Slightly Chipped is the second volume of book collecting anecdotes by the husband-and-wife team the Goldstones (Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World, 1997). While their first effort was praised as “passionate,” its companion conveys more of an excitement about the chase and chance of possession than a true love for the books as literature. In ten brief chapters, the Goldstones take us on a journey through book fairs, bookstores, museums, libraries, and Sotheby’s. Throughout, they try continuously to make great stories of every detail, from what they eat for supper at the restaurant across the street to various people they meet. Some of their subjects are more interesting than others. The chapter on a visit to the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia cannot help but be intriguing; the building itself and its contents—a fabulous book collection included—are a little-known gem, and thanks to the Goldstones, it will probably welcome more visitors than ever. Perhaps, too, the Pequot Library annual sale in a small coastal town in Connecticut will be visited by curious readers. But much of the writing here is too preoccupied with the financial transaction of the book collecting habit—prices and resale value. Whereas the authors would once have hemmed and hawed (like most of us) before coughing up over $200 for a book, they are “much more sophisticated now.” One hopes that the missing passion might be found in the “footnotes” referred to in the title. But the authors disappoint by backing their reporting with redundant histories of subjects ranging from Bloomsbury to the duke and duchess of Windsor. A drab and simultaneously fussy but conversational prose style does not enliven the situation. Rather than pulling the uninitiated into the exciting and beautiful world of book collecting, the Goldstones are writing here for the converted.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20587-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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
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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