Don Ho lovers rejoice; this colorful coffee table book is everything readers could possibly want from an autobiography of...
Loa maika’i eluhelu e pili ana no Don Ho. (Possible grammar issues notwithstanding, that’s Hawaiian for “A very good book about Don Ho.”)
Hawaiian vocalist/songwriter Ho released his first album in 1965, and from then until his death in 2007, it could be argued that he was the island version of Sammy Davis Jr.–a versatile entertainer as well as a compelling singer. He cut the lilting ballad “Tiny Bubbles,” his first big hit and his signature song until the end of his life, in 1966, and soon afterwards took the mainland by tropical storm. From Las Vegas to New York, the affable Ho performed anywhere and everywhere. He hit his peak of popularity in the late-’60s and early ’70s, thanks in part to appearances on such TV shows as The Brady Bunch, Batman and I Dream of Jeannie. Ho led a relatively drama-free life–no documented heroin binges, polygamy or the like–which one would think might make for a less-than-scintillating autobiography. But the performer was so beloved that the reader can’t help but be charmed by this generous outing. It’s formatted as an oral history rather than a straight narrative, which gives the book a conversational, relaxed and intimate vibe–the kind of vibe that Ho himself likely exuded. Filled with dozens of photos and heartfelt reminiscences from family, friends and showbiz industry cohorts, My Music, My Life isn’t an autobiography as much as a celebration. Ho summed it up best when he said, “People used me as a good excuse for a party a thousand times.” And that’s exactly what My Music, My Life is–a party honoring an island icon.
Don Ho lovers rejoice; this colorful coffee table book is everything readers could possibly want from an autobiography of this Hawaiian treasure.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9790647-4-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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