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Susannah Felts

NonfictionLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Linocut

Review by Susannah Felts

As any visitor to my home may note, I’ve long been drawn to the simultaneously bold and delicate look of linocut art, a very hands-on type of relief printmaking wherein ink is transferred to paper via a carved linoleum block. Perhaps it’s time to make a few prints of my own.

U.K.-based artist Sam Marshall’s Linocut makes the process feel approachable, with friendly, precise instructions and projects that build in degrees of complexity. That’s not to say Marshall oversells the ease of this medium. She admits she struggled with it at first and is open about the fact that it’s not unusual to earn a cut or two when you’re starting out—so have Band-Aids on hand! But the act can be meditative once you’ve mastered the feel of the tools, and it’s an art form that can be practiced right at your kitchen table.

Even if I don’t take up a knife and block, the book is a beauty, full of both Marshall’s own prints and those of a few printmakers she admires.

Sam Marshall’s book makes linocut printmaking feel approachable, with friendly, precise instructions and projects that build in degrees of complexity.
NonfictionLifestylesFilmFashion

Red Carpet Oscars

Review by Susannah Felts

As we enter Oscars season, here’s a chance to take a deep, luxurious dive into the history of red carpet fashion and fame. Dijanna Mulhearn’s Red Carpet Oscars chronicles the biggest celebrity event of the year from its beginnings in 1929, “a quiet black-tie dinner,” to the 94th edition in 2022, when the slap seen ’round the world overshadowed the dresses by a long shot. (That said, Mulhearn keeps her gaze steady and makes no mention of the debacle.)

Photographs offer an incredible parade of silver-screen talent throughout. Modern viewers may find the many black-and-white candids from the first three decades of Hollywood especially intriguing; I personally love the 1970s coverage, too. Mulhearn’s text helps tell the couture story, providing social context and a taste of each evening’s drama and the actors’ personalities. “[Joan] Fontaine’s black midi-length dress,” she writes, “felt mournful, possibly reflecting Fontaine’s mood as she imagined watching [Olivia] de Havilland snare the Oscar.” In sum, what we have here is a fascinating, particular angle on American culture.

Dijanna Mulhearn offers a chance to take a deep, luxurious dive into the history of red carpet fashion and fame.
NonfictionLiteratureLifestylesFilm

But Have You Read the Book?

Review by Susannah Felts

For a literary spin on the movies, there’s But Have You Read the Book?, a compendium of 52 stories taken from print to screen. You won’t be surprised to discover titles such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Blade Runner here, but did you know Jaws was first a book? Goodfellas? The Social Network?

Author Kristen Lopez succinctly parses differences between the versions of each story, pointing out actor credits and box office facts for the movies and themes explored in the books. Rarely are the book and film notably similar; in the case of No Country for Old Men, Lopez writes that the Coen brothers “brought their patented blend of dark humor to [Cormac] McCarthy’s wild Texas landscape, transforming the book from a noirish, cynical take on the degradation of the country post-Vietnam into a melancholic look at the Western genre.”

So is But Have You Read the Book? for film buffs or book nerds? Both, I suppose, with its sweet spot in the Venn diagram overlap of the two.

Is Kristen Lopez’s But Have You Read the Book? for film buffs or book nerds? We say both.
NonfictionLifestylesFilmArt

Colors of Film

Review by Susannah Felts

Color: We can’t not see it, and yet we’re frequently unaware of the power of its strategic use, even as we feel the effects. But you’ll never take color for granted again after perusing Charles Bramesco’s Colors of Film, which explores the palettes used in 50 iconic films through four eras of cinema.

Bramesco’s discussion dives into technical developments in color reproduction as well as the symbolic and emotional currency held in the color choices for pivotal scenes. For each film, a small grid of color blocks printed adjacent to film stills, along with hex and RGB codes, makes the case visually. For 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, “the Technicolor reds, greens, and yellows portray Broadway as a playland of exuberant fakery,” Bramesco writes, “its colors bewitching not in spite of their unnatural pop, but because of it.” A garish Pepto pink steals the show in Jamie Babbit’s queer cult classic But I’m a Cheerleader, while the soft pink of cherry blossoms characterizes Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.

This book provides a fascinating object lesson in how visual information wields power. As Bramesco puts it, “Color is the perfect hiding place for significance, most powerful when left unstated.”

You’ll never take color for granted again after perusing Charles Bramesco’s Colors of Film, which explores the palettes used in 50 iconic films through four eras of cinema.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Sugar High

Review by Susannah Felts

If you’d told me back in the early 1990s (my, um, experimental college days) that a few decades hence bookstores would be selling cannabis cookbooks, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are, and hallelujah. In Sugar High: 50 Recipes for Cannabis Desserts, Chris Sayegh first delivers a primer on cannabis—quite necessarily, as uniformed and skewed perspectives on the plant are abundant—before moving on to how to calculate dosage. Beware: There are equations involved! But if that doesn’t deter you, proceed directly to oil and butter infusions and tinctures, and then on to the sweet stuff, such as dulce de leche coconut blondies, tiramisu and “Literally the Best Hot Chocolate.”

