A solid guide to storytelling with a purpose.
A debut manual focuses on crafting personal stories for professional success and valuable connections.
In this business book, Rebelo introduces readers to his “PeakStory” model for constructing personal narratives that convey important information about the writers while helping them to land a job, build a network, or attract a client. The guide explains the author’s trademarked “storypathing,” a framework for linking tales to the identity the teller wants to project. Rebelo writes that “by making sense of where you’ve been and where you’re headed, you can show that you have more engagement and more value wherever you land because your story aligns with who you are.” Subsequent chapters take readers through the steps of developing their own tales following the PeakStory model. Each chapter includes a conceptual explanation—much of the model is drawn from psychology research, and a substantial bibliography is included—examples of the technique in action, often drawn from Rebelo’s students, and a guided exercise to help readers implement each step of the process. One of the volume’s strengths is its emphasis on the different contexts in which PeakStory can be applied, particularly the author’s anecdotes about teaching formerly incarcerated people to use the technique to control the tales they tell about their imprisonment and their plans for the future. Rebelo also does a good job of walking readers through the process of fashioning their stories and showing how each element of the model relates to the others. Although the book is full of the author’s specialized jargon (self-event, blue-dot moments), the terms are fairly easy for uninitiated readers to pick up on. Still, Rebelo’s rhetorical style is not for everyone. His enthusiasm is evident in the text, which often feels like a pep talk from a hard-charging coach or a dynamic motivational speaker, but readers who prefer a more straightforward narrative may find the frequent statements of encouragement and assurances of success distracting. Nonetheless, the manual presents a persuasive case for the validity of the PeakStory model and makes it easy for readers to learn.
A solid guide to storytelling with a purpose.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1964-7
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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