Motivational but vague collection of creative writing.
Farrar’s debut collection of poems, parables and devotionals guides readers through present day Christianity, arming them with a spiritual survival kit.
These lyrically pronounced pieces are often full of rhyming triplets, quatrains and allegorical narratives intended to be read aloud. Modeling her writing on biblical scripture, the poet uses verse to lead readers toward moral lessons. In “Friends or Flies,” she anthropomorphizes hippos and flies to show how the intentions of friends might not be always be aligned with readers’ own spiritual journeys. She warns: “It's up to you to discern the difference / Between having friends or having flies.” This motif repeats in “The Wilderness,” where the author confesses, “It had been a long time since / I saw my family and friends / Who decided to disown me / Because I could not live in sin.” Throughout the collection, Farrar grapples with her own faith, sincerely endeavoring to share the intimacy of her experiences. She issues frequent reminders that everyone is unique and refrains from passing personal judgment. Other poems recall youthful memories, such as “Fairytales,” in which she writes: “When I was a little girl / I thought of Jesus as a fairytale / Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.” But darker terrain lurks around the corner, serving as a stark contrast and fleshing out her spiritual journey; in pieces like “I'm Not Looking Back,” the author struggles to come to terms with her past. Other writings point out the pitfalls of materialism, alcoholism, loneliness and temptation. Farrar often refers to her own painful history but, unfortunately, does not elaborate, leaving the reader stranded in generalities. Whether the vagueness is intentional is unclear, since the author’s mission is to inspire readers to make time in their own lives for a spiritual journey. To this end, a series of interactive questions designed to prompt further exploration is included at the conclusion.
Motivational but vague collection of creative writing.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1449737306
Page Count: 268
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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