JENNY WALTON'S PACKING FOR A WOMAN'S JOURNEY

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JENNY WALTON'S PACKING FOR A WOMAN'S JOURNEY

Name: JENNY WALTON'S PACKING FOR A WOMAN'S JOURNEY
Author: Nancy Lindemeyer
ISBN: 0-517-70662-8

by Nancy Lindemeyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1998

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In this small book, Lindemeyer, editor in chief of Victoria magazine and the author of its “Jenny Walton” columns, celebrates all that has been “good, kind, graceful, generous, and beautiful” in her life, in hopes that her readers will find “pride in a woman’s journey.” Lindemeyer’s early life was not without its sorrows. Her mother died when the author was very young, and she was raised by her grandmother. Indeed, this book is as much about Lindemeyer’s grandmother’s life as her own. The spacious and populated midwestern home she recalls so meticulously in these pages was filled with pleasing sounds and aromas, with homely, charming conversations, and with real affection. It was here that the wisdom that best characterizes Victoria magazine took root. Indeed, Lindemeyer traces back to her grandmother essential life lessons concerning hard work, togetherness, morality, and the nature of real accomplishment. If home is the “citadel of family pride,” then making it beautiful is a matter of importance. For every sorrow, Lindemeyer finds solace in her homey possessions, the motifs “on my linens—birds, butterflies, flowers,” remembering “with pleasure calm, cool yesterdays in this special home.” She finds enormous meaning in the “things” of life, but has her eye all along on the power of love, developed here in anecdotes about her friends and family members. Lindemeyer explains that her magazine is dedicated to that part of women’s lives that has been “ignored as their energies . . . drove them into perfecting the roles they had chosen.” Hers is a book about contentment, continuity, and accomplishment, wrapped in homespun. As a memoir, however, it fails to explain the magnitude of the author’s own professional accomplishment. Perhaps this volume allows us to believe that such accomplishments are not always the result of the killer instinct, but of a sound and steady belief in the goodness of honest simplicity. (Author tour)

Pub Date: April 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-517-70662-8

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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HOW MUSIC WORKS

by David Byrne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2012

Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.

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From the former Talking Heads frontman, a supremely intelligent, superbly written dissection of music as an art form and way of life.

Drawing on a lifetime of music-making as an amateur, professional, performer, producer, band member and solo artist, Byrne (Bicycle Diaries, 2009) tackles the question implicit in his title from multiple angles: How does music work on the ear, brain and body? How do words relate to music in a song? How does live performance relate to recorded performance? What effect has technology had on music, and music on technology? Fans of the Talking Heads should find plenty to love about this book. Steering clear of the conflicts leading to the band’s breakup, Byrne walks through the history, album by album, to illustrate how his views about performance and recording changed with the onset of fame and (small) fortune. He devotes a chapter to the circumstances that made the gritty CBGB nightclub an ideal scene for adventurous artists like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Tom Verlaine and Television. Always an intensely thoughtful experimenter, here he lets us in on the thinking behind the experiments. But this book is not just, or even primarily, a rock memoir. It’s also an exploration of the radical transformation—or surprising durability—of music from the beginning of the age of mechanical reproduction through the era of iTunes and MP3s. Byrne touches on all kinds of music from all ages and every part of the world.

Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-936365-53-1

Page Count: 352

Publisher: McSweeney’s

Review Posted Online: July 31, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN UTOPIA
by David Byrne ; illustrated by Maira Kalman

- BOOK REVIEW
BICYCLE DIARIES
by David Byrne

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MOMOFUKU MILK BAR

by Christina Tosi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 2011

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With this detailed, versatile cookbook, readers can finally make Momofuku Milk Bar’s inventive, decadent desserts at home, or see what they’ve been missing.

In this successor to the Momofuku cookbook, Momofuku Milk Bar’s pastry chef hands over the keys to the restaurant group’s snack-food–based treats, which have had people lining up outside the door of the Manhattan bakery since it opened. The James Beard Award–nominated Tosi spares no detail, providing origin stories for her popular cookies, pies and ice-cream flavors. The recipes are meticulously outlined, with added tips on how to experiment with their format. After “understanding how we laid out this cookbook…you will be one of us,” writes the author. Still, it’s a bit more sophisticated than the typical Betty Crocker fare. In addition to a healthy stock of pretzels, cornflakes and, of course, milk powder, some recipes require readers to have feuilletine and citric acid handy, to perfect the art of quenelling. Acolytes should invest in a scale, thanks to Tosi’s preference of grams (“freedom measurements,” as the friendlier cups and spoons are called, are provided, but heavily frowned upon)—though it’s hard to be too pretentious when one of your main ingredients is Fruity Pebbles. A refreshing, youthful cookbook that will have readers happily indulging in a rising pastry-chef star’s widely appealing treats.