Engaging, precise baking guide that will have readers heading for the kitchen with enthusiasm and confidence.
A tasty treat of practical cookie making, historical cookie-mold information, and a wide range of recipes, all served with appetizing sides of baking history and great photographs.
Watson (Island Women Trilogy, 2015, etc.) adds to her collection of how-to books on soap and lotion making with a colorful collection of recipes, decorative cookie lore, and clear, practical advice for bakers of all levels. Starting with honest descriptions of her own failures—some cookies were “flattened into unrecognizable blobs”—she provides historical context for molded cookies of all types, along with her secret ingredient to ease the unmolding process and produce exquisite treats. Few cooks will be able to resist her enthusiastic and encouraging call to kitchen action: “You’ll have to experiment a bit, but don’t let that daunt you. Remember, when you experiment, you may not get cookies you like—but the one thing you’re sure to get is information, and that’s always helpful!” But Watson’s book has appeal outside the kitchen; she weaves in a Saint Nicholas story and a detailed cookie-making lesson with style. Also helpfully included is an FAQ section and extensive resources for purchasing molds or learning more. A “historic preservation architecture consultant” by trade, Watson is organized, thorough, and undeniably readable. Her guide is also surprisingly entertaining. While relating her first attempt at molding, she says, “Since my reason for buying the mold in the first place was the making of beautiful Saint Nicholas cookies, I was very disappointed. For all I knew, so was Saint Nicholas.” Shepard, her husband, provides dozens of clearly labeled photos for mouthwatering visual inspiration.
Engaging, precise baking guide that will have readers heading for the kitchen with enthusiasm and confidence.Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0938497646
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Shepard Publications
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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