A volume of humorous hints that may be best suited as a gift for someone who’s tired of traditional advice books.
Adler, in her debut, offers a book of not-so-serious advice for living.
This collection of witty one- and two-liners is aimed at helping readers navigate the modern world. Readers should probably exercise a healthy amount of caution, however, in actually employing Auntie Jodi’s tips, lest they offend and alienate everyone they know. Adler divides the book into four sections, one for each season of the year, and offers up advice on a variety of social situations and predicaments. The book tends to assume a certain amount of affluence, or at least high social standing, on the part of readers; overall, Adler comes off as a Miss Manners for the Hollywood set. The book’s quick snippets of advice can easily be read in a single sitting or in short doses when one needs a quick laugh. The humor tends to be dry and sarcastic: “Those darling little children of yours down with the flu? Simply go on an impromptu vