A canny blend of punkish attitude and discographical smarts that blasts boys-club assumptions about pop music.
A wide-ranging assortment of essays and reportage on rock, pop, country, and hip-hop, conscientiously putting women front and center.
The title of Hopper’s book (which revises and expands a 2015 edition) isn’t a brag but rather an air horn announcing a problem: Just as female musicians have been dismissed, marginalized, and abused by a patriarchal industry, Hopper is just one of many women music journalists who was told “it was perverse to tangle up music criticism with feminism or my personal experience.” So being “first” is as much a lament as an assertion, but the best pieces show how thoughtfully the author has used her position. Essays on Liz Phair, Kim Gordon, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Rey underscore how the negative “personas” applied to them are often used to obscure and undermine their talent. In one emotionally intense interview, Björk reveals how, more than four decades into her career, she’s had to prove she writes her songs. Hopper elevates underappreciated women-led acts like D.C. punks Chalk Circle and calls out misogyny in the system: Her landmark 2003 essay, “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t,” chastised the scene for confusing sad-boy sensitivity with proactive feminism, and she reports on women country artists’ oft-futile efforts to gain airplay. The author convincingly argues that staying silent on such inequities has consequences, a point underscored by an interview with journalist Jim DeRogatis on R. Kelly’s track record of sexual assault and music journalists’ turning a blind eye to it. Hopper is stronger as a reporter and cultural observer than a track-by-track reviewer; the collection is padded with reviews that reflect her wide range of tastes but are stylistically flat. However, as she points out in the fiery conclusion, the book exists in part to expose other female writers to what’s possible with diligence and a refusal to compromise. In that regard, it’s essential reading. Samantha Irby provides the foreword.
A canny blend of punkish attitude and discographical smarts that blasts boys-club assumptions about pop music.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-53899-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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