The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes

This is a fun delve into the world of arcane foods. Tom Parker Bowles dives into foods from all around the world as he travels about eating ridiculous things (no spoilers) and suffering through the consequences. His writing is fun and funny - you can hear his British lilt in the prose which brings about a bit of Monty Python absurdity to it.

Food and interest in all aspects of it, from production to consumption, has become quite a topic in the media over the last ten years. The rise of Food Network and celebrity chefs is a sign of this. This book is also a result. Bowles is an avid eater and one can tell he does enjoy food. His devotion to proper food raising practices, diet, and local products is also admirable. As a writer, he comes up short. His quest amounts to little more than traveling the world and eating other cultures’ dishes. He is repetitious in writing and behavior which might not be an issue if that behavior wasn't entitled, spoiled, and ignorant. While he claims to be educating himself that other cultures eat things that might seem strange or off-putting, he show more is trying to frame things in a stereotype that he wishes to exist. Ever city and country save predetermined favorites such as Spain and Italy come up short as they don't live up to Bowles' notions. Only Laos fulfills his stereotype. What he finds horrendous and distracting in one country, he loves in another. Whatever charm the British are noted for is lacking in Bowles' writing and his stabs at humor cannot support the clumsy, repetitious nature of a book that sells due to interest in food culture. show less

Now this was a glorious, unabashed, food loving book. Not just about eating the weirdest item, but more about exploring local food all over the world, and trying to approach it with an open mind and taste buds. I gave up marking pages to read out loud to Andrew, and just read one, and told him he must read this book! Lots and lots and lots of fun!

This is the book I only read to chapter 2, then gave up on. If you think the author's last name is familiar, it is because 1) he is a famous British food writer, and 2) he is the son of Camilla Parker Bowles, now married to Prince Charles of the British royal family. No, Charles is not in the book, but his mom is, mentioned as someone that can cook, hates spicy food, and like good ingredients. The author writes a lot, far too much. It is like he thinks every little word and thought is of interest, but there really isn't any depth to anything. The first chapter is about baby eels, but he ends the chapter without eating one molecule from the eel, and the second chapter is about chilis in New Mexico, but you don't really learn anything show more about chili or find out what he thinks about them. It is just one long diatribe about being to a Fiery Food Festival eating too hot sauces, seeing people puke and say the f-word (lots of that in the book), and then just want to go home. Boring. Superficial. I gave up. If I writer can't even excite me about hot chilies and Santa Fe, the book is lost. I really tried to like it, but I couldn't.

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This is an amusing book, if one is into "lives of the rich and famous (or members of families that wish they were rich and famous)." The book is basically a gastronomic travelogue, so don't expect there to be some persistent plot, climax, or whatever. All it really consists of are a series of essentially independent essays about TPB's adventures in eating. Some of the incidents are quite outrageously funny (the hottest peppers is my favorite), but mostly it's just interesting reading.

I read the first chapter of Tom Parker Bowles The Year of Eating Dangerously, thenI gave it up. I hardly ever give up books but I do wonder if TPB hadn't been the son of Camilla Parker Bowles who is now married to the future King of England he would he even have got it published. The first chapter was all about fishing for elvers on the Severn Bore - a river with a huge tidal wave - and in 40 pages never came to a climax but introduced large numbers of people by name he met in the pub, on the river, around a campfire, in some other place or perhaps another one or maybe on a motorbike... and it just ended. No climax at all. Just ok, there you are. Next chapter. Yawn.

Nice turn of language, decent self-contained chapters.