by Sara Bareilles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2015
A breezy, upbeat, and honest reflection of this multitalented artist.
A chart-topping singer/songwriter exposes “the inner workings of my mind and my heart” through this intimate essay collection anchored with music and humor.
A five-time Grammy Award nominee, Bareilles conveys her life and career in a series of heartfelt, confessional ruminations written with the passion with which she hones her musical craft, forming an entertaining and candid scrapbook chockablock with memories, lyrics, stories, and photographs. A tomboy growing up the youngest of three sisters in northern California’s wooded Humboldt County, the author reveled in building haystacks and catching frogs until her parents’ divorce when she was 12, a devastating event that only exacerbated the self-consciousness she felt as the schoolyard “fat kid…the label I was given by my peers.” Getting in shape and becoming active in theater empowered her throughout adolescence and shaped her onstage presence. The chapters are each named for a song in her repertoire: “Gravity” describes a formative and exquisitely crushing encounter with heartbreak, while “Love Song” chronicles the author’s years as a flourishing artist on the singer/songwriter circuit in Los Angeles (she signed her first record deal in 2005). A unique epistolary section called “Beautiful Girl” includes letters to her former selves to exorcise the demons of the past. Mostly sidestepping hackneyed platitudes for true sentiment, the singer remains genuine whether discussing what she learned while writing on a deadline, the development of her recent theatrical adaptation of “Waitress,” or the vulnerability of exposing her life “without the metaphor and mask of music or my singing voice.” Bareilles also demonstrates a sense of humor, much like fellow musician Ben Folds, who admits, in his playful introduction, to initially repurposing one of her “Little Voice” promotional CDs to counterbalance an uneven leg on his entertainment center.
A breezy, upbeat, and honest reflection of this multitalented artist.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2777-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.