A handbook that should encourage readers who have complicated relationships with food.
In her debut, Blake reveals how she copes with her intolerances to everyday foods and offers tips to fellow sufferers.
“I have lost the ability to digest 95% of the foods that everyone else enjoys,” the author begins. She arrived at this point of extreme dietary restriction after 30 years of declining health and weight loss. After realizing that diarrhea was the primary sign that she couldn’t tolerate a particular food, she gradually eliminated such foods from her diet, including most fruits and vegetables, many grains and nuts, oil, starch, fish, and most dairy products. The author demonstrates a deep knowledge of human anatomy in this book; for example, she explains the symptoms of leaky gut syndrome and the role of digestive enzymes, and also provides a helpful diagram of the digestive system. Perhaps controversially, she characterizes the common labeling of diarrhea-manifested digestive problems as irritable bowel syndrome as “meaningless and insulting.” At times, the book’s advice can feel too fussy, as when the author insists that vegetables be grown outdoors and that people should use no lotion on their hands before handling food; even non-stick pan coatings and tap water merit suspicion. Moreover, the list-based format can be repetitive. Luckily, many elements are widely applicable, such as a food tolerance chart and information on avoiding toxins and pesticides. The book also strikes a good balance between declarative and imperative statements. “It is healthier to be safe than gourmet,” Blake insists, a dictum that accounts for the very small range of foods that she uses in the 14 recipes: baked meat, casseroles, roasted potatoes, blanched almonds, and dark chocolate form staples of her diet. Intriguing snippets of autobiography suggest that several of these foods are ones that her British mother cooked while the author was growing up, and that by writing about bodily functions, Blake is breaking family taboos. It therefore took real courage, after decades of fighting to stabilize her health, to write this book for others’ benefit.
A handbook that should encourage readers who have complicated relationships with food.Pub Date: July 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-5816-3
Page Count: 152
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015
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
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
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