A series of quick, impressionistic affirmations for Christians in a beautifully crafted booklet.
A series of meditations examines the Christian life.
Neary opens this slim nonfiction debut with a vivid account of the night at Bible study camp in her 16th year when she decided to challenge Jesus directly, praying that if he would reveal himself to her, she would serve him. At once, the room filled with light and breeze, and she felt herself in the presence of her Lord. This kind of encounter is in accord with what Neary’s collaborator Day writes in his preface about the Christian God. “He wants to be found,” Day claims. “He wants to be known. He has been waiting for you to arrive at this moment in history to make Himself known to you.” Since someone who wants to be known would actually make himself known—not through private, ambiguously felt presences but by direct, observable, and unambiguous encounters—this and other sentiments expressed throughout the book indicate its target readership is the authors’ fellow devout Christians. And for those Christians, Neary and Day have enlisted the aid of artist Lee to make their book a lovely, illuminated work. There are briskly narrated meditations on seemingly trivial items (the desert, for instance, or the alabaster jar containing the scented oils Mary Magdalene used to anoint Jesus, which becomes the focal point for an intriguing elaboration). And each of the volume’s sections is suffused with the kind of peaceful optimism (“We are meant to have joy all the time and have it be our strength,” for example) that the authors clearly intend to impart. There are occasional minor inconsistencies. On the same page, for instance, readers are told conflicting tidbits about angels: that they understand nothing about humans except what they learn from God and that they know mortals’ stories because they have studied them. But the majority of this handsome pamphlet acts as pure reassurance for the faithful.
A series of quick, impressionistic affirmations for Christians in a beautifully crafted booklet.Pub Date: March 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-7065-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
