Kakutani ranges broadly across issues but ultimately has little new to say.
A prize-winning literary critic delves into the reasons for social dislocation.
Kakutani, author of The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, was a book reviewer for the New York Times from 1983 to 2017, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1998. She has attracted ire as well as applause throughout her career, and her latest book will probably continue that trend. Her unoriginal thesis is that we are living in a period of radical change, technological disruption, and spreading chaos. She lines up the usual suspects for assessment: the Covid-19 pandemic, the dangers of social media, the loss of faith in institutions, the collapse of geopolitical and cultural boundaries. The problem is that all of this has been examined in countless articles and books over the past decade, and Kakutani fails to add unique insight. It’s clear that the author has read widely, but the text’s saturation with references often becomes a distraction. The author is snarky in a way that may appeal to denizens of New York City literary circles, and, given the nearly 170 references to him, the book could have been titled Reasons To Hate Donald Trump—some version of which has been written many times already. Kakutani’s previous book was almost entirely about her disdain for the former president, and she re-tills too much of the same ground here. She extends her antipathy to conservative Supreme Court judges and, in most cases, to anyone not as far to the left as she is. This admittedly well-researched book, which contains justified anger at the current political landscape, will appeal mostly to those who share the author’s ideological views. Others will find the instructive messages buried under too much rancor and spite.
Kakutani ranges broadly across issues but ultimately has little new to say.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780525574996
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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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