6. Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)

Anthony Bourdain is a bastard. Apparently, though, he wants to be a bastard, as he overtly gloated over his hardass-ness throughout this entire book. And seriously, is he holding a sword on the cover?

Ok, yeah, we get it, the New York restaurant world is gritty, drug-filled and moral free. Its kind of hard not to get that impression when Bourdain beats you over the head with it in every single chapter.

It might sound like I hated this book, but not really. There were a lot of behind the scenes restaurant secrets revealed, and some things I'd rather know that not (i.e. what to order on what days.) Overall I enjoyed this book - pretty interesting but not mind-shattering.

Rating: 4 out of 5

5. Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

Even though I was an English major, I somehow escaped reading a lot of the "classics." So, I've made it a goal to go back and read all of the things that I missed in school, with the assumption that they must be classics for a reason.

I really loved Slaughterhouse Five. (The hyphenating seems strangely varied and sporadic.) Vonnegut's writing style is very declarative, but for some reason, with him it just works. I've heard that some people are bothered by the book's science-fiction aspects, but in my mind I just took them as symbolism (maybe I'm still too much of an English major.)

Rating: 5 out of 5