A sharp, sometimes witty, often helpful map for pointing your life in the direction of happiness.
Romero’s motivational guide aims to put readers on the road to happiness.
The author, like millions of other people around the world enduring the global pandemic, had a horrible 2020. Here she tells the story of how she bounced back and offers lessons for others trying to get back on track. In the period covered by the text, the divorced Romero experienced a new romance that quickly ended in infidelity, the loss of her job, and the death of her father from Covid-19. Though the author doesn’t like the term “self-help,” this is essentially a self-help book, full of tips to help hone the mind, body, and soul. Each chapter includes what Romero calls a “happiness check,” including exercises to help the reader achieve happiness. The first happiness check includes a deep-breathing tutorial, an exercise to help the reader feel empathy for someone who has wronged them, and guidance for developing a personal affirmation. Other topics include retraining your brain to be happy, staying resilient, maintaining gratitude and faith, practicing grace, setting goals, and finding a purpose. The author holds a degree in psychology and asserts that all of her advice is supported by clinical research—she backs this up with a number of citations that lend credibility to her arguments. At the same time, the book is enjoyable; Romero’s a sharp, straightforward writer. Sometimes, though, she tries a bit too hard: The book is littered with gratuitous pop culture references (Sharknado, J. Lo., Survivor, Oprah, Judge Judy, Pete Davidson), making Romero seem at times a bit like the mom who wants to be cool around her kids’ friends. She also seems to think she’s being relatable with her use of expletives, which is constant (“F*ck you, 2020. You seriously kicked my ass”). There’s nothing really wrong with that; it’s just that, coming from an adult professional with grown children, it can appear calculated and patronizing. This should not deter the curious, however—this guide is filled with information that just might help the most unhappy of us.
A sharp, sometimes witty, often helpful map for pointing your life in the direction of happiness.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425890
Page Count: 264
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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