Seasoned with wit, though, it has legs enough for enthusiasts who may be thrilled to learn that there’s actually a Grenache...
An Englishman crosses the Channel to spend a year in the vineyards of France. Overcoming the traditional Briton’s bewilderment at sunshine, he learns a bit about the quaint locals and an awful lot about oenology.
No, it’s not Peter Mayle, but erstwhile lawyer and first-time author Moon, who inherits Uncle Milo’s place in the southern region of Languedoc. The house is picturesque in a derelict sort of way, the vines neglected. The neighbors are sufficiently—as always—colorful to have been cast in an old Ealing comedy. Meet Manu, an imbibing, poaching rascal, and his fierce spouse. Waitress Babette is comely and bright. English historian Krystina teaches our pioneer some local history and seems quite eager to make some more with him despite his lack of enthusiasm for a bit of a romp. Virgile, the earnest winemaker, teaches the author what must surely be just about everything, from grape to glass, about the art and practice of viticulture. Virgile, in his cave, is immersed in wine—and at one point quite literally. He pulls out all the corks in relating the manifold tests and tribulations necessary to produce a product with exactly the right nose and body, a wine far different from Manu’s dreaded house red. Tastings include Virgile’s Carignan, Syrah, and Grenache Noir, then samplings of the local Picpoul, Mourvèdre, and Cincault. With truffles, trout, snakes, bees, and the Occitan language as adjunct studies, the author’s principal course in wine lore covers varietals, the vendange, and the sometimes baleful influence of the zodiac, the Romans, and the Appellation Contrôlée authorities. None of it is enough to faze Moon in his report on what he did on his vacation. With all the focus on French wine aesthetics, this isn’t designed for teetotalers or Francophobes (see John J. Miller and Mark Molesky’s Our Oldest Enemy, above).
Seasoned with wit, though, it has legs enough for enthusiasts who may be thrilled to learn that there’s actually a Grenache Blanc. (Map and line drawings)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7195-6517-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: John Murray Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
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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