An inspirational, if slightly overlong, account of self-acceptance.
Azar recounts his journey as a closeted, gay Evangelical pastor in this debut memoir.
The author notes early on that he felt like an outsider in elementary school, as he was a “plump, Middle Eastern boy who loved the Spice Girls and Power Rangers.” He wasn’t yet conscious of the fact that he was gay, but bullies tormented him with homophobic taunts and slurs nonetheless, and Azar even took jabs at his own gay older brother. The author had grown up attending a liberal Episcopal church with an openly gay pastor, but Azar’s attitude toward his own sexual orientation drew him to conservative Evangelical Christianity as a teen. There, he found a community that accepted him while also condemning homosexuality, and he quickly began to rise through its ranks: “Where I once was the awkward, gay, fat kid in middle school and freshman in high school,” Azar recalls, “I was fast becoming the boisterous, intelligent, Republican Christian.” However, as he committed himself to his church—attending Bible college and eventually becoming an Evangelical pastor—the lie at the center of his life ultimately became too difficult for him to ignore. Over the course of this memoir, Azar’s prose is well crafted and deeply vulnerable. Even after he left the church, he says, he suffered from depression, night terrors, and panic attacks, and his discussions of the mental health effects of his self-denial are among the most moving sections of the book: “I’m about seven years removed from my faith, but the remnants of my past remain,” he writes in the introduction, adding that “to this day, I battle with the thoughts about myself that are flat-out lies: I’m a horrible sinner, and I was never worthy of true love.” At more than 350 pages, the book feels slightly too lengthy, and there are sections that could certainly have been removed, including a few chapters that read like homilies organized around specific topics. Even so, Azar’s struggles with fear and self-loathing make for an affecting work.
An inspirational, if slightly overlong, account of self-acceptance.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-91334-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roman Matthews Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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
SEEN & HEARD
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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