Elliott Hester is a flight attendant for a major American airline. He flies all kinds of routes, though many of his stories seem to include routes to South America. He lets us know what it's like to be a flight attendant and all the quirky stories that go along with it. The stories range from funny to gross. It's an interesting look in to this life, which you would normally only see for a few hours at a time.
Having just finished a book that looked inside the world of waiters (Waiter Rant), it's hard not to draw comparisons to this book. And unfortunately for this book, I found Waiter Rant better. There were a couple of reasons for this.
First, I found like Hester had no passion for what he was doing. He worked this for a job and then expected us to care about what he did in his job. As a result, you only care about the stories but not much about Hester himself. Some of the responses he gave customers I would consider unprofessional given the industry he's in. Sure, some of the customers are jerks and deserve worse, but in the service industry you still need to be polite to people (up to a certain point, I guess). Hester seemed snippy with most everyone and it just made me glad that I've never been on a flight with him before.
The second is Hester's continuous negative description of people. For example, there was an incident on one of his flights where a flyer has a heart attack so they call for a doctor. There is a doctor, but apparently he's fat. So Hester says the doctor waddles down the aisle like a pregnant lady and then every time this doctor is mentioned again, he's called some form of fat. Why? The doctor wasn't even a major player in the story, nor had he treated anyone poorly.
All in all, I think Hester's a bit of an ass himself, which made it hard for me to like this book.
First Line: "I never wanted to be a flight attendant."
Rating:
(2.5/5)
In another blog-to-book, Waiter Rant examines the operations at the front of the house for a restaurant. Steve finds himself out of work in his thirties and not knowing what to do. His brother gets him a waiter gig at the restaurant he's working in and Steve carried on in this career for many more years than normal. He eventually becomes the head waiter at a restaurant he calls simply 'The Bistro'. It's an upscale Italian restaurant. There are many tales: funny, horrifying, sad, uplifting, I could go on. This book has been billed as the waiter version of Kitchen Confidential, which I haven't read so I can't compare to. But I get the feeling it doesn't quite measure up.
This is the story of two teenagers from completely different backgrounds. The first is Jaleel, an African American from a small town who witnesses his father kill his mother and then himself. The police decide that Jaleel is the murderer and rather than trying to clear his name, he flees. He meets a man on the bus who helps him out, providing him a new identity so we can start a new life in LA. Jaleel is a smart kid with a knack for baseball, which allows him to carry on in school and get accepted to a top tier university.
Nick Stone agrees to one last operation in order to get his papers for the USA and be with the girl he loves. His mission is to travel to France, meeting up with two Egyptians that will help him. They are to track a boat to one of the ports and then follow the men when they leave the boat to collect three payments. These payments are being sent back to families from terrorists that are planning something in the Western world. If they capture the men the money is coming from and blow up the money before it makes it back to the Middle East, they can stop the terrorists and also learn who they are.
This classic novel tells the story of the four March sisters in 1860s New England. Their father is off at war so it's just the four of them and their mother, trying to make the best of everything. Christmas is tough and instead of buying things for each other, the girls buy for their mother and give their lunch to a family that has little to eat. Their neighbours hear about their good deeds and send over treats. This sparks up a relationship between the boy Laurie that lives beside them.