By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris)
Annually around this time, everyone and their pet dog puts out a list encapsulating their year into “Best” and “Worst” lists. When I was asked to do the same it became a dilemma: How do I select the “Best” book of the year, especially when I find such things so banal?
During an average year I read anywhere between 20 and 40 books, almost exclusively non-fiction, and not all are new releases. For example two of my favorite reads of the last 12 months were 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (a book that came out before I was born), and A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which first arrived in bookstores in the mid-nineties (and it was just made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte that will be in theaters next year). Should they make my list? Should I include new releases that I did not review? And just how does one compare I Must Say to The $11 Billion Year? Or Bruce Cockburn to Monty Python? What is my criteria?
I will begin by not calling my selection the “Best” but rather the “Most Outstanding” because who is to say what is “best”? (After all it is merely my opinion; albeit an informed one, it is still biased.)
When I agreed come to Curtains Up! I planned to only discuss books that pertained to show-business, and with a few exceptions (like an old piece that never made it to press because The Local Herald, the paper that published my column Read On! With Andreas Kessaris, went belly-up before I could submit it, as well as a list of my all-time favorites), I have kept to that guideline, so the aforementioned efforts will not be considered. And it should be a book I reviewed this calendar year, even if it was released earlier. Taking into account my 2 film reviews that eliminates 4 of the 21 articles I composed for this site in 2014, leaving me with 17 possibilities.
Because I write about biographies and behind-the-scenes books, important factors in my decision include how well-organized, researched and informative the volume is, as well its accessibility and of course, writing skill should be considered.
That is why my choice as the Most Outstanding Book of 2014 is From Scratch: Inside the Food Network by Allen Salkin (Putnam Press).
About From Scratch I wrote: “Salkin moves the story at a respectable pace; the book is never slow or boring. Bios of the principal players are short but detailed, with no frivolous facts, and the author’s humorous asides, observations, comments and digressions are not overbearing or bitchy. In fact, there were several times where I laughed out loud, (once so much I had to stop reading for fifteen minutes)…Salkin mercifully avoids the temptation to dish the dirt on people and maintains a strong level journalistic integrity throughout. Facts are presented clearly and fairly, and those involved were given a fair opportunity to tell their side of the story; any dispute or controversy is neither sensationalized nor trivialized.” (My full review is still posted on Curtains Up!)
So there it is…that wasn’t so bad. I would like to thank you for a terrific 2014, and I look forward to more great books and movies in 2015.
Read on!
