Mini Reviews: Memoirs to Skip

Apron Anxiety: My Messy Affairs In and Out of the Kitchen by Alyssa Shelasky

I love food memoirs, and so I thought I’d love this one. I admit to having some hesitation when I went to get it from the library for two reasons: the subtitle hinting that the book might have more explicit content than I would want to read, and the stupid cover image. Since I was just borrowing it, I figured I’d have little to lose, and could always stop reading it if I didn’t care for it.

Except I didn’t stop reading it. It was a train wreck, and for whatever reason I couldn’t look away. I found her appallingly narcissistic and shallow.

I’d give it a real review, but I don’t want to give any more of my energy towards this terrible book. So instead I’ll link to this awesome review of it that does a great job of detailing many of the issues I had with this awful book.

MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend by Rachel Bertsche

Felt super contrived. I’ve liked several other “do this thing for a year” sort of books, even if they are (or were) trendy and referred to as “stunt journalism.” Maybe I should say that I like them when they don’t simply feel like they’re done as a stunt, like this one did. Bertsche came across as really shallow, especially when she was complaining about how/why she wasn’t connecting with friends in Chicago. I think the combination of her “New York is the best place ever and woe is me stuck in the Midwest”, and her extroverted “every girl needs tons of friends to spend every spare moment with and something is wrong with you if you don’t have dozens of super close friends” attitude did not resonate with me. At all.

So wanted to like this one though, and was so disappointed that I didn’t.

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