An outstanding cookbook with an intriguing concept and exceptional design and illustrations.
Herbert, who’s not a professional chef but a self-described “pattern geek,” offers a book that shows cooks how to improvise.
This is not a typical cookbook, but a collection of what the author calls “frameworks,” which each feature a “flexible combination of ingredients from key categories balanced to complement each other.” Instead of presenting fixed recipes with prescribed amounts of ingredients to get a standardized result, each framework is a creative guide. Herbert recommends a “shift from thinking about specific ingredients to an expanded view of ingredient categories,” which allows readers to adapt meals based on their preferences or what they have on hand. The frameworks proceed from basic to more complex dishes, with six categories in all: salads; “bowls and boards” (grain bowls, antipasto platters, and so on); breakfasts; “bread platforms,” which include sandwiches, tacos, and even crêpes; vegetable sides and soups; and, finally, “foundational proteins” to be paired with a vegetable for a quick weeknight dinner. Additional material at the end includes a comprehensive guide to building a pantry, with color-coded lists ranking ingredients from “essential” to “niche.” There’s also a chart of internal temperatures for cooking meats (including U.S. Department of Agriculture minimums and chef recommendations), a guide to selecting a cooking oil, and a combined glossary of ingredients and seasoning blends. This brief book—just over 100 pages in length—may initially seem slight to readers accustomed to doorstop-size cookbooks, but it packs an incredible amount of information into those pages. Much of the reason why it works is the amazing design and art direction from Karen Constanti and Kat Catmur, respectively. Each two-page spread covers a specific framework concept at length, showing suggested ingredients and instructions on the left, and expert tips and sample pairings on the right. Rather than photographs, the book employs Smith’s full-color illustrations, which often use an exploded view like an engineering diagram, showing each element that makes up the whole. (They’re also an absolute visual delight.)
An outstanding cookbook with an intriguing concept and exceptional design and illustrations.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798998790201
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2026
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
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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