A book makes the perfect gift. Unlike a refrigerator, freezer, a barbecue or even something relatively small like a carpet shampooer or a ferret, books are quite painless to give. A book — even a big one — fits neatly into a symmetrical package. The flat sides of a book make it easy to wrap — even an inelegant book looks elegant when it’s nicely packaged up — and easy to stow until the time […]
The whole premise behind Lost in the Supermarket: The Indie Rock Cookbook (Soft Skull Press) is so bizarre, it just has to be explored. “Moments, whether momentous or quotidian,” the authors tell us in their introduction, “are marked by how they combine music and food.” Oh-kay. And then later, “One of the initial draws of this project … was the hope that creativity was not limited to music and a recipe book might seem like […]
There’s something deliciously crazy about Birdscapes (Chronicle Books). Cunningly engineered and beautifully designed and executed, to open the book is to initiate a wildlife symphony so convincing, the whole time I played with the book, my dog thought something illicit was happening on my desk. (And, from her perspective, what could be more illicit than colonies of birds taking root in the studio?) The sounds would be impressive enough, but they’re not alone. Open, for […]
The sentiment sounds oh-so sexist, but the execution is light and fun. “A good cocktail,” writes author Tucker Shaw, “carefully balanced and lovingly mixed, is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”Shaw does not bring a mixologist’s expertise to A Man’s Place is Behind the Bar (Chronicle Books), but rather, as restaurant critic for The Denver Post and an accomplished journalist, he appears to know what he likes as well as how to do the research to […]
I’ve often thought that the early death of Robert E. Howard is one of the great tragedies of American literature. Howard committed suicide in 1936 at the age of 30. Prolific, gifted and, driven, Howard’s work has been admired by Lovecraft and King. It’s possible this author altered the course of macabre writing. Some of his characters will perhaps be better known to you than the author himself: Conan the Cimmerian, Kull of Atlantis, Solomon […]
“Canadians are peaceable, friendly, unassuming, and adorable. They’re also secretly in control of nearly every aspect of life in the southernmost Canadian territory known as the United States.” So at least we’re told by the back cover of The U.S. of Eh? (Chronicle), which is clearly a very silly book, intended for a chuckle and — certainly — meant to be given as a gift, if only because it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually buying […]
The timing of the mid-November release of The Hour I First Believed (Harper) leads one to think that this is the moment — this holiday moment — that the PR mavens at Harper had in mind when they thought things through all those months ago. A two-time Oprah pick, (for She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True) Wally Lamb tends to sell a lot of books and a lot of people seem […]
This is the gift that the true foodie will enjoy for many years to come. More: this is the sort of book — lush, over the top, practically decadent — that is best served up as a gift. After all, Italian cookbooks are hardly in short supply. But Food Festivals of Italy: Celebrated Recipes from 50 Food Fairs (Gibbs Smith) takes things to a whole new level. “We have yet to find anyone who believes […]
I was a little sad to learn that Mark Jones, who illustrated Harriet Ziefert’s Snow Party (Blue Apple) has never built a snowman. It doesn’t show in his work, though. Or maybe it does. Jones’ snow people live and breathe and interact in a way quite beyond anything we’ve experienced. And so maybe that was his secret weapon. And maybe that’s part of the reason that Snow Party works so well. Perhaps Jones has brought […]
Just in time for the holidays, a sort of weird movie tie-in that stands entirely on its own merits, the graphic novel of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Quirk Books) is only slightly short of wonderful, and only then so because I don’t like to rave. The original story was, of course, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In a delicious afterword to the graphic novel, Fitzgerald himself explains his muse in this instance: This story […]
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