Nothing is as wonderful as a trip to la ville lumière, but this is a good second choice.
The bestselling author turns her hand to travel writing in an episodic, engaging evocation of Paris.
Johnson (L’Affaire, 2003, etc.) offers an intimate look at St.-Germain-des-Prés, the Parisian quartier she has lived in for years, but don’t come to this book expecting a sustained narrative. Instead, Johnson presents short mediations delightfully reminiscent of Colette. She begins at 8 Rue Bonaparte in her apartment overflowing with books and visitors. From there, the writer leads us on a colorful tour: up a staircase behind her guest room that leads to a spot where Jews were hidden during WWII; into the chapel near her apartment; through the famed art and architecture academy, École des Beaux-Arts; to the Bibliothèque Mazarine, where Johnson does much of her writing. Along the way, we inspect French fashion and taste French macaroons—“not those coconut-almond cookies we think of,” Johnson explains, “but a sort of pastel-colored oreo, two halves of pastry with a filling in between . . . pistachio, caramel, chocolate, fraises . . . or even chili, or oyster.” She takes us to the Paris of the past: we meet Queen Margot, Marguerite de Navarre (1553–1615), “in some ways the founder of the neighborhood,” and Dr. Guillotin, who in the cour de Commerce St.-André, “experimented on sheep to perfect his instrument.” The sections on 20th-century Parisian history include nods to existentialism, Edith Wharton, and a community of expat lesbians who congregated at Rue Jacob in the 1920s. In her evocation of and an ode to a different culture, Johnson waxes rhapsodic of the joys on walking, extolling the “village quality” of St.-Germain and the pleasure of running into friends and neighbors. Indeed, a subtle critique of contemporary America lurks at the edges of her portrait of Paris.
Nothing is as wonderful as a trip to la ville lumière, but this is a good second choice.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7922-7266-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
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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