MixedBookreporterThe overwhelming question I had when reading On the Plane of Snakes was \'Why does this book exist?\' Enjoyable at times, it appears to possess a motivation most meaningful to its author. Most simply, it’s about an older white man seeking to benefit from the charms of a country by interacting with its inhabitants, thereby deriving greater truths. Paul Theroux seems to take pains at times not to be exploitative, and to acknowledge the impossibility of coming away from significant engagement and understanding of another culture in a brief period. Unfortunately, he falls short ... a book with a fair amount of interesting and vivid descriptions of unusual places accessed and portrayed was made far more bitter by the blithe attitude of its author ... I enjoyed learning about a town where they trade straw hats for money, as well as the dignified and lovely-sounding Zapatista hub, Oventic. Certain portraits are playful and evocative. And I appreciate that despite his advanced age, Theroux has continued to take advantage of his privileged existence as a travel writer. I have no doubt that as one ages, the bits and pieces of the world that resonate change. That change seems likely to be universal, although how it plays out is not ... Still, despite Theroux’s insistence of his status as an hombre de juicio, maybe he would have been better off attempting to hold a little less.
Ruth Reichl
PositiveBookreporter\"In Save Me the Plums, Reichl’s most recent memoir, I assumed I would find... vivid anecdotes, lively portraits of people she’s encountered, and, of course, the continuation of a lifelong romance with food. All of these qualities are found here, which makes for a fun read. However, despite the structure of following the author from her offer to editor in chief at \'Gourmet\' to Condé Nast’s decision to shutter the glossy magazine, the narrative didn’t have much natural swing ... the book really picked up for me in the final third, in which Reichl discusses the more outré and literary direction \'Gourmet\' pursued during its final years. I found this to be a much more compelling angle from which to dissect the intersection between food and lived experience ... Reading about [Reichl\'s] growing desires to engage readers by content more literary than culinary is a significantly more satisfying way to reveal that food is about much more than nutrition—a fact that I’m sure no one picking up Save Me the Plums would doubt.\
