A less-than-thrilling story of a South Pacific island adventure.
Chase (100 People to Meet Before You Die, 2014, etc.) recounts a mother-daughter journey through New Guinea in this travel memoir.
The author and her 14-year-old daughter, Katherine, were walking through the jungle north of the Baliem Valley in New Guinea when they came upon a pitched battle involving Dani warriors crouching in the bush, slick with pig grease and soot, and firing arrows into the air. Chase reached for her pepper spray, prepared to defend her child, but then she realized they were witnessing a sort of play: a mock battle between two tribes trying to impress each other. It was the first of many surreal moments for Chase and her daughter as they spent a month living among the tribal cultures of New Guinea. They were there by choice to seek out a simpler mode of living: “Leaving the excess baggage of distractions and our need for material things allowed us the opportunity to learn the art of living in unpretentious ways.” They get a bit more than they bargained for, but they discover an inner strength by roughing it. Not only do they become more self-reliant, but they also learn to rely on each other in ways that they couldn’t have predicted. The numerous, full-color photographs are the book’s strongest attribute, as they document a wide swath of jungle and village life. The uneven text, unfortunately, is less compelling. Its look into the daily lives of the Papuans is interesting, but the author’s observations rarely approach profundity. She often expresses concern about the threat that the modern world poses for the ancient ways of the jungle tribes, even as her presence represents a manifestation of that threat. Although the book frames the trip as an insightful demonstration of bonding and discovery, readers may never quite shake the notion that they’re reading a comprehensive vacation scrapbook.
A less-than-thrilling story of a South Pacific island adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937630-56-0
Page Count: 324
Publisher: AdventureTravelPress.com
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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