A rich guidebook for dedicated foodies and newcomers alike that will inspire readers to make their own travel memories.
Higgins offers a work that’s part love letter and part travel guide to Mexico’s underappreciated wine regions.
An experienced world traveler and devout oenophile, the author opens this book with an admission: Despite his interest and access—he lives close by in California—he had never taken the time to dive into the rich and diverse viticulture in Mexico. This work is, in many ways, the diary of that finally undertaken journey. The guide is split up by region. Readers follow Higgins first to Valle de Guadalupe, where they learn about the area’s unique terroir and are presented with the author’s theory as to why certain wines there taste “salty” or “rotten” (sterilization, or, in the case of “rotten” wines, not enough sterilization). Higgins goes on to describe the fantastic and surprising gastronomy to be found in the locale and provides readers with a helpful list of wineries and restaurants, complete with lush photographs of enviable dishes. (Several restaurants receive full pages of praise and description.) Readers will partake in Higgins’ sense of wonder at his surroundings as he narrates moments like finding a nearly entirely hidden eatery: “You are… meandering along a dirt road as it winds amongst oak trees, eventually, you will arrive at a massive oak tree that must be hundreds of years old. The entire restaurant is under this ancient tree. It’s a totally natural dirt floor.” The author then proceeds to Guanajuato and Querétaro, dining with friends along the way; he takes in some art at Casa Frida, and even encounters some wild animals in Ensenada. Higgins’ book is essentially a travel guide, and it is an excellent one, not only for its wealth of useful information—the specificity he provides for each highlighted winery and restaurant is truly impressive—but for the joy which animates the entire project. From the world-class photographs to the enthusiasm for the region’s offerings—“gastronomy and libation opportunities,” as the author calls them—Higgins’ work succeeds in shining a warm light on an underappreciated destination.
A rich guidebook for dedicated foodies and newcomers alike that will inspire readers to make their own travel memories.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780996966061
Page Count: 340
Publisher: International Exploration Society
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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