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"If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour," Maira Kalman advises in The Principles of Uncertainty (Penguin, $20). It helps if you're in New York or Paris, two of the cities where Kalman stands on street corners, sits in cafes, people-watches and scribbles in her sketch pad. But if you're elsewhere, you can read her delightful book, a whimsical mix of the words and illustrations inspired by her gawking.

Kalman, an artist best known for her children's books and New Yorker illustrations, serves as the reader's sharp-eyed companion on a journey whose ultimate goal seems to be digression. One minute she's pondering death; in the next she's explaining her obsession with painting fruit platters and her love of tea and honey cake, or telling a bittersweet story about her glamorous Aunt Frances, who, plagued by Alzheimer's, "tried to pay a patient cashier at the Bagel Buffet with Sweet 'n Low packets." A painterly image records a visit with Kitty Carlisle Hart during which the elderly actress sang Kalman a George Gershwin tune. On the next page we see an illustration of Gershwin, who, Kalman notes, is buried in the same cemetery as Kalman's husband. "One thing leads to another," she explains -- though she doesn't need to.

Source: Washington Post