“World Travel: An Irreverent Guide” by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
This is a book about world travels through the eyes of Anthony Bourdain, written by his long-time collaborator Laurie Woolever.
Laurie was no stranger for Tony. They met a while back ago in 2002, when she was hired to edit and test the recipes for Tony’s Les Halles Cookbook. She then started to work as his assistant in 2009 where she also became involved with numerous editing and writing projects, alongside the ground-level tasks of an assistant, and they also collaborated in writing another cookbook in 2015 called Appetites.
This book was supposed to be their third collaboration. However, Tony’s busy travelling schedules meant that the project got postponed several times, that is, until Tony’s shocking death.
Now, I love Tony. I’ve watched almost all of his travel shows, from No Reservations to Parts Unknown, I watch them when I’m happy and when I’m sad, I watch them when I’m ill, sometimes I just put them as a background as I do other stuffs around the house, I even showed his shows to my kids since they were toddlers. We love his no-bullshit and brutally honest approach on life and travel. And I was pretty heartbroken when hearing about his death.
This travel book, in many ways, has a nostalgic feel about Tony. It is written by Laurie with the intention to re-live all the things that Tony himself had said about these places, in a style that Laurie would know best as one of the closest person ever lived with Tony.
As Laurie remarks, “I’d spent enough time in daily correspondence with Tony to have a good sense of the way he’d choose his words and set his rhythm. He wrote nearly impeccable prose, but on the occasion when it needed a bit of tidying or fleshing out, I was able to do that, I think, without detection.”
All the countries, the sights, the art, the food, the people are all vividly described just like it was in Tony’s shows. And in a way, the book seems to be intended as the complimentary show notes for the shows, where we get more of the details such as the name of the places, the addresses, how to get there, the prices, the short history, etc.
And along the way, Laurie provides so many quotations from Tony that is fitting with the country that is being covered, which makes it feel as if Tony is still alive and well. Such an enjoyable book to read, loving every minute of reading it.
THE CHAOS THEORY 