Readers approaching their senior years will find a wealth of insights and motivation in these pages.
Twelve interviewees share how to “live all of life,” far into the elder years, in this self-help work.
In his sixth book, Elias sets out seven key tenets for reframing aging, gleaned from his 50 years as a psychologist and Chinese medicine practitioner. Twelve “pathfinders” speak to readers in excerpts from his interviews with them. These “modern-day sages” range in age from late 70s to 100-plus. Elias embraces “elderhood” as an opportunity for examining where one has been and where one refuses to go. As such, the book isn’t a bucket-list pep talk; instead, it encourages readers to remember their past selves, as when it asks them to revisit long-shelved dreams and pursue them once again. The work also suggests, among other things, that readers rewrite their life “scripts”; practice mindfulness; awaken joy through humor; exercise; and find one’s “tribe.” The author’s commitments to meditation, seeking presence, and other spiritual concepts dominate the latter parts of the book, but he designates “mind over matter” as the central theme. He effectively draws on his own experiences, as well, to round out his message, which isn’t focused on how to live a longer life, per se, but on ways to pack one’s latter years with vitality. The language is lively and often fun, in part because a colorful profile of each pathfinder opens every chapter. For instance, 80-year-old Carolee Schneemann, a maverick artist and feminist who in her youth attended Bard College on a full scholarship, says that she was once suspended for a year because she painted a nude self-portrait. Widespread recognition of her talents came late in her life, when, in 2015, the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg showed a retrospective of her art called Kinetic Painting. Her advice? “Keep sexually alive, eat kelp, and have a pet!”
Readers approaching their senior years will find a wealth of insights and motivation in these pages.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9966542-3-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Five Element Healing Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A frank, fierce, and heartfelt memoir.
In her long-awaited second book, the award-winning comedian chronicles the personal challenges that have made her “more alive, more human, and…more interesting.”
As Haddish, author of The Last Black Unicorn, recounts, her Eritrean-born father left the family when she was 4. Several years later, her mother, diagnosed with head injury–induced schizophrenia, began beating her out of frustration. In foster care by age 13, Haddish eventually became the “cute homeless” girl who lived in her car. Yet she still managed to find unexpected (and sometimes wildly surreal) comedy in almost everything. For example, she recalls how her Jehovah’s Witness mother would tell stories about “enzymes” boys carried that would “eat your face up” after kissing, which Haddish innocently repeated to more sex-savvy friends. When her father suddenly reappeared in her life, the author remembers how she celebrated their tender moment of telephone reconnection by crying into “some marijuana plants I had growing on my kitchen windowsill.” A recurring topic throughout the book is sexuality, which Haddish discusses in refreshingly unfettered ways. When, for example, she started taking Paxil (an antidepressant) in her 20s, she experienced severe vaginal chafing. With the trademark outrageousness that met with rejection from establishment comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, she remarks, “Do you know how hard it is to walk fast when your coochie is dry?” Nothing is sacred nor forbidden as she jokes about the joys of “riding that D” with fat men and her grandmother’s advice to keep a man: “You gonna have to kiss that banana every day.” Featuring liberal use of slang and profanity, Haddish's book showcases not only her ability to transform the “shit” of tragedy into the “fertilizer” that “makes you grow,” but also her relentless, utterly courageous pursuit of joy.
A frank, fierce, and heartfelt memoir.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781635769531
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Diversion Books
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A smart collection of articles and interviews on stupidity.
Are people getting dumber, or does it just look that way?
That question underlies this collection of essays by and interviews with psychologists, neurologists, philosophers, and other well-credentialed intellectuals. A handful of contributors have ties to North American universities—Dan Ariely, Alison Gopnik, and Daniel Kahneman among them—but most live in France, and their views have a Gallic flavor: blunt, opinionated, and tolerant of terms in disfavor in the U.S., including, as translated from the French by Schillinger, moron, idiot, and imbecile. Marmion, a France-based psychologist, sets the tone by rebutting the idea that we live in a “golden age of idiocy”: “As far back as the written record extends, the greatest minds of their ages believed this to be the case.” Nonetheless, today’s follies differ in two ways from those of the past. One is that the stakes are higher: “The novelty of the contemporary era is that it would take only one idiot with a red button to eradicate all stupidity, and the whole world with it. An idiot elected by sheep who were only too proud to choose their slaughterer.” The other is that—owing partly to social media—human follies are more visible, whether they involve UFO sightings or “some jerk pressing the elevator button like a maniac when it’s already been pressed.” Social psychologist Ewa Drozda-Senkowska distinguishes between ignorance and stupidity, noting that “stupidity, true stupidity, is the hallmark of a frightening intellectual complacency that leaves absolutely no room for doubt.” Other experts consider whether stupidity has an evolutionary basis, how it erodes morale, and the “very particular kind of adult stupidity” exemplified by Donald Trump. Although not a self-help guide, this book suggests that it rarely pays to argue with blockheads. Unfortunately, notes neuropsychologist Sebastian Dieguez, the “imbecile…doesn’t have the mental resources that would permit him to perceive his own imbecility.”
A smart collection of articles and interviews on stupidity.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313499-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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