For wine enthusiasts and newcomers alike, a sharp gathering of writing about wine’s multidimensional, occasionally...
Novelist, screenwriter, and wine connoisseur McInerney (Bright, Precious Days, 2016, etc.) lovingly curates a collection of pieces about the making, selling, and drinking of fine wine.
In interviews, the author often admits that he feels barely ahead of readers when it comes to wine, despite having written about the stuff for venues like the Wall Street Journey, Vanity Fair, and Town & Country for more than 20 years now. Nonetheless, McInerney displays a keen, well-trained literary eye. In this anthology, he selects mostly traditional selections, with a few surprises. The book opens with “Taste,” a 1951 short story by Roald Dahl about a bet to guess the identity and origin of a glass of wine. In “A Stunning Upset,” then Time reporter George Taber chronicles the now-famous “Judgment of Paris,” in which Jim Barrett’s California-based Chateau Montelena beat highly touted French wines in an infamous 1976 contest. At the time, Barrett said, “not bad for a bunch of kids from the sticks….I guess it’s time to be humble and pleased, but I’m not stunned. We’ve known for a long time that we could put our white Burgundy against anybody’s in the world and not take a backseat.” There are wine experts in New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov’s “The Importance of Being Humble” and winemaker Kermit Lynch’s tribute to “Northern Rhône,” but there are also iconoclasts like the late Jim Harrison, who writes, “such bottles truly resonate in the memory, growing even more overwhelming as they distance themselves from the years.” Bill Buford, another larger-than-life character, witnesses a culture clash in “Burgundy on the Hudson.” Other fictions sweeten the collection with rich, sensuous writing that evokes the multifarious senses that wine awakens: selections from Rex Pickett’s Sideways (2004) and Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter (2016). The collection also includes pieces from A.J. Liebling, Maximillian Potter, and M.F.K. Fisher.
For wine enthusiasts and newcomers alike, a sharp gathering of writing about wine’s multidimensional, occasionally subversive pleasures.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2883-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
