Readers will certainly come away from the book knowing more about wine and likely eager to explore it further, but even...
An 18-month immersion in the study of wine, teaching us not just about what to look for in the glass, but how to experience the world in a new way.
When tech journalist Bosker (Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China, 2012) went from being an amateur drinker to a professional pusher of wine, she did so in a big way. The self-described “type-A neurotic” and lover of “competition, the less athletic and more gluttonous the better,” decided to see if she could not just become a competent sommelier, but also pass the Certified Sommelier Exam, an event that requires blind tasting, vast theoretical knowledge, and a service test that is “like some weird hybrid of Trivial Pursuit, a ballroom dancing competition, and a blind date.” A job as a “cellar-rat,” where she hauled crates of wine down a dangerous ladder at a New York restaurant, gave her the chance to sample “dozens if not hundreds of wines a week” at tastings held by distributors—and to be “drunk by noon, hungover by 2 p.m.” Bosker made her way into a couple of blind tasting groups, where she met a wine mentor who coached her for the competition; traveled to California to view the production of mass-market wine; talked her way into a wine “orgy” for the mega-rich; and met with the inventor of the “Wine Aroma Wheel,” a “circular chart of six dozen descriptors.” Always perceptive, curious, and entertaining, the author describes her experiences with precision and a wry sense of humor, locating the exact words to evoke even the most insubstantial sensations.
Readers will certainly come away from the book knowing more about wine and likely eager to explore it further, but even those less inclined to imbibe will be intrigued by Bosker’s insights into the nature of smell and taste and the ways training and attention can increase one’s pleasure in them.Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-312809-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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