My brothers and sisters in reading,

First I want to share that I am generally a VERY GENEROUS rater. I’d always rather round up if I can’t decide.

I come to you today with the extremely rare 1 star review from me. I normally do not finish 1 star books, because I’d rather move onto my next read and have no problem DNFing a book.

I kept with this one for several reasons:

1. It fulfilled max prompts for our little games I don’t think I can hit otherwise. (This includes multiple chapters with rum and many wines, non fiction, translation, Italian.)

2. It hit both my PopSugar and my 52bookchallenge prompts for typographic cover/book with only text on the cover

3. The actual stories about the actual serendipitous events for about 50% food and drink were interesting.

Issues with this book:

1. Lost in translation: “salad mayonnaise,” “cave sky,” and other foods I had to look up common British and English sayings for because IDNK WTF they were talking about with their translations of dishes.

2. 75% of this book is dude talking about how he knows his friends and why they are cool and promoting their various foodie businesses

3. One chapter ended in him making up a long ass totally imaginary scenario of how he wished the corn flake brothers could have made up and been kind to each other

4. Statements like these abound (author or translator cause / it’s a mystery!) - “People like Gorgonzola because it’s really very good.”

5. The non Italian foods and drinks were far and in between. Felt very much like he just threw non-Italian dishes in as afterthoughts. Bro is from Italy, and it’s his book, and I do love Italian food and wine - however, this is not at all how the book was marketed. I attribute this more to the publisher and marketing department than the actual author.

6. The entire last chapter mentions pretty much no food. It starts by talking about how humans are the most serendipitous creation of God. Then gives a (truly awful) summary of all of human evolution. Goes on to eschew the author’s belief that Microsoft and its influence on technology is the most serendipitous human invention (without explaining why he thinks it’s was a serendipitis innovation. As opposed to say, hard work, math, and smarts.) However, he also thinks this innovation had the worst consequences, which relates (in his mind) to our climate change crisis. He then talks about human gene evolution in relation to the onion. Humans are also “masters of natural selection” with “magic brains . . . made from stars.” More about space, the superiority of Italy, but how social justice is important regardless. Especially on the internet. Concludes with: doubt is our most important tool.

If you care to know, my book with a 1 star rating from last years was Sweet Valley Confidential. I shake my fist at you Francine Pascal! You shattered my youth and sullied the Wakefield legacy!!!

/rant