Readers looking to strengthen the relationship between the self and the outside world will find this book useful and...
A step-by-step guide to uncovering one’s inner artist and, in the process, healing one’s psychic wounds.
When one is a child, one has access to the unlimited power of creativity, and one can express oneself in art and writing and song without judgment. But when downbeat inner and outer voices get loud enough, argues debut author Celebre, one can end up abandoning the self inside and its profound connections to the world. There is, however, a cure: as practicing shaman Sandra Ingerman writes in her foreword, “Using the creative process as the foundation for self-discovery, you will learn to override limiting beliefs of your mind, connect to unlimited possibilities, establish a deep sense of trust with your intuition, and then learn to listen and follow your intuitive voice.” Celebre guides readers along this path by dividing her book into four sections: “Roots and Bones,” “Let Your Creative Soul Fly,” “Creative Alchemy,” and “Spreading the Joy,” each designed to help the reader further uncover the artist within. In the first section, for example, the author suggests starting with a “body scan” in order to ground the mind in the physical, and recognize when a feeling or thought is true and right. Throughout the book, Celebre offers exercises to “reclaim” one’s connection to oneself and the universe, as well as brief asides on the history of intuitive painting and her own creative journey. Although readers may think they know what the words “body,” “mind,” and “spirit” mean, Celebre gives helpful definitions that illuminate her philosophy (“Body,” she says, encompasses the “Chakra, meridians, and nerve plexus” as well as the expected “organs, bones, muscles, cells”). Quotes from figures as diverse as Rumi, René Descartes, and Ellen DeGeneres are strewn throughout the text, which demonstrate the universality of the author’s message of self-discovery.
Readers looking to strengthen the relationship between the self and the outside world will find this book useful and liberating.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9906778-0-2
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Brushheart Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2015
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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