Christmas Book Reviews by Chloe Blades

Burn Book (A Tech Love Story) by Kara Swisher (Little, Brown Book Group $40)

From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead. While tech titans bragged they would "move fast and break things," Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. Covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the truth of this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of "listening in the heating ducts" and for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg to once say: "It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, 'I hope Kara never sees this.'

The Position Of Spoons And Other Intimacies (Penguin $50)

In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites the reader into the interiors of her world, sharing her most intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her. From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, we can relish here the richness of their work and, in turn the richness of the author's own. Each page draws upon Levy's life in exalting ways, encapsulating the wonderful precision and astonishing depth of her writing, as she seamlessly shifts between and meditates on questions of mortality, language, suburbia, gender, consumerism and the poetics of every day living. From the child born in South Africa, to her teenage years in Britain, to her travels across the world as a young woman, each page is a beautiful, tender composition of the questioning self- a portrait of Deborah Levy's writing life and intellectual vitality in all of its dimensions.

Japan: An Autobiography by Peter Shaw (Six Point Press $45)

Peter Shaw first went almost unwillingly to Japan 25 years ago, staying in Tokyo for only two days. Surprised at how little he knew or understood he was however, smitten. In the following years he returned many times searching for answers about the country’s culture; its art, architecture, food, religion, history and people. Accompanied by many of his own photographs this book conveys a New Zealand writer’s feelings and thoughts about a unique culture.

Earth by John Boyne (Transworld Publishers Limited $35)

It's the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known footballers standing in the dock, charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt. As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him to this moment. Since leaving his island home, his life has been a lie on many levels. He's a talented footballer who wanted to be an artist. A gay man in a sport that rejects diversity. A defendant whose knowledge of what took place on that fateful night threatens more than just his freedom or career.
The jury will deliver a verdict but, before they do, Evan must judge for himself whether the man he has become is the man he wanted to be.

The Use Of Photography by Annie Ernaux & Marc Marie (Fitzcarraldo Editions $42)

The Use of Photography recounts a passionate love affair between Annie Ernaux and the journalist and author Marc Marie, after the two met in January 2003. Ernaux had been receiving intensive chemo for breast cancer during the prior three months, and had lost all her hair from the treatments. At the end of January she had surgery, followed by radiation therapy. The affair took place in different locations and Ernaux describes how, shortly after it began, she found herself entranced each morning by the sight of clothes strewn about, chairs out of place and the remains of their last meal of the evening still on the table - and how painful it felt to put things back in order afterwards. She went and got her camera, and began to take photographs of the scenes of disarray. When she told Marc Marie what she had done, he said he had felt the same desire. Translated by Alison L. Strayer into English for the first time, The Use of Photography is an extraordinary meditation on eroticism, photography and writing, a major work by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.

What I Ate In One Year by Stanley Tucci (Penguin Books $50)

'Sharing food is one of the purest human acts' Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci's life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime. Now, in What I Ate in One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself. Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable, to the comfortingly domestic, to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialized in this diary are a prism through which he reflects on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks - and mourns - the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and prepares himself for what is to come. Whether it's duck à l'orange eaten with fellow actors and cooked by singing Carmelite nuns, steaks barbecued at a gathering with friends, or meatballs made by his mother and son and shared at the table with three generations of his family, these meals give shape and richness to his days.