A thoughtful exploration of pain and truth.
This debut nonfiction book meditates on the nature of suffering using an 18th-century Buddhist poem.
Hakuin Ekaku was one of the great thinkers of Zen Buddhism, and his hymn “The Song of Zazen,” composed around 1760, is a poetic encapsulation of his philosophy. “In his day, Hakuin was to Japanese Zen what the Beatles were to rock ’n’ roll in the 1960s,” writes Lahn of the poet. “He was a radical reformer, reinvigorating the active practice of Zen, both within the monasteries and among the common folk.” Even so, the ideas contained within the poem are not inherently Buddhist: The author argues that Hakuin’s meditation on suffering and wisdom speaks to people across cultures and faith traditions. With this book, Lahn seeks to bring Hakuin’s poem to that wider audience, demystifying its sometimes-enigmatic verses and applying them to his own modern concerns. As the author explains, the poem “takes away far more than it gives,” helping readers shed the cumbersome ideas and emotions that get in the way of accessing the deeper truth of being. “The Song of Zazen” is not a lengthy poem—the translation by Norman Waddell that Lahn works from is only 43 lines long—but each short stanza is given its own elucidating chapter. The author’s prose is empathetic and accessible, supplementing Hakuin’s spare lines with relatable analysis. Here, he illustrates Hakuin’s insistence on the necessity of suffering with an example from his own life, when he became reliant on crutches after injuring his foot: “After a while, the nurse told me I could wean off the supports and walk freely again despite the pain. Although it was growth and progress, I found myself reluctant to experience the pain of a healing foot as well as go without the nice attention and sympathy the crutches and cane brought me.” It’s an unexpectedly breezy work, and Lahn is correct that one need not be a Buddhist to appreciate the simple, if unintuitive, wisdom that Hakuin and his poem offer.
A thoughtful exploration of pain and truth.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-948626-78-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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