Readers who prize outdoor experiences—and tiny houses and the simple life—will find this book a source of much pleasure,...
Literate journeys to some of the world’s less-traveled places, seen through an unusual lens.
British travel writer Richards (Climbing Days, 2016, etc.) comes by his wanderlust naturally. Before he was born, his father spent time in the remotest reaches of Svalbard, the Arctic island chain, from which he brought home a polar bear’s pelvis. As he writes in an arresting opening, the object fascinated Richards, but more so the thought of living in a shelter such as the one his father called Hotel California, which a bear would probably tear apart in a minute. “An unremarkable garden shed, the only thing that makes it a shed of note is the fact it’s there, stood on Svalbard,” he writes before embarking on a fascinating series of journeys. There are the literarily famous sheds, of course, such as Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond and the one Jack Kerouac scaled a mighty Cascade peak to groove in, guided by Gary Snyder. Richards climbed the same mountain, having eaten a burger the night before with the admonishment that the joint would be dead, “D.E.D. Ded,” in a quarter-hour, “the most American thing ever said.” The author also traveled to Iceland to visit “houses of joy,” which serve as “refuge stations for travellers crossing the hinter/highlands,” joy-giving spots that offer shelter from the storm, “modern bunkhouses on ancient foundations.” Some of the sheds, huts, and shelters Richards chronicles are works of art, literally, such as a Danish construction called Shedboatshed: “I liked it the moment I saw it as a shed at Tate Britain and took an even greater pleasure in it once I’d learnt its backstory.” Others are invested with meaning, such as the Japanese mountain stronghold called Nageire-dō, “the Oz of shrines.” The author was also able to travel to Svalbard to have a look for himself.
Readers who prize outdoor experiences—and tiny houses and the simple life—will find this book a source of much pleasure, bears and all.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78689-155-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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