A spirited, heartfelt homage to reading.
Pulitzer Prize winner Kakutani, former chief book critic at the New York Times, has been a capacious, eclectic reader since childhood. Aiming to encourage reading and rereading, she presents succinct essays on more than 130 books that she believes “deserve as wide an audience as possible,” ranging from the Odyssey to Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, “an unsparing rumination on identity” published in 2019. In the introduction, Kakutani rehearses predictable assertions about the benefits of reading. Books, she writes, “can transport us back to the past” and “forward to idealized or dystopian futures,” take us to far-off places, and introduce us to beliefs different from our own. They “can surprise and move us, challenge our certainties, and goad us into reexamining our default settings.” The essays themselves are more perceptive, offering fresh, inspired assessments of a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry: memoir, biography, and history; social, political, environmental, and cultural analysis; nature writing; children’s books (she responds to six Dr. Seuss stories with her own, unfortunate, doggerel), and young adult fiction. Kakutani focuses on many canonical texts, including The Federalist Papers, George Washington’s Farewell Address, Moby-Dick, Frankenstein, Winesburg, Ohio, The Waste Land, The Great Gatsby, and Invisible Man; and on canonical authors, such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, George Orwell, and Toni Morrison. But surprises abound, including four books by and about Muhammad Ali (“a larger-than-life figure: not just an incandescent athlete dancing under the lights, but a man of conscience who spoke truth to power”); Richard Flanagan’s “dazzling, phantasmagorical” Gould’s Book of Fish; Tommy Orange’s “fierce, sad, funny, and transcendent novel” There, There; the Harry Potter books (“one of literature’s ultimate bildungsromans”; two “heart-stopping books” about the war on terror (David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service); and a sprightly biography of Frank Sinatra.
A spirited, heartfelt homage to reading.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-57497-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.
An actor and comedian tells the story of her journey from being an unpaired “animal” to a “new mammal mother” in love.
After Slate completed her first book, “the issue of finding a partner…never rested and never allowed rest for [her] either.” Senses heightened, she had stepped into her most animal self and was on a quest to “fulfill [her] mammal instincts.” Loneliness and emotional vulnerability made her seek connection with neighborhood dogs and insights from books that promised to bring soulmates. When love did finally find her, the anxiety that he would reject her for being herself and “drinking tequila on a Saturday afternoon…then [having] a bath with my friend” was intense. After the pair became a couple and Slate became pregnant with the baby she called “the lifeform,” her neuroses—which the author mocks through an imaginary session with a psychologist—went into overdrive. Yet even as she wrestled with her fears, Slate also discovered that the body that was so often a “bay of doubt” was also becoming a “harbor of well-being” for the life-form to which she was attached. Then, during a time of “plague and disruption,” the author “exploded [her] vagina” to give birth, becoming not only a mother, but a “mammal with a soul that [was] born anew every day.” Though still haunted by a “purple-dark hole marking me in the afternoons,” Slate had become secure enough in the “nest” she had built for herself to see the hole more as a “bluish egg-thing” portending possibility. At times whimsical in its flights of fancy and always surprising in the moments of lyrical grace it offers, Slate’s book celebrates the transformative power of surrendering to love and life.
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780316263931
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
