A helpful, enlightening, and witty guide on lawyers and their practices.
A Colorado lawyer shines a light on how American lawyers work the legal system and what they really think of some of their clients and colleagues.
In his nonfiction debut, Cook collects stories of “games” lawyers play with people they represent and with one another. Much of his book comprises scenarios based on experiences he’s become familiar with as an attorney: “Every incident in this book is real or an amalgam of real events and people.” Divorce lawyer Jon, for example, wants to settle a case quickly, mostly because he’s fed up with incessant phone calls from his client, Dan, who has two grown children with his wife. Dan felt pressured into marriage years ago by his family, and he now seems at times to want to use Jon as a therapist for related unresolved issues. In another case, criminal defense lawyer Howard believes Danielle, a prosecutor from the district attorney’s office, may be treating his habitual shoplifter client harshly in part because she lost a case against Howard. While these scenarios present a dim view of the legal profession, they also help to humanize lawyers, showing them as real people; some have grown disillusioned as handling foreclosures and divorces has replaced their dreams of fighting for justice. His attorneys have absorbing backstories; estate planning lawyer Emily suffers years of mistreatment and condescension from her male colleagues. The clients have full-bodied backgrounds, too, including children who slowly warm up to their stepmother, only for her to suddenly challenge their inheritance after their father dies. Some parts of this pithy book are appealingly tongue-in-cheek as it covers popular ideas such as that all lawyers would prefer being more-respected doctors. Cook, however, also offers suggestions for anyone dealing with legal “games.” There’s a bulky section on collections agencies and intimidation strategies that lawyers employ to disguise the fact that they have little sway over clients who can’t or won’t pay their bills. The book ends with guidelines for finding a lawyer and steps to take in hiring and, if need be, firing one.
A helpful, enlightening, and witty guide on lawyers and their practices.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-692-12033-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: White Tiger LLC
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Complex, mystical, and helpful, if occasionally obscure, musings on spirituality.
In this autobiographical work, a real estate broker recounts working in the elite Hamptons market on Long Island and following a path to enlightenment, offering tips to those interested in taking a similar journey.
When she was young, Barbaria dabbled in witchcraft and magic. For years, she chose to follow her dark side to achieve success until she realized she had been accumulating numerous enemies along the way. Combining her personal sense of mysticism with Buddhist teachings, she began tuning in to the more benevolent side of her psyche—her “good witch” persona. “It was not until I got slammed over and over and finally brought to my knees that I realized I was in a partnership with a power way higher than my own earthly self,” she writes. “I call this higher power the Divine Spirit.” The author takes readers down the tumultuous road that ultimately led her to enlightenment by intertwining short vignettes, some of which are quite amusing, with long, philosophical passages. At one point, she wrote the names of each person who had wronged her on individual pieces of paper, putting them in containers filled with water that were then placed in her freezer: “I was freezing bad energy yet still there was always more bad energy arriving as I had not yet frozen my own.” Barbaria is a self-described empath, sensitive to the energy fields around her, whether they emanate from people or places. It is a valuable asset in her real estate business. Houses and buildings, she tells readers, have karma. They carry energy that must be respected or trouble will ensue. Writing with a love for linguistic musicality, the author frequently composes lengthy, intricate sentences, and there is often a beauty in their flow. But she also has a fondness for cryptic constructions that seem to be crafted more for style than elucidation: “My out-of-bounds consciousness harmonizes me with rituals around letting down and perusing what my psyche needs to thrive on.” Nonetheless, Barbaria provides useful suggestions for learning to access one’s kinder, more enlightened nature and to establish balance between the light and dark energies of the psyche.
Complex, mystical, and helpful, if occasionally obscure, musings on spirituality.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9794143-3-6
Page Count: 303
Publisher: My Abracadabra
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A jubilant celebration of the poetic form but one lacking in inspiration.
In her debut poetry collection, Wells invokes classical mythology and memories of childhood, travel, and personal growth.
The compilation is split into three sections—“Remembrance,” “A Touch of Humor,” and “Fantasia”—and each is peppered with the author’s drawings and photographs of moments and places described in each poem. The works take on themes of memory, aging, and myth as they delve into the minutiae of the speakers’ lives, including childhood and later travels through Italy, Greece, and Peru. In her work, Wells frequently veers toward prose poetry, as in “Memories in Silver,” and all of her poems maintain a distinctly prosaic narrative quality that falters when tackling moments of emotional significance. In “Pergamum,” for instance, an art student in Italy attempts to capture a Corinthian column, striving to “give a correct image to something / so beautiful and elusive.” It reveals a determined but lackluster approach; most of these poems similarly seem to attempt to capture a “correct” image of a memory, a moment, or a feeling, with mixed results. Occasionally, Wells’ poems successfully move beyond the trappings of mimicry to offer a more poetic and sincere image, as in “The Edelweiss”: “In the highest mountain meadows / On sheer rocks above the graceful colors / Of the Rhododrendons and Enzians….” Others feel more contrived, even relying on author’s notes to explain the poem to readers. Even those in which the poet draws upon the inspiration of classical history and mythology fall flat, simply restating, in less emotionally charged terms, stories that have been told and retold for centuries, as in “Theseus, Ariadne, and Dionysus.”
A jubilant celebration of the poetic form but one lacking in inspiration.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63210-094-8
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Plain View Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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