The Science of Good Food (Robert Rose) won’t be every home chef’s idea of a good time. However, if the foodie on your list loves the “why” as well as the “how”of cooking, he or she might be a great candidate for this astonishingly complete book. After close reading, it appears to me that The Science of Good Food includes everything. Everything. There are over 1600 entries in a book that is paperback, yet very […]
Emily Perkins isn’t widely known in North America, which is a shame, as Novel About My Wife (Bloomsbury), her fourth book, is amazing. Tom Stone, a foundering screenwriter, is trying to piece together what went wrong with his wife Ann, who we know at the outset is dead. We don’t know the how she died, or why, but as this almost gothic story unfolds, it’s impossible to put down until we learn the truth. Ann […]
I don’t know about you, but I spent far too many of my own tween afternoons pouring over Wacky Packs, those addictive trading cards that fractured ads and product packaging, turning the most inocuous of claims into a hysterical parody that often spoke more truth than the real products taglines did. (I think they played a large role, in fact, in my career choice as as advertising copywriter — but it’s possible I’m being a […]
What one feels, throughout the pages of Lion Eyes (Ballantine Books) is a sort of disconnect, almost disassociation. For the most part, the feeling is delicious. It’s a sensation of wondering, throughout much of the book, “Is this real?” or “Is this part fabrication?” We know that both things are a possibility and therein lies that pleasurable confusion. Like author Claire Berlinski, the main character is called Claire and she is an American living in […]
Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor M. Wayne Cunningham reviews Crimini edited by Giancarlo De Cataldo. Says Cunningham: On their Web site, the folks at London-based Bitter Lemon Press boast: “Our books are entertaining and gripping crime fiction that exposes the dark side of foreign places. They explore what lies beneath the surface of the bustling life of cities such as Paris, Havana, Munich and Mexico City.” And now with the publication […]
For anyone who ever read Mad magazine, the name Al Jaffee is seared into memory. But before he was Mad, he was syndicated in newspapers nationwide with a strip called “Tall Tales.” Turning up his nose at the standard horizontal format, Jaffee created something, well, taller, one column wide and several inches tall. Now 120 of the best have been gathered into a book, also called Tall Tales (Abrams). Without a single word, each cartoon […]
Readers with an interest in owls will simply not find a better book than respected science and environmental writer Frances Backhouse’s Owls of North America (Firefly Books). The book is large and handsome, suitable for coffee table adornment, but don’t let it spend too much time there. Backhouse hits just everything you’d want to see covered in a book of this nature: owls in history and mythology, their mating and flight habits, how they communicate, […]
With a name like The NFL Gameday Cookbook (Chronicle Books) you’d maybe think there wouldn’t be a lot to say. 150 recipes. Official NFL colors. Lotsa pictures. Add a football fan or six and some food and you’re ready to party, right? In all fairness, though, the The NFL Gameday Cookbook is a lot more. In fact, it’s more than it has to be. First, the recipes are surprisingly varied. Sure there’s a lot of […]
I don’t know what it is, I don’t know why it should be, but I’m a total sap for the holidays. I love the food. I love the shopping. Much to my partner’s chagrin, I love the goofy music, the tired old movies, the television shows that only get dusted off every 12 months and sent out at us in a massive airwave for a couple of weeks late in the year. And I love […]
“If you are in any ennui or doldrums, lift up your heart, there IS something new under the sun.” This line opened a letter Allen Ginsberg wrote to Jack Kerouac in July of 1950. The newness he was writing about was a relationship. “Ah, Jack,” he continues later in the missive, “I always said that I would be a great lover some day. I am, I am at last.” Most everyone is familiar with the […]
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