A highly conversational self-help book that successfully documents how many have made positive decisions in their lives.
A collection of anecdotes about making life changes that focuses on shifting one’s habits and finding new routes to success.
McManus (co-author: Ten Traits for Top Performers, 2006) and Skidmore (co-author: Rock Your Life, 2017) collect a large series of personal stories in this self-improvement book, including tales of career changes, improved diets, family decisions, and romantic relationships. Each chapter begins with an essay about the importance of change in a particular area of life and illustrates it through real-life accounts of struggle and triumph. For example, in one section, a woman reflects on her decision to separate from an abusive mother; this painful process, she learned, was crucial to her ability to lead a healthy, productive, stable life. In another chapter, a man discovers that he must change his diet in order to prevent health problems compounded by years of unhealthy, sedentary behavior. The stories vary in depth and severity, making this a great book for readers looking to improve either large or small areas of their lives. Choice, the authors explain, is the most important tool that one has to design one’s own existence. Although the book does take on a repetitive rhythm, with each new theme followed by short examples, the stories are varied enough to keep things fresh and engaging. One chapter, for instance, discusses deepening one’s social connections by having in-depth conversations with the people one meets in such settings as volunteer organizations or educational classes. Specifically, the authors suggest straying from the topic that brought you together with others in order to find out more about their lifestyles and interests. It’s only through such fearless exploration, the authors assert, that bonds can grow. Although not every chapter will speak to every reader, the book supplies something for everyone.
A highly conversational self-help book that successfully documents how many have made positive decisions in their lives.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-938015-82-3
Page Count: 206
Publisher: CKCGlobalmedia
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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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