A food connoisseur expertly unravels the intricate dance surrounding food in Japan.
A gourmand's tour through Japan.
Roads & Kingdoms editor and co-founder Goulding, who co-authored the bestselling Eat This, Not That! series, takes readers to Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Hokkaido, and Noto, chronicling his wanderings through the streets, bars, teahouses, and restaurants of each locale. Throughout the book, the author brings to light the food found in these cities. In Japan, eating, cooking, preparing, and even selecting the food products to cook are near-sacred tasks. The Japanese transform what many might consider mundane chores into sublime acts of devotion, where time slows down and reverence is as much a key ingredient as the freshness of the food. Through Goulding's eyes, ears, and especially his mouth, readers can sense the perfection that each shokunin ("an artisan deeply and singularly dedicated to his or her craft") strives for as he or she dedicates his or her life to cooking just one item—e.g., grilled beef intestines or buckwheat noodles—constantly tweaking ingredients, heat, and timing to reach a transcendent state of food ecstasy. Thanks to Goulding's obvious love of the exotic and his ability to write mouthwatering descriptions of food, readers will appreciate the smells and tastes of gizzard shad, cod sperm, dried sea cucumber ovaries, and numerous other animal and seafood parts many would never consider eating. The author munches and crunches his way through bite-sized portions of sushi, soups, dumplings, and noodles, washed down by rounds of sake, to bring readers an epicurean bonanza in addition to insights into the men and women who have devoted their lives to the perfection of certain dishes. Though it does not contain recipes, the book will whet readers' appetites for fresh, flavorful foods and inspire them to travel to Japan to taste the country’s main delicacies.
A food connoisseur expertly unravels the intricate dance surrounding food in Japan.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-239403-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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