Next book

LIVE FAST DIE HOT

An uneven barrage of life stories by turns hilariously candid and self-consciously flippant.

Brazen dispatches on the life-altering effects of childbirth and motherhood on a woman with a stern “reluctance to be a responsible adult.”

In 2008, actress and author Mollen (I Like You Just the Way I Am: Stories About Me and Some Other People, 2014) discovered her “accidental pregnancy” with her then-boyfriend, actor Jason Biggs. A neurotic tangle of anxiety and insecurities at 28, she writes of contemplating abortion but saw, for the first time, an actual future and a family plan with Biggs, whom she eloped with soon after. Though she miscarried, her second pregnancy was successful. Mollen’s melodramatic misadventures and life lessons in new parenting populate the remainder of this candid exercise in unfiltered adulthood. Whether taking ayahuasca in the Peruvian jungle with Chelsea Handler, ghost-proofing a new house, or impulsively venturing to Morocco to meet the weavers behind her pricey Beni Ourain rug, Mollen’s opinionated anecdotes are outspoken, often vulgar, and intermittently entertaining. Her rhetoric is not a cuddly, softhearted tribute to motherhood: recreational drugs played a role in her first pregnancy, and negotiations for threesomes aren’t uncommon during date night. Most of these incidents seem drafted for maximum comical effect, and some strain to achieve it, but there are a few true motherly moments that resonate as “part of an emotional, painful, joyous journey [the author] was finally happy to take.” Once born, did baby Sid really hold the power to vanquish Mollen as the “fun-loving woman-child” she’d considered herself to be? Sure, and she believes that to be a good thing: it was truly time to grow up. Nevertheless, even a life beautifully enriched by a child couldn’t dampen her effortlessly snarky outlook on kids, love, marriage, and Tinder.

An uneven barrage of life stories by turns hilariously candid and self-consciously flippant.

Pub Date: June 14, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-385-54069-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016

Categories:
Next book

I AM OZZY

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

Next book

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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

Categories:
Close Quickview