A poetic and inspiring invitation to find ways of dwelling in meaning and joy.
A collection of essays centered around the theme of the ritual.
A ritual encompasses many forms: It could be mundane, like eating breakfast, or symbol-laden, like receiving the body and blood of Jesus at Communion. The experiences that interest Potter are ritualistic acts elevated into life-altering and resonant experiences, leading to a state of liminality—a sense of crossing a threshold or existing in between two separate realities. One way these liminal states can be entered is through physicality, via the body itself. In her first essay, “Between Chaos and Light: Sex, Card Playing, God, Calvin, and Dancing,” the author, who was forbidden to dance during her Calvinist upbringing, discovers that rhythmic yet freeform movement can become a spiritual rite akin to the practice of the whirling dervish Sufi dancers (“their bodies prayers”). In “The Story of a Hollowed-out Bone,” Potter acquires a Buddhist relic for self-protection (a femur, fashioned into a trumpet) that leads her to a shattering discovery about herself. Places can be routes to the in-between state as well, catching us between two worlds. “By the River of 1000 Lingas” explores how a small river in Cambodia with carvings of sacred masculine and feminine symbols (lingams and yonis) adorning its banks mystically links the natural with the human-created. Another essay, “Ever Becoming—Never Being: Dwelling in the Sukkah,” concerns the concept of sukkot, open-sided temporary dwellings some observant Jews reside in for a short period every fall. Sukkot, too, present a duality, acting as both refuge and not-refuge. Potter’s book is tightly organized, with essays divided thematically into four parts. Photos of such subjects as Cambodian temple moonstones, a Whidbey Island labyrinth, and the author’s tallit (prayer shawl) add visual interest, but are almost unnecessary; the prose creates evocative word pictures on its own. (Preparing to write, Potter feels “rushing-spirit brooding over the face of deep, dark, moving waters of what is possible but is not yet born.”) The author describes her book as “an active intuition going for a walk”; Potter’s lyrical essays will make readers want to join the walk, too.
A poetic and inspiring invitation to find ways of dwelling in meaning and joy.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798989164028
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Ritual, Liminality, and Imagination
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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