This easy-to-follow diet plan may leave some readers hungry for more information.
A brief, back-to-basics diet book aims to help women lose weight and keep it off.
“I have struggled with my weight since I was an adolescent,” DeSimone confesses on the first page of her debut. Shedding pounds wasn’t the problem, but keeping them off was, especially after she had two children. She tried numerous diets until finally discovering a straightforward strategy that worked for her: She started counting calories. The author realized she needed to consume no more than 1,500 calories per day if she wanted to achieve her goal of losing 10 pounds. With that information in hand, she devised a plan where she would eat five 300-calorie meals or snacks each day. (DeSimone’s diet is specifically aimed at women, who typically have lower calorie needs than men.) Once dieters reach their desired weight, they can switch to a plan that involves five 400-calorie daily meals. “Dieting is all about the numbers,” the author tells readers, urging them—in the manner of a supportive and enthusiastic friend—to become vigilant about checking the calorie counts of all the foods they eat. The focus here is truly on the numbers. While she points readers toward whole foods like vegetables and nuts and touts low-carb items, she doesn’t hesitate to suggest people get “prepackaged meals” if that makes it easier to track what they eat. Occasional cheat days, where you “eat what you love and don’t count,” are recommended as a way to stay motivated. No foods are strictly off-limits provided dieters stay within their daily calorie goals. DeSimone’s plan is easy to understand and appears simple to follow. Those overwhelmed by more complicated diets will likely appreciate the author’s basic approach, but there are times when the advice is too bare-bones. At several points, she simply advises readers to turn to Google if they have further questions about calorie counts. Nutrition and exercise are mentioned in passing, but the spotlight remains on the sometimes “tedious” process of counting calories—“the only way to gain control of your weight.”
This easy-to-follow diet plan may leave some readers hungry for more information.Pub Date: May 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-69870-041-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
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
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
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