A friendly, warts-and-all aging handbook.
A humorous guide to the pleasures and irritations of growing older.
In their nonfiction collaboration, debut author Paskoff and Pack (Chronicles: The Library of Illumination, 2014, etc.) take a loving, detailed look at the many trials and challenges of old age, aiming their book specifically at an audience of people traveling the strange terrain that is life over the age of 60. The authors address dozens of aspects of growing older, including changes in basic physical capabilities as well as fear of dementia and other ailments of the aging population. The book gives readers clear, sensitive overviews of various phenomena that seniors might encounter, such as how to deal with changes in the body’s five senses or a diagnosis of heart disease. The authors don’t shy away from subjects that some may find delicate, such as the changing physical nature of senior sexuality or even alterations in what they call the human “waste disposal system,” presenting them simply in clear graphics with an often light tone. The book also deals with other complex topics, from the intricacies of grandparenting to the difficulties of modern technology. The number of Americans over 60 is projected to double from 40 million to 80 million by midcentury, and the authors clearly want to reassure readers in or approaching that age group. One of the book’s most insightful segments deals with the psychological effects of aging, when it begins to change elements of day-to-day life: “Gone are the days when we see our reflection in the mirror and like what we see,” the authors write. “Now, we sometimes get depressed.” There’s also valuable advice on financial matters, particularly the increasing likelihood of outliving one’s retirement savings, and on writing a personal memoir (“You don’t have to be flowery or elegant. You just have to tell it like it was”). Many seniors will find this a must-read.
A friendly, warts-and-all aging handbook.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9979084-9-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Artiqua Press
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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