A compelling and cathartic remembrance and self-help guide.
Greer offers the story of his evolution from business leader to shamanic practitioner.
The book opens with a ritual that the author and a shaman did to “summon and engage helpful energies, including that of the jaguar.”The memoir goes on to peel back the layers of Greer’s life. He was raised in a Midwestern suburban communityin the 1950s, which encouraged hard work, a lack of emotional expression, and a belief in traditional and stereotypical masculine roles. These notions, he says, shaped his early life choices to pursue metallurgy and a career in the oilbusiness. Although these decisions brought him some outward success, he says, they left him hungry for deeper connections with other people. As he confronted health and marital problems, he realized that his competitive nature had serious drawbacks; his marriage later ended. He refocused his life with a blend of Jungian analysis and shamanic spirituality, which, he says, helped him to deal with childhood feelings of loss and to reconnect with his high school sweetheart, whom he later married. Now he’s both a student and teacher of shamanic spirituality.Greer’s work is filled with engaging moments of self-reflection, as when he highlights how many of his life choices were driven by his fear of a deeper calling; for instance, he notes that he used metallurgy to “burn out” his poeticism. Throughout the narrative, Greer effectively invites readers to look closely at the ways they may be unknowingly limiting their own potential. To foster such analysis, he includes thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter, encouraging readers to recognize and challenge familiar patterns of their lives—and he notes that it’s never too early, or too late, to examine one’s own life in this way. The book’s ultimate message is that when one accepts one’s true self, one can discover new creativity, passion, and possibilities.
A compelling and cathartic remembrance and self-help guide.Pub Date: April 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63051-904-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chiron Publications
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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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