Great, smart fun, and full of theses to provoke arguments and pointers for new ways to, yes, listen.
An entertaining excursus into the noisy world of music.
“When you were born, what did you know about music? The only sounds you instinctively loved were made by your mom.” So writes British novelist Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White, in this appealing foray into nonfiction. This isn’t Nick Hornby territory—Faber isn’t interested in sharing his top-10 album list or revealing much about his musical holdings, save that he doesn’t love the Wings album Band on the Run or early ’70s Deep Purple—but instead a liminal land incorporating neurology, psychology, and sociology. Most of us profess to love music, but do we really listen to it? And what do we listen to? For many seeking to find their tribe, it’s the music that everyone else in that tribe is listening to; for many who’ve already self-identified, music is often a stroll down memory lane. Faber is highly opinionated (“Holland would prove to be The Beach Boys’ last artistically credible album”; “Some people just have shitty taste”), but he’s also self-effacing and -deflating, and he poses fun challenges. For example, if you really love music, then instead of listening to an Eagles knock-off band, seek out the pop tunes of a place like Honduras or Fiji, and then branch out beyond your preconceptions and your nostalgia soundtrack and find something that will carve a few new furrows into your cerebrum. The author also recommends you not waste your time staking out a position in the snobbish arguments about whether vinyl or CDs or mp3s sound better than other media. The real medium, he insists, is your mind, and it’s our instrument, too. “The world,” he writes memorably, “is playing us.”
Great, smart fun, and full of theses to provoke arguments and pointers for new ways to, yes, listen.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781335000620
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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