Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Franz Man In Culinary Success, 3 Nov 2006
I enjoyed Kapranos' weekly food column in The Guardian so much that this release appeared to take an age to arrive, but when it finally did it took me all of five minutes to read. I could not put it down! It's not a boring clinical dissection of the weird and wonderful food that Alex ate whilst on the road with Franz Ferdinand, it's a vivid painting of the surroundings in which he eats and the people whom he eats with. It includes pieces of history about the place or the dish in question that is enlightening and actually interesting, and whimsical sketches drawn by a member of the band illustrate every story. The reaction of his fellow band mates to some foods had me giggling, not to mention the singer trying, with not much luck, to speak a foreign language with a Scottish accent! These snap shots never fail to be entertaining!
Humorous, informative, morbid, surprising, sexual: Sound Bites is an exciting mix of all the above. I recommend this firstly to any Franz Ferdinand fan and secondly to anyone who is interested in food but can't stand pompous food critiques. Buy it now!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deliciously funny and funnily delicious, 4 Nov 2006
If you enjoyed Alex Kapranos' columns in The Guardian over the last year, you'll enjoy this book even more. There's more to it than those columns -- besides extra pieces of writing there are funny and clever illustrations. This is a wonderfully oblique and odd account of life on the road in a rock band, and Alex Kapranos' use of language is always unexpected and unusual, sometimes even unsettling.
A clever, charming and sexy book. And it will make you hungry...
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Book with an Identity Crisis??, 22 Jan 2007
I'm sure I am about to incur the wrath of all hardcore Franz Ferdinand fans, but I had some real issues with this book. Most of the book has already appeared in The Guardian as a column, so it is understandable that it is written in the form of 'snapshots' rather than one piece of cohesive writing, but still it is really, really patchy.
I loved the snapshots about pease pudding and the Munich Christmas Market and I felt the writing really came alive when he wrote about Japan. However, for every lovely snippet there are two that are pretty dire. The writing is sparse and staccato and the short sentences really made me want to scream after a while. Just to give you an example, this is a little extract from when the band's drummer tries oysters for the first time:
'The swallow becomes a gag. A grey gob shoots out. It's caught on the shell. He stares at it. With a glare of defiance, he tips it into his mouth again. It's straight back out.'
This kind of writing would be bearable if it didn't happen every other paragraph.
I also thought it was a little churlish to make a big deal about going to Bourdain's Les Halles, only to say at the end of the piece; 'The burger tasted great too, by the way'
I did enjoy parts of this book, but can't help feeling that it had a bit of an identity crisis. Was it a great piece of food writing? Not really, it lacks the passion. Was it about life on the road with a band? Not really, they weren't often mentioned. Was it about his observations of people and cultural relationship with food? Sometimes.
Strange, and definitely overpriced.
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