Really, is there any better way to get your CBD or THC than through a luscious chocolate custard? When Sayegh opens his first cannabis bakery, I’m there.

Is there any better way to get your CBD or THC than through a luscious chocolate custard? Chris Sayegh’s cannabis dessert cookbook will show you how.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

The Creative Vegetable Gardener

Review by Susannah Felts

Kelly Smith Trimble’s first title, Vegetable Gardening Wisdom, holds a face-out position on my bookshelves, ready for a quick consult. Her latest effort, The Creative Vegetable Gardener: 60 Ways to Cultivate Joy, Playfulness, and Beauty Along With a Bounty of Food, will give it some excellent company.

Humble in tone yet robust with expertise, this inspiring guide isn’t concerned so much with crop yields or pest control as it is with the sheer pleasure and wellness that gardening can bring. Trimble wants us to think outside the box—the quadrilateral raised bed, that is—and pursue spirals, hay bales, front yard settings and other methods for changing up our forays into cultivation. She encourages readers to garden for the mindfulness and surprise of it and counsels them to not get hung up on how many tomatoes they produce in a given year. And for most any common woe, she has a helpful suggestion. Lacking a full-sun backyard, as I am? Here’s a list of plants that will thrive under four hours of sun. Curious about permaculture or what the moon has to do with it all? Here’s your explainer.

Accessible for beginners but poised to shake up the thinking of the most seasoned dirt-gardener, Trimble’s new book covers lots of ground.

Kelly Smith Trimble’s inspiring guide isn’t concerned so much with crop yields or pest control as it is with the sheer pleasure that gardening can bring.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

An A–Z of Pasta

Review by Susannah Felts

I don’t believe I’ve ever met a pasta I didn’t like. There are, however, many pasta shapes I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting—yet. In An A–Z of Pasta, Rome-based author Rachel Roddy introduces readers to 50 of them, some of which, like brichetti, are not often found beyond specific Italian regions. (As if I needed another reason to visit Italy someday.)

This is no mere collection of dishes, however; it is a specific window into Italian history and geography, thick with sense of place. Take fregula, little balls similar to couscous. “A tiny shape . . . particularly stout and . . . nutty,” they are native to Sardinia, where women have traditionally been tasked with making them (not a small job, despite the small shape). Roddy is a knowledgeable storyteller and low-key witty. Of fusilli, she writes, “One day I will watch an extruder forming fusilli while smoking a joint and listening to the Incredible String Band. As with any invention that has become commonplace, we take a pasta machine that can extrude perfect spirals for granted.”

Roddy’s lamb ragu with lots of herbs, “a Friday night dish,” sounds amazing, as do numerous other recipes included here. This book is essential for anyone passionate about Italian cooking.

In An A–Z of Pasta, witty and knowledgeable author Rachel Roddy introduces readers to 50 essential pastas and the recipes you might use them in.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & Drink

Buzzworthy

Review by Susannah Felts

Did you know that the margarita is a “tribute cocktail,” a drink named in honor of a person? In this case, the honoree is Margarita Henkel, daughter of a German ambassador. In Buzzworthy, Vancouver-based author Jennifer Croll (Free the Tipple, Art Boozel) builds on this concept, introducing cocktails inspired by female writers from the 19th century to the present, from poets to graphic novelists and everything in between.

Each recipe is paired with a brief bio of the writer, so you’ll get a dash of literary trivia with your tipple. The book is forward-thinking in its inclusion of low- and zero-proof options, as well, such as the Louise Erdrich: muddled strawberries, juniper-cardamom syrup, lemon juice and soda.

Between Rachelle Baker’s punchy illustrations of the literary ladies with their eponymous drinks and book covers, and the “tipsy” typeface, the whole effect is effervescent, with the final section, a curated TBR list of the writers’ works, acting as the ideal digestif.

Buzzworthy features cocktails inspired by female writers from the 19th century to the present, from poets to graphic novelists and everything in between.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

Cooking for Culture

Review by Susannah Felts

Cooking for the Culture is the first book from Toya Boudy, a spirited celebrity chef whose New Orleanian heritage shines through in everything she does. I sheepishly admit that I’d never heard of Boudy before her cookbook landed on my desk—I’m not fluent in TV, see—but her keep-it-real approach and candid family stories sucked me right in, and the voice that (I’m certain) comes through so winningly on screen is front and center here, too. For example: “If you’re going to jump out the gate slanging tartare on the table, you’d better come out swinging.”

