Not at all the usual actor’s memoir, but a simple toast to eating, drinking and innocent merriment in old Umbria.
Devoted foodie Tucker (I Never Forget a Meal, 1996) and wife Jill Eikenberry, both veteran actors familiar for their stints on L.A. Law and elsewhere, find a second home in the heart of the Italian peninsula.
Near Monteluco in Umbria, a stone cottage called Rustico was comfortably settling deep into its fourth century when the couple first saw it. They traveled there several times in one year to partake in the Umbrian way of life, then bought Rustico, sold their West Coast place and established transatlantic housekeeping in New York and central Italy, whose culture they enjoyed sharing with friends and family. After remodeling their 13th marital residence (doubling its size with an addition that matched its stone walls and brick tile floors), they purchased furnishings and contemplated acting opportunities when not rusticating. There was much partying with colorful new friends and dear old ones, but the principal pleasures at Rustico were founded on the Italian genius for food. Tucker recalls shopping for truffles and pasta, the joy of home cooking and the hunt for authentic eateries. He extols the local tartufo, grappa and pork. He describes visits to butchers and building fires at home for suckling pigs and marinara pizzas, fondly detailing all the preparations. His delight in performing as chef is evident, as is his affection for his wife, family and friends, as well as for a favored district in the middle of Italy.
Not at all the usual actor’s memoir, but a simple toast to eating, drinking and innocent merriment in old Umbria.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87113-962-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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
IN THE NEWS
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
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