Let's all go to Culinary School and write a book - Rated 
It's not a bad read and he sums up his feeling about cooking in a professional kitchen very well, but I don't need a lesson in stock-making or the Maillard reaction from someone at a cookery school. The recipes are pretty useless. but that's not the reason to buy this book.
The one reason you would not buy this book is that it has to be the most shoddily put together publication I have ever read. Doesn't anyone proof-read the book before it goes to press. There were times when I literally had to decipher what had been written. I'm sure that this isn't Michael Booth's fault, but someone at Jonathan Cape needs to learn their job.
almost as good as eating - Rated 
what a lovely book, I enjoyed it from the first page to the last. Michael booth is obviously very pasionate about food and he makes you want to leave everything and go to France to learn all you can. funny, entertaining and inspirational
Make sure your lobster doesn't escape! - Rated
From the first page of this book I was hooked. Imagine giving up everything including your cookery book collection and taking your family to live in France whilst you learn to cook at the best cookery school in the world - Le Cordon Bleu. Michael Booth spoke very little French when he moved to Paris but he wanted to learn to cook from the best in the world. Read about his fellow students from all over the world, the eccentric chefs and the escaping lobsters. The sentence that sticks in my mind is a description of a lobster wriggling like 'a knight with ants in his armour'. If you're even vaguely interested in cooking or Paris - read this book. There are some recipes as well, but it's the tips you pick up which are useful - for example always let meat rest for half as long as you've cooked it for. If you love chocolate you'll drool over the short course he did in chocolate making. Brilliant
'Ratatouille' revisited - Rated 
Thoroughly enjoyable book that makes you immediately want to move to Paris. I don't know if burning your cook book collection is warranted, but Michael Booth certainly makes the case for good old fashioned french cuisine and trainng. Well written, entertaining, and manages to avoid the more nauseating traits of the 'I moved to france/paris/provence etc.' and he doesn't patronise the natives. The author manages to both engage your interest and remain likeable. Not sure whether on one book he can quite earn the Bill Bryson title, but he sure makes me wish for that small(ish) lottery win to follow in his footsteps. As an interesting follow on classic french cuisines try Jacques Pepin's 'The Apprentice' or as a complete contrast in style at the other end of the french food lover's spectrum, Anthony Bourdin's Les Halles Cookbook.
Best book on food in years - highly recommendable! - Rated
This is such a refreshing new take on the whole food genre, and the best book on food I've read since "Kitchen Confidential" - and far more entertaining at that. The writing is eloquent, captivating and so funny that I had to read parts of it in isolation (to provide my family with some peace and quiet).
It's not the 'insider spilling the beans' kind of book, in the sense that Booth apparently only knows as much about cooking as the average Jamie Oliver viewer, when he sets out on his quest to become a French chef. And that's exactly what makes it so great. There are no (or not too much anyway) insiders jargon or presumptions about the readers cooking skills.
In a way he has infiltrated the French kitchen and is now revealing a lot of the secrets like a rogue magician. You get the straight talk on all those basic techniques of french cooking (and cooking in general) that more or less makes this book "the missing manual" for the traditional cookbooks you have.
Best of all you actually - like the author - end up feeling liberated from the tyranny of recepies, and feel like taking on your kitchen in whole new way.
Very, very inspiring and highly recommendable for everyone with the slightest interest in cooking (or France, or preferably both).
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