This earnest, if meandering, account of a mystical connection offers much for readers to uncover.
A spiritual work looks at a near-death experience.
Two men, who remain nameless throughout this book by Anonymous, sit down for a conversation. The topic is how one of those men had a near-death experience that had him “deeply connecting with a Multidimensional Being.” The experience with this being, whom he refers to as “Omega,” was an immense one. The conversation spans the course of a weekend. The goal is to explore this interaction with Omega in fine detail. After his ordeal, the man finds he has a greater sensitivity toward the world; he is less worried about dying; and he’s even eating better. But these personal changes are merely the beginning of what he has to say. The interaction with Omega was not just a one-time deal. Enter into the account something called “bridging sessions.” Omega is still contacted by the man during events that involve “inflowing information and understandings.” What does all this multidimensional interaction amount to? The book delves into various takeaways. Consider the idea that this three-dimensional universe is part of a much grander “4D multiverse.” Or that a future world could involve older people choosing a “voluntary life completion” option to make Earth more tenable for others. Or that death is not the end it is often understood to be. Some notions are clearer than others. A sentence like “Dissolving into the Silent Reverence of the Deep indivisible Peace that passes all understanding” may take a few passes to fully unpack. Yet the intriguing and engrossing volume is notable for not shying away from challenging concepts. From the tangible (a potential future fraught with environmental problems) to the abstract (what it means to connect with something well beyond human understanding), the discoveries flow freely. Although some rambling occurs (“Let me just kind of take a step back and swing my bat a few times, and spit in the dirt, and then step back up to the plate”), there is an overall sense of authenticity. It is, after all, a conversation between two ordinary people. One of them just happens to have had an experience that is not so easy to explain.
This earnest, if meandering, account of a mystical connection offers much for readers to uncover.Pub Date: July 5, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-51-115407-7
Page Count: 582
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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