A positive, encouraging book about changing your life, although it ignores some key barriers to happiness.
Phillips explores how personal alignment and purpose-driven change create a more fulfilling life in this self-help guide.
The book’s titular concept, “living in your PJs,” means feeling “Authentic. Relaxed. Free,” according to the author. Signs that you are “in your PJs” include feeling excited, energized, and aligned, while those who feel drained, stuck, or resentful are living outside of their pajamas. Phillips insists that it’s natural to outgrow things, especially jobs, and she gives readers permission to let go and move on. She describes how the “sacred intelligence guiding us all” speaks to people in increasing intensity: by whisper, tap, or two-by-four. The book invites readers to explore their passions but to also beware of “fantasy passions” that look good on paper but might not be a good fit. She uses her own eclectic career history—from corporate life to Chinese medicine, commercial real estate to coaching—to illustrate and normalize pivots. Phillips lays out nine “P” concepts (purpose, passion, play, potential, possibility, persona, positivity, pivot, and permission) as “powerful access points back to your authentic self.” The book concludes with a reminder that “your only job is to stay aware, aligned, and in action.” Phillips writes in a familiar and upbeat tone in this approachable book, which combines self-help advice with the author’s personal and professional experiences of evolution. She empathizes with those suffering from inertia, acknowledging that “nobody gets off a comfortable couch.” But she also empowers such people to make better choices, stating, “You already hold the answers you seek. This book is simply a tool to help you remember.” “PJs Ponderings” in each chapter prompt readers to reflect and write in long form about their lives, with questions like “Where are you living from ‘shoulds’ instead of soul?” However, the author offers little practical guidance on navigating transformation within real-life constraints, such as financial limitations or caregiving responsibilities.
A positive, encouraging book about changing your life, although it ignores some key barriers to happiness.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2025
ISBN: 9798765266205
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Balboa Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2026
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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