A book that hopefully marks the beginning of a fruitful writing career.
A quirky book of personal essays by a successful Hollywood professional.
Many recognize Lahti as the acclaimed actress who has received Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe awards for her outstanding performances in countless moving female roles. In her first book, the author launches into the literary world with the same dynamism that has enlivened her acting roles. “Many of these stories are told through the lens of my ever-evolving feminism,” she writes, “the lens through which I see just about everything….I’ve been a clumsy feminist, finding solid footing only to be knocked down again. And I keep finding new veils to be lifted.” With brazen honesty, Lahti recounts the many surprising, heartbreaking, and identity-building events that have punctuated her life. From her earliest childhood memories to her 1960s rebel heart to the launch of her career to more intimate admissions about her acting and mothering techniques, the author crafts an enjoyable book that only requires from readers a willingness to believe, participate, laugh, and grow along with her. Though she identifies herself as a clumsy feminist multiple times, there’s nothing clumsy about her feminism. She is adaptable to the changing sociopolitical climates and never shies away from being challenged by the younger women close to her. “These millennials have taught me that their ‘pro-sex feminism’ is the undeniable next step in empowerment,” she writes. “If men choose to regard them as ‘objects,’ tough shit, that is their problem.” Given the level of Lahti’s success, it is refreshing to read a book of essays that oozes modesty, humor, and complete levelheadedness. The author’s compelling and thought-provoking stories effectively reflect her wisdom as well as her desire to share that wisdom and to keep learning throughout her life. As she writes, “I see this collection as the highs and lows of a feminist who is very much still a work in progress.”
A book that hopefully marks the beginning of a fruitful writing career.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-266367-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© 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.
