Pithy portions of wisdom well-told.
A lifetime of collected anecdotes in an excellent and entertaining resource for speakers, writers, and storytellers.
Physician, researcher, and speaker Rajah writes that he spent 20 years amassing these 365 parables and is grateful for his early realization that he needed to record these stories because “the faintest ink is stronger than the best memory.” Each month of the year has a theme: e.g., “Philosophy and Wisdom” for January, “Best Humor” for June, and “Inspiration” for December. Most days, the anecdote is accompanied by a brief message and a quote, the sources ranging from Che Guevara and Friedrich Nietzsche to Martin Luther King Jr. and Mark Twain. “Plowing Troubled Land” tells of a Jewish potato farmer sent to a concentration camp while his gentile wife was left to manage the farm. The man wrote his wife a letter and said, “Don’t dare plow the field. There is a lot of hidden hardware buried.” The very night she received the letter, the Gestapo arrived and raided the farm, digging up all the land. The confused wife wrote her husband about the incident, and he replied, “Now plant the potatoes”: after all, “Every crisis represents at the same time an opportunity.” It’s hard to imagine a reader who won’t discover fresh stories in these pages. That said, a few of the stories are overly familiar or commonplace, such as the “Footprints in the Sand” legend in which a man dreams he’s walking on the beach with God. Nevertheless, the well-written book would make a fine resource for anyone needing a brief illustration to share at a church or civic club meeting. While offering a year’s worth of stories, the book never turns tiresome, perfectly illustrating the quote from Winston Churchill that a good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: “long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest”—an apt description of the book itself.
Pithy portions of wisdom well-told.Pub Date: May 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1502462473
Page Count: 470
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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