A bright, perky, and artfully executed lifestyle guide.
A self-help debut that aims to encourage healthy habits.
Hope, an emergency room doctor based in the Detroit area, offers an informative, conversational book that’s built around easy-to-adopt “small, sustained daily efforts” to improve one’s well-being. Although some readers may find her stated platform of “five minutes a day…to create a healthy habit” a bit simplistic, it effectively establishes an approachable tone. Part I lays groundwork with some basic psychological concepts, such as how to overcome obstacles, set goals, and become motivated to develop healthy routines. Hope employs an informal, direct style, combined with relevant examples, to help readers find their reason (or “real why”) for wanting to change. She emphasizes easy-to-accomplish “quick wins,” such as drinking more water, but she also recognizes that making lasting change is a long-term process. Along the way, Hope introduces four fictional patients: Sarah, Bill, Mary, and George. Each represents a different life stage—a mom in her 30s with elderly parents, an entrepreneur in his 40s, an empty nester in her 50s, and a retiree in his 60s, respectively—and these neatly define the book’s intended audience. The patients are useful in demonstrating how to apply “the four pillars of health”—“eat,” “sleep,” “burn” (via exercise), and “release” (of stress)—detailed in Part II. Hope has a knack for writing in everyday terms, whether she’s explaining portion size, the effects of sleep deprivation, practical approaches to exercise, or how to de-stress. To keep things flowing, she cleverly inserts a “Nerd Alert” when more technical detail is necessary. Her self-deprecation regarding the inclusion of these sidebars is charming: “I’m a huge nerd, and I couldn’t be happier about it,” she writes. “Sometimes I can’t help but throw down and geek out on some science.” The four pillars themselves are nothing new, but Hope doles out authoritative advice regarding each. The fictional patients nicely provide “top ten” lists of tips at the ends of their chapters, and the book’s conclusion is strongly positive and encouraging. There are also five helpful appendices, including one that lists “five-minute health-ups,” such as writing down one’s food goals.
A bright, perky, and artfully executed lifestyle guide.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1262-4
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
IN THE NEWS
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
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