It is deeply reassuring that our dumbed-down world still has room for work like this.
Five essays explore the idea of disappearing and other obsessions of a restless, powerful mind.
The titular first essay is a perfect way into this almost dauntingly intelligent book, employing a few of the author’s signature gambits to winning effect. There are 13 numbered sections: How To Disappear, Ways To Disappear, What They Will Say, People Who Disappeared, Why You Are Not Famous, and so forth. Each of these is an exhaustive list of possibilities for that item, funny, provocative, relatable, vulnerable, cynical, and sobering by turns. This essay is one of the two most straightforward in the book, the other being the third, The Uber Diaries, a series of vignettes describing the author’s experiences as a rideshare driver after a big Hollywood project he had been involved in fell apart and left him disastrously overextended. All the terrible things one might imagine could happen to a driver at the hands of his riders do indeed happen, but lead to an epiphanic ending where the line between driver and rider dissolves. The next essay is much more conceptual or theoretical, titled On the Desire To Reject Narcissism: Notes Toward a Follow-Up Essay to “The Uber Diaries.” Possible openings for such an essay, numbered from 1 to 131 follow, though some are printed with strikethroughs and others only vaguely described, and some sections simply reprint poems by other people, among them Franz Wright, Fred Chappell, and Molly Peacock. Heady stuff. Subsequent essays contain autobiographical material from a painful childhood and a spiky writing career, plus detailed recountings of certain stories Minor is obsessed with, most importantly the fate of eight sailors in a 1968 sailing race. His favorite competitor: “Bernard Moitessier, the sailor who quit the race because he simply wanted to sail the seas.” It is poignantly evident that that’s exactly what Minor means to do with this book: quit the race, sail the seas. You don’t have to be as smart as he is to enjoy the ride.
It is deeply reassuring that our dumbed-down world still has room for work like this.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781956046571
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Sarabande
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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