A rollicking, tongue-in-cheek guidebook to discovering one’s own route through life.
Transplanted New Yorker Hart’s idea of creating a fake cooking show began as a joke for a friend in California. At last count, her YouTube channel, “My Drunk Kitchen,” had tallied more than 66 million views. Hart’s “cookbook” will surely enlarge her audience and please her fans.
The author, who dedicates the book to “reckless optimists,” has been featured in numerous magazines including Time, LA Weekly and Marie Claire, as well as on CBS News, and her 2012 YouTube documentary “Please Subscribe” won the 2013 Steamy Award for Best Female Performance in a Comedy. Hart’s wacky sense of humor carries on in this collection of drink suggestions, which includes fun recipes, cooking tips, photos, quotes and life lessons. Whether the author is elaborating on the basics of kitchen improvisation and “filling your heart as well as your stomach,” embracing the bumpy journey toward adulthood, or exploring the boundaries of love and sexuality, Hart remains entertaining. In the section entitled “So This Is Love,” the author includes recipes for Hot-Crossed Bunz, Heart-Beet Salad, Brothel Sprouts and Sad Thai. “I feel like the people we find ourselves drawn to are somehow reflections of the love we were given (or denied) as children,” she writes. “And this could manifest as unconditional loyalty or devotion to people who don’t necessarily classify as healthy and/or functional human beings.” Hart devotes another section to coping with family during the holidays. The author’s recipe for Trifle Troubles alludes to the trauma of leaving the comfort of your adult life and revisiting “the emotional baggage of your childhood,” while Let’s Get Grilled (About Your Life Choices) traverses the troubled terrain of communicating with a less-than-understanding father “who never achieved his goals.”
A rollicking, tongue-in-cheek guidebook to discovering one’s own route through life.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-0062293039
Page Count: 240
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
PROFILES
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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