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Some Things You Keep

Name: Some Things You Keep
Author: J.J. Landis
ISBN: 978-1501083433

LETTING GO. HOLDING ON. GROWING UP.

by J.J. Landis ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 25, 2015

An honest memoir from a strong woman that will appeal to fans of Christian narratives.

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Debut author Landis preaches the “good news” in her true-life story of redemption.

It was a hard-knock life in Landis’ early years. Her parents divorced when she was 8, and her mother committed suicide when she was 12. This devastating event shaped Landis’ life, sending her into a tailspin that lasted well over a decade. Despite the support of her father and stepfamily, Landis became emotionally withdrawn, feeling isolated and unloved. Thus began a downward slide into drugs, alcohol, and the wrong type of men. Landis rummages through her emotional baggage, dissecting how, in the period following her mother’s death, she wanted attention and acknowledgement yet shied away when it was offered. She lays bare all her past transgressions, tracing the path from her first tastes of alcohol to her eventual and habitual use of cocaine. Landis’ life was full of bad choices and risky behavior as she struggled with her inability to truly come to grips with her mother’s death. At one point, she was raped by a man and then went on to date him, despite her deep disgust at both him and herself. Ultimately, Landis was able to come to terms with her emotions and self-destructive behavior, attributing her redemption to Jesus Christ. Landis’ conversational narrative memoir of tragedy and triumph isn’t unique, but that doesn’t make her story any less admirable. Landis does jump among the chronology of her past, which can be confusing, and while many readers may not relate to the details of her life, the larger threads of struggle, depression, and faith are certainly familiar to many. Her relationship (or, at times, lack thereof) with Christ and religion is a consistent theme, one she finally comes to grips with in the end. However, she can sometimes push the message a little hard. As compelling as her salvation through Christ will be for some, the appeal to a broader audience may be limited, as the latter half of her memoir feels a bit like a sermon: “I wanted to carry my candle into the darkness and shine Jesus’ light for all the world.”

An honest memoir from a strong woman that will appeal to fans of Christian narratives.

Pub Date: March 25, 2015

ISBN: 978-1501083433

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 12, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)