An appealing celebration of the joy in basic pleasures—family, travel, and wine.
In a hilarious departure from his previous work (Respiratory Infections: Diagnosis & Management, 1983), medical researcher Pennington pens a series of personal essays.
After medical school and a career in medical research spanning both coasts and spots in between—Boston, Washington, D.C., and California—in the later years of his career, Pennington found himself with time to assist with babysitting his young grandchildren and explore myriad interests—flying, skiing, acting, writing, and wine tasting. These experiences took him on voyages to San Francisco’s Mission District, Colorado’s mountains, and, terrifyingly, a preschooler’s dance recital. Pennington proved himself not to be the most natural babysitter, sharing with his young granddaughter particularly petrifying scenes from The Shining and inciting his daughter’s wrath. While Pennington pursued some of these interests only after semiretirement and eventual retirement, he studied and collected wine for several decades. His knowledge and experience with wine serve as the focus for the later chapters of the book. Several of the 19 essays, or stories, as Pennington calls them, focus on his and his wife’s trips with their grown children, son- and daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren. Despite the author’s obvious intelligence, he self-deprecatingly portrays himself as often slightly befuddled—perfectly understandable when dealing with young children. Although some of the chapters lead naturally from one to the next, each was clearly written independently, leading to occasional repetition. His easy, natural humor flows through the prose, while his wife Diane’s frequent frustration with him does as well. He chronicles his frugality—telling of his attachment to a 1997 Mercedes and a frayed shirt—but he and his wife are financially well-off, traveling extensively and investing in a wine cellar. Although Pennington may not be completely relatable to all readers, his humility and humor will endear him to most.
An appealing celebration of the joy in basic pleasures—family, travel, and wine.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5462-0770-2
Page Count: 200
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.
Savvy counsel and starter lists for fretting parents.
New York Times Book Review editor Paul (My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, 2017, etc.) and Russo, the children’s book editor for that publication, provide standard-issue but deftly noninvasive strategies for making books and reading integral elements in children’s lives. Some of it is easier said than done, but all is intended to promote “the natural, timeless, time-stopping joys of reading” for pleasure. Mediumwise, print reigns supreme, with mild approval for audio and video books but discouraging words about reading apps and the hazards of children becoming “slaves to the screen.” In a series of chapters keyed to stages of childhood, infancy to the teen years, the authors supplement their advice with short lists of developmentally appropriate titles—by their lights, anyway: Ellen Raskin’s Westing Game on a list for teens?—all kitted out with enticing annotations. The authors enlarge their offerings with thematic lists, from “Books That Made Us Laugh” to “Historical Fiction.” In each set, the authors go for a mix of recent and perennially popular favorites, leaving off mention of publication dates so that hoary classics like Janice May Udry’s A Tree Is Nice seem as fresh as David Wiesner’s Flotsam and Carson Ellis’ Du Iz Tak? and sidestepping controversial titles and themes in the sections for younger and middle-grade readers—with a few exceptions, such as a cautionary note that some grown-ups see “relentless overparenting” in Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series doesn’t make the cut except for a passing reference to its “troubling treatment of Indians.” The teen lists tend to be edgier, salted with the provocative likes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and a nod to current demands for more LGBTQ and other #ownvoices books casts at least a glance beyond the mainstream. Yaccarino leads a quartet of illustrators who supplement the occasional book cover thumbnails with vignettes and larger views of children happily absorbed in reading.
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0530-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite Meyer's unusual perspective, this journal contains memorable passages of joy and sorrow for parents and children of...
A 70-something reflects on becoming the father of his sixth child at age 59.
Meyer fathered three sons during the Vietnam War era while married to his first wife. A journalism professor at California State University-Long Beach, he entered a second marriage to a student 27 years his junior, fathering two daughters and a son. After much agonizing about balancing career and family, Meyer took early retirement from his teaching to become a parent and a home-based freelance writer. Before his retirement, the first batch of his diary-like entries became a book, 1989's My Summer With Molly: The Journal of a Second Generation Father. After retirement, he became a regular journal-writer, musing about parenting and dozens of related threads. Just as Molly dominated the first collection of entries, son Franz dominates the second collection. At turns doctrinaire, old fuddy-duddy, self-deprecating, melancholy, humorous, even hip, Meyer is a thoughtful guide through daily life. The seemingly oblique title becomes clear in the context of the W.B. Yeats' quotation from which it is derived: "An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick unless / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress..." Meyer sounds ageist at times, but throughout, he is determined to fight his own aging and to serve as a good husband and father. Eschewing sentimentality much of the time, Meyer can't help occasionally lapsing into teary-eyed territory. He concludes that "geezer fatherdom" is worth the costs, that "in the end, there is only love, active and remembered, to warm the chill of a cooling universe."
Despite Meyer's unusual perspective, this journal contains memorable passages of joy and sorrow for parents and children of all ages.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-942273-05-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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