An upbeat and gently challenging series of observations about growing older.
A personal, faith-oriented self-help book that offers a new way of looking at aging.
Reflecting on her own life as she approaches her 60th year, Blue, a retired nurse and author of Made With Words (2018), wonders what the future will bring: “Will I continue to be healthy?” she asks. “How much help will my children need? Should I start a new career?” As she takes readers through reminiscences about events from the late 1960s to the present, she reflects on changes in her life and how it’s been informed by her Christian faith. She recalls her grandparents, her childhood, and her years as a geriatric clinical nurse specialist, drawing lessons about aging from every stage, always accompanied by practical advice and insights: “If you’ve been sitting and reading awhile, it's time to turn your head, change positions, do some stretches, or stand up and walk a bit,” she writes in one representative passage. “My nursing language would state I need to balance activity vs. rest.” She also frequently talks about how her faith is a part of her daily life: “My daily challenge is to hear Christ’s voice and not my own.” Each chapter ends with a section of direct interaction with the reader, including discussion questions under the heading “Your Turn,” such as “Who are your role models for aging now? Make a list of your top five. Have they changed over the past ten years?” At every stage of her book, Blue effectively combines a funny, happy-go-lucky attitude toward the aging process with an energetic interrogation of what her readers think about getting old. At one point, she intriguingly asks, “What are you hungry for at the age of sixty or seventy?” which can apply both to actual food—her advice on daily matters, such as food indulgences or staying well-hydrated, run throughout the book—and deeper hungers to stay engaged and motivated in later years. Aging Christian readers will likely feel as if they’re reading the advice of an old friend.
An upbeat and gently challenging series of observations about growing older.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-055-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Mascot Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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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