A wild ride of fame, friendships, music, and drugs sure to appeal to Blondie fans and 1970s rock in general.
The iconic singer reveals her legendary journey.
In this whirlwind tour of her life, Harry, one of the most photographed faces in music, deploys an irreverent style well suited to her story. Her tales of life before, during, after, and beyond her time with Blondie are intermixed with interludes that capture the eclectic and electric passion she has for the creative process. In a narrative that feels simultaneously heartfelt and spontaneous, Harry recounts close encounters with violence and harassment with the same immediacy as the moments that catapulted Blondie to worldwide fame. Harry doesn’t focus on the challenges of being a woman in the music industry but rather on the collaborations that fueled her creativity. Though her sound and style influenced rock, and especially women in rock, there’s refreshingly little self-congratulation in these pages. Instead, readers will find reflection on life with a budding band and an uncensored view of what it took to succeed. Whether she’s recounting her experiences making clothes, waitressing, meeting artists, or playing early gigs at CBGB, Harry’s intimate portrait often reads like a love letter to a bygone version of New York City. The narrative reflects the energy of the punk and new wave scene as the author weaves personal stories with entertaining descriptions of partying and playing with the likes of the Ramones, Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie. There is no shortage of notable cameos in Harry’s chronicle of her journey to stardom, and she maintains effervescent senses of humor and grace throughout. From small venues to world tours, bankruptcy to gold records, this account of life behind the fame offers a candid view of the hard work, big breaks, and tough times that came before and after celebrity. The co-founder of Blondie, Chris Stein, provides the introduction.
A wild ride of fame, friendships, music, and drugs sure to appeal to Blondie fans and 1970s rock in general.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-074958-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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