Sometimes amusing, sometimes uneven, this book should appeal to Chicago readers.
These collected short pieces comment on Chicago’s North Shore, modern life, and other matters.
From 2015 through 2016, Lubow (Time Pieces: An Informal Memoir, 2016, etc.), a former ad agency creative director, wrote a column, “North Shorts,” for North Shore Weekend, a weekly paper covering Chicago’s northern suburbs. (It also ran on the Daily North Shore website.) Each piece is deliberately short to match today’s brief attention spans, providing “some observation or snippet of light news.” Lubow often begins by noting some particularity of North Shore life, which he expands to more general observations. For example, in “Back to the future,” the author evokes “a time when people on the North Shore saw movies at The Edens.” That theater closed in 1994 to make way for cineplexes, which are now being replaced by posh theaters with pre-assigned seats that offer more luxury but less freedom. Musing that “you can’t go back to the future,” Lubow remembers seeing the movie Back to the Future—at The Edens. This note of lightly ironic nostalgia characterizes many of the pieces. On occasion, the author makes intriguing associations, as with a Bruce Springsteen quote that launches a discussion of creativity and audience (“The connection”). But the short format precludes much thoughtfulness, and too often Lubow cuts off, sentimentalizes, or makes glib what might deserve a deeper exploration. For example, in “Siren song,” he writes about the arrival of urban coyotes and other wild animals, which he takes as a sign that the “wild west isn’t always west, but it’s always wild.” But these animals’ appearance in urban areas isn’t a sign that their populations are rebounding, wild and free; it’s an indication of habitat loss. Some columns offer conclusions so mild that they hardly seem worth noting: it’s good to reread favorite books; old memories can be incomplete; people have different opinions. While Chicagoland readers can enjoy Lubow’s hat tips to local sights and characters, the book offers fewer charms for outsiders, especially because the columns can still be read for free on the Daily North Shore website (jwcdaily.com).
Sometimes amusing, sometimes uneven, this book should appeal to Chicago readers.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-982057-76-3
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Birdwatcher Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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