about spices because Carl had e-mailed about them. And I thought about how historically important spices have been -- certainly in terms of setting out to other land for riches and plunder and for wars. And I thought about that and how little I know about it. So I went for two cookbooks about spices. The first book is forgettable and not worth reading. The recipe selection is very poor, there's no historical context. The second book was published in another language, I believe. Which results in issues of translation -- nothing like what Isaiah had to deal with -- but it had real historical context and was a good easy source of background on spices. I do recommend Chae Mia's book. I do not recommend Brittany Davis' book.
Isaiah, you wrote about why you picked your book -- wrote about it in the review -- but would you talk about that for a moment?
Isaiah: Sure. Saturdays, growing up, were days I spent with my grandfather. And we'd eat breakfast, go outside for a walk, come back in and hit the papers -- I'd do the comics, then we'd watch westerns on TV. One of those was KUNG FU. So when I saw David Carradine's ETERNAL HIGHWAY, he was the star of KUNG FU, I thought it would be a good book to read. It was not.
Trina noted the translation issue with her book and how you had a different issue with translation.
Isaiah: Right, I did. This book is filled with typos. You get the letter "d" in a word when it should be an "l." You can't get through a page without that happening and it's usually several on each page. You have to stop and try to figure out what word is being mispelled. Sometimes, it's obvious, sometimes it's not. Now this isn't David and I'm sure the print copies are not like this -- if they were there would have been a big scandal with people returning the book when it was first published as a result of all the errors. But the digital copy that AMAZON's providing is awful and they need to pull it. Rebecca's noted bad typos and missing pages in one AMAZON UNLIMITED version of a Joan Collins book. But she said that was nothing compared to what I was coming across in ETERNAL HIGHWAY.
Trina, do you think they should pull Chae Mia's book?
Trina: No. I'd love it if they'd fix the errors but even without them being fixed, it's not the problem that Isaiah had -- or even what Rebecca had with the Joan Collins book. You can figure out the word. It's not misspelled, it's just misused. Chicken breasts, for example, are referred to in the book as chicken bosoms. It's that sort of thing. If AMAZON could clean up the errors, that'd be great. But you can follow along.
Isaiah: And you really can't at times in ETERNAL HIGHWAYS. I can't remember the family right now, but it was a -- yeah, I can. It was the Keach family -- Stacy Keach, James Keach and their father Stacy Sr. I was reading along and wondering who this Stacy guy was because I did not recognize the last name. Then they mentioned James and I thought, "Keach!" That's the word they misspelled. And there may be people who don't know James and may try to read it and have no idea that David's writing about Stacy and James Keach. You can easily miss out on who is being written about and what's happening in the book because of the constant typos. It's an embarrassment and I hope people reading it grasp that it's a bad digital version and that it's not anything David Carradine would have agreed to have published.
You both are planning to do more book reviews before the end of the year?
Isaiah: Yes, I am. I know Ann always feels guilty and thinks she's reviewed more than she has and is hogging the book topic. I don't feel that way. And I don't think Ann should either. I love her book reviews. The way it goes is one of us usually says by Tuesday of a week, "I'm going to review ____." And then the rest of us know that, say, Trina's working on a review so we don't have to worry about it. Because we're trying to do one book review a week in the community.
Trina: Right. So if no one's claimed the week by Tuesday, we're then scrambling with group texts and e-mails asking if anyone's got a book they might be able to go with since no one's called the week. But there's also no rule that says only one person can review a book a week. In terms of me, I want to go deeper into the spices so that's probably going to be the topic for the next book I review.
And Isaiah?
Isaiah: I'll probably try to review a book about comics or cartoons -- something to do with drawing.
Okay, thank you both.
Previous book discussions this year.
"Books (Marcia, Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Ann, Mike, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Stan, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Mike, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Ann, Elaine, Kat, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Isaiah, Stan, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Trina, Kat, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Marcia, Ann and C.I.)," "Books (Ruth, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Isaiah, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Mike, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Marcia, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Trina, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Isaiah, Kat, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Stan, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Marcia, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Ann, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Trina, Ava and C.I.)," "Books (Marcia, Ava and C.I.)" and "Books (Ava and C.I.)."
