by Annette Newcomb ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 30, 2016
A sweet, inspiring tale of overcoming troubles through faith.
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In this debut memoir, a woman confronts her life’s challenges, armed with a deeply held faith.
Newcomb says that she “gave [her] life” to Jesus when she was only 16 years old at a First Baptist Church rally in Van Nuys, California. In her senior year, she met her future husband, who interned at her youth group; she was immediately drawn to him and impressed by the depth of his belief. She later left UCLA after one year after deciding that she wanted to pursue a life with more religious purpose. She and her new husband moved to Florida in 1985, and she was pregnant by 1987. But after a bladder infection sparked a kidney ailment, she nearly lost her baby, who was born prematurely. She overcame this trial through prayer, but other adversities followed: a second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage; financial hardships stripped the family of their home; and Newcomb’s father and father-in-law both died suddenly. Years later, her second son, a tumultuous teenager, refused to work or attend school, and he left home at 18 when his parents confronted him with an ultimatum. Newcomb’s diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she says, was too much for her husband to bear, and he became emotionally abusive; she was finally compelled to file for divorce. The stress was pulverizing for her, and she attempted suicide. However, she says she was able to save her life, and even her marriage, by trusting in the Lord. Overall, Newcomb’s story is an uplifting one, and it will likely appeal to those readers who have also found comfort from suffering by embracing spirituality; her spiritual practice, as depicted here, allowed her to persevere through a lifetime of tribulations. Her prose is direct and clear, like an intimate anecdote shared with trusted, religious friends, and its tone is forthcoming and familiar: “I finally learned the secret that Paul was talking about in Philippians. It’s simply to trust God completely with absolutely everything.” The book’s principal message is neither groundbreaking nor philosophically deep, but its purpose is to stir and hearten, not edify or provoke.
A sweet, inspiring tale of overcoming troubles through faith.Pub Date: March 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-3578-9
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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