A lean but surprisingly comprehensive guide that skillfully tells readers how to analyze and take control of their...
A debut manual offers advice on reprogramming inner attitudes about succeeding in life.
Joyette’s slim handbook starts with an appealingly functional premise: that people approach the world’s challenges in ways largely determined by their early upbringings and personal “programming.” The author maintains that individuals can change this programming if they work at it (and, of course, consider the thoughts and guidelines laid out in this volume). Joyette wants his readers to ask themselves some disarmingly simple questions: What explanations do you have for the way your life currently is, and if it isn’t to your liking, why is that? What are the factors that have gone into making your life and personality the way they are? The central contention of these pages is that most of the answers to such questions lie inside individuals—and are under their control if they’ll only free themselves from negative, self-limiting thinking. “It is incredible,” Joyette sarcastically notes, “how expert we become at ‘knowing’ what we can and cannot do.” The essence of this inspirational book’s teachings—presented in clear, highly kinetic prose—is that such expertise is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, the product of letting all of life’s negative stimuli pile up and harden into a crust of self-defeat. The author’s advice examines many personal improvement topics, always distinguishing between inner and outer enhancements—and emphasizing that the former is more important. On the subject of physical appearance, for instance, he advises modifying it in positive ways. But he stresses that the crucial second step is to “internalize positive beliefs” about appearance rather than tying self-esteem directly to it (“If you attach your self-worth in any way to how you look, and you aren’t satisfied with what you look like, you’re setting yourself up to be miserable”). Joyette includes a particularly blunt and enlightening chapter on how to apply these self-image improvement techniques when one is black in America—a subset frequently plagued with its own challenges, which the author addresses with plainspoken sensitivity.
A lean but surprisingly comprehensive guide that skillfully tells readers how to analyze and take control of their self-images.Pub Date: June 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2416-5
Page Count: 168
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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