Reviews with content warning for Pandemic/Epidemic - Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs

Reviews tagging 'Pandemic/Epidemic'

Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus

23 reviews

foldingthepage_kayleigh's review against another edition

adventurous funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

5.0

I picked up this book because it came highly recommended to me by 2 friends, but I knew absolutely nothing about it until I started reading. Part-travelogue and part-history and contemporary realities of hotdogs, this book was as fascinating as it was absolutely hilarious. I sped through this one in 3 days, and the delivery on audio was excellent, although I wish I had a physical copy to go back and reflect on interesting hotdog facts 🌭

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dorothy_shack's review

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dark funny informative medium-paced

5.0

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haileyeh's review against another edition

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funny informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.5

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jonna_doucette's review against another edition

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medium-paced

1.5

Disappointing—It’s giving Tucker Max meets Charlotte Roche, circa mid-2000s. As a fellow devotee of The Dog, I started this book excited to dine vicariously through Loftus’s Triple D-style excursions, celebrating an iconic taste of Americana and its rich history, both culinary and sociocultural, served up with a heaping helping of dog-industry insider information. Instead, I found myself trapped in the backseat (with Loftus’s pets), an unwitting passenger on an interminable road trip in search of a punchline without a destination, forced to endure the author’s violent commitment to ‘the bit,’ and frequent, eye-roll-worthy descriptions of her overactive excretory system.

For its faults, of which there are many (see: Loftus’s a-hole choice to flout lock-down and travel/research this book during the height of the pandemic), this book had the makings of something better that was lost along the roadside of Loftus’s journey. A travelogue? Yeah. A culinary history? Maybe... if you squint. Capitalist critique? Certainly not. Unfortunately, for the small amount of ink Loftus spares for actually interesting, prescient topics, like industrial safety standards for slaughter houses, meatpackers, and the animals we farm for food, or ethnocentrism within competitive eating, she wastes twice as many pages playing at being an insecure girl next door from Bah-ston and hoping we’ll accept her anyways, like so many of the humble, working-class delicacies she’s sampled across our great country.

For anyone interested in actual meat-centered food history/commentary, I suggest the following:
Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat
The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics
Salted and Cured: Savoring the Culture, Heritage, and Flavor of America's Preserved Meats
Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat

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dominika_benmichael's review against another edition

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adventurous funny reflective fast-paced

3.0

A surprisingly meditative look at the state of the world in summer '21

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theabee's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

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alreads420's review against another edition

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adventurous funny informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.25

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marieee_greeen's review against another edition

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funny informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.25

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ashklaass's review against another edition

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adventurous funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

5.0

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jourdanicus's review against another edition

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5.0

This might be my most unexpected 5 star read this year! I have been in a serious book slump, and it's been even worse with audiobooks, so for a... Hot dog... Memoir? To take me out of it is pretty fun.

Yeah, idk, it was good. Interesting. If you like "micro histories" you'll like this. If you're vegan you will either love this or hate it. You'll definitely like it if you like podcasts. Being narrated by the author makes the audiobook even better!

Re: content warnings - they are listed in the beginning of the book so that's helpful if I missed some here.

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