Some of Boudy’s food is delightfully simple: shrimp on a bun, fried okra and red beans (served with fried chicken, her favorite meal). But some recipes are marvelously extra, like her praline sweet potatoes with whiskey mallo cream, or her “Expensive Ass Salad” (the best-titled recipe ever) featuring lobster, crab, scallops and a champagne caviar vinaigrette. And you best believe there are all the Cajun and Creole classics you could dream of in these pages.

Chef Toya Boudy’s New Orleanian heritage shines through in everything she does, from red beans and fried okra to praline sweet potatoes with whiskey mallo cream.
NonfictionLiteratureLifestyles

The Illustrated Etymologicon

Review by Susannah Felts

For the language geeks of the world, of whose ranks I am a lifetime member, The Illustrated Etymologicon is a curious journey through time, with its ears and eyes trained on the way life gets translated into words.

Author Mark Forsyth first made his name with a blog called The Inky Fool, and The Etymologicon followed, became a hit, etc. This new version is gussied up with typography presented as art- and collage-like illustrations. The organization here is associative, with fart, for example, leading us to peter out, which may come from the French verb peter, to fart. From there we’re on to fizzle out, feisty and even partridge. Want to go deep on the origins of the name Starbucks? Forsyth will take you all the way to the Vikings. It’s all quite dizzying, and often funny in a rather British sort of way.

Perfect for the language geeks of the world, The Illustrated Etymologicon has its ears and eyes trained on the way life gets translated into words.
NonfictionLifestylesHistoryArt

The Madman’s Gallery

Review by Susannah Felts

First came The Madman’s Library. Now comes its weird kid sister, The Madman’s Gallery, packed with tres bizarre art through the ages.

Words won’t quite do it justice, of course, but mastermind author/curator Edward Brooke-Hitching does his best: “Here is the art of ghosts, the art of madness, imaginary art, art of dog-headed people, the first portrait of a cannibal, and a painting of the Italian monk who levitated so often he’s recognised as the patron saint of aeroplane passengers.” We’re talking giant Olmec heads, phalluses growing on trees, decaying cadavers, Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” a nude Mona Lisa, Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s fruit and veg portraits, hirsute women, Salvador Dali’s clocks, Frida Kahlo as wounded deer, AI creations and so much more. This one is occasionally disturbing, and always fascinating.

Mastermind author/curator Edward Brooke-Hitchings’ The Madman’s Gallery is packed with tres bizarre art from every period of history.
NonfictionLifestylesDesignCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Patchwork

Review by Susannah Felts

If you are a fan of jaw-droppingly beautiful things, you have to check out Patchwork: A World Tour by textile designer and collector Catherine Legrand. I had never before thought about the similarities between, say, sampler quilts in the U.S. and kantha in India (cloth created out of stitched-together old garments); now I wonder how I could have missed it. From French courtepointe (patchworks of varying sizes, often used as bedspreads) to Korean bojagi (used to wrap gifts and other objects), this study crisscrosses the continents, “composed from fragments of human lives laid side by side in order to illustrate this global artform.”

Many of these fabrics’ and textile arts’ creators have humble origins; as Legrand notes, “patchwork is a practice that brings women together in a context of social exchange and community.” Taken as a whole, the fascinating works presented here celebrate human creativity, ingenuity and determination to use and preserve what we’ve got. You can’t possibly feel unmoved by the connections this book reveals and assembles, stitch by visible stitch.

The fascinating textile arts presented in Catherine Legrand’s Patchwork celebrate human creativity, ingenuity and determination to use and preserve what we’ve got.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesEnvironment

Sown in the Stars

Review by Susannah Felts

For centuries, farmers have been consulting celestial cycles, such as the zodiac and the phases of the moon, to time their planting, with a number of calendars and almanacs printed every year to help them do just that. There’s scant scientific research on this type of zodiac-based cultivation, but as associate professor of agriculture and natural resources Sarah L. Hall muses in Sown in the Stars, “It does seem (even to a scientist like me) that when a practice continues over a long period of time, there might just be something to it.”

Hall interviewed a large number of Kentuckians who follow the folk tradition of planting by the signs (I love how she refers to them as “garden artists”), and their stories shape the heart of this beautifully designed book. Hall gives readers an overview of astrology and astronomy, which inform this method of farming, and she even shares the results of her own season of planting by the signs. Whether you wish to give it a go yourself or are simply curious about traditional practices, this book is a valuable cultural document, full of experience and wisdom typically passed from one generation to the next by women.

Sown in the Stars is a valuable cultural document, full of experience and wisdom from farmers who consult celestial cycles and the zodiac signs to time their planting.

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