Both sentimental and inspirational—for fans only.
With the assistance of Rolling Stone contributing editor Wild (He Is…I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond, 2008, etc.), country-music sensation Paisley pridefully shares his thoughts and thanks on a charmed “life in progress.”
Born in West Virginia to a schoolteacher mother and a highway worker, the acclaimed performer enjoyed musically inspired roots peopled with wise advocates who helped shape his moralistic sensibilities. The author fondly recalls the guitar he received from his grandfather, a lover of instrumental country music, on his eighth Christmas. With enthusiastic prose, Paisley writes of a swift ascent to greatness beginning in the third grade, when he asked to play guitar in church. Under the careful mentorship of professional musician Clarence Goddard, his talent branched out to songwriting at age 12 and a warm-up performance at the Wheeling Jamboree. The singer’s good fortune quickly blossomed in Nashville with a first album and the formation of a multi-city tour, what he calls a “curious kind of traveling circus.” Paisley writes of his indebtedness to bands like Alabama, Restless Heart and the Beatles, and to legendary guitarist Buck Owens and the Grand Ole Opry. There are also gushing accolades from country-music luminaries like Vince Gill, Carrie Underwood and Roy Clark, who calls him a “true superstar.” If Paisley is repetitive with personal facts, his praise of hard work is redeeming and honorable; he admits that he would be “at best mediocre if not for ingenuity and sweat.” This sage motto, coupled with the author’s obvious adoration for country music, makes the book ideal for a younger generation of devotees.
Both sentimental and inspirational—for fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2552-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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