A clearly written and wide-ranging collection of lessons on becoming a more cheerful, centered, and successful person.
An inspirational manual aims to help readers through life’s difficulties.
In one form or another, Blalock’s nonfiction debut repeatedly asks readers the same question: “What are your solutions for sanity in a world of chaos and complexity?” In these pages, the author distills the lessons of a lifetime in business into his own answers to that question, delivered in bite-sized chapters that keep the book’s tempo swift. Chapter subjects range across a broad spectrum of issues, and the tips are supplied with a minimum of fuss or flourish. Readers are instructed on the value of mindful eating, on healthy ways of dealing with disappointment, on the importance of compromise, on methods of critical thinking, on the role of willpower in long-term planning, on the ability to know when to relinquish a stubborn but pointless hope (“Giving up hope is sometimes prudent in situations where your attention elsewhere is necessary to reach your goals in life” is a typical elaboration), and many other topics. The theme running through all of this lucid material and connecting it is the author’s insistence that being personally and spiritually grounded is the key to both happiness and success. The guide’s encouraging tone derives in large part from Blalock’s optimistic belief that the power to achieve that foundation rests in the hands of each person—this is a self-help book that places a refreshing emphasis on the “self” part. The writing often relies on clichéd thinking—embrace the moment, every day is a new day, change is constant, etc.—and many of the instructions in these brief chapters, however valuable, are truisms that scarcely bear repeating (things like “be kind,” “be honorable,” “be productive,” “be positive”). But the upbeat tone and positive self-improvement advice will make the manual a shot in the arm for despondent or distracted readers.
A clearly written and wide-ranging collection of lessons on becoming a more cheerful, centered, and successful person.Pub Date: April 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4575-6364-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2020
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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