Plenty of atmosphere and attitude, but not much else; this would have been better as a snappy magazine article.
Definitely not your father’s travel guide: A native Venetian offers some playful aperçus about La Serenissima.
Venice is a fish: “How did this marvelous beast make its way up the Adriatic?” Venice is a tortoise: “its stone shell is made of grey trachite borders…which pave the streets.” Venice is whatever novelist, poet and playwright Scarpa feels like making of it in his English-language debut, an entertaining, highly idiosyncratic look at la dolce vita veneta. Organizing his random agglomeration of musings by parts of the body, he suggests in the chapter on feet that tourists simply let theirs wander. “Why fight the labyrinth?” he asks. “Let the streets decide your journey for you…Lose your bearings. Just drift.” Let your legs absorb the never-flat surfaces of the city’s calli (streets), open your heart to the “permanent state of romantic excitement” that leads Venetians to make love outdoors on every street corner. (There are some hilarious anecdotes in this chapter, including one about a guy who offers a jovial “Hi!” to a passing acquaintance without disturbing the activities of his girlfriend, kneeling in front of him.) Hands (rubbing centuries-old plaster), face (hidden behind the famous carnival masks), ears, mouth, nose, eyes—each gives the author an excuse to strut his stuff. Scarpa provides insider information about the best local dishes (wholemeal spaghetti, fried sardines and calves liver, each sautéed in oodles of onions); about the meaning of street names, which generally commemorate “foul deeds and popular customs”; about why the city is plagued by flooding (deep channels dug in the lagoon to accommodate oil tankers). It’s all exceedingly readable and agreeable—and nothing more. Venice’s remarkable 1,400-year history as a crossroads between East and West is nowhere in evidence, and the city’s character is rendered in such broad strokes that it approaches caricature.
Plenty of atmosphere and attitude, but not much else; this would have been better as a snappy magazine article.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-592-40407-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
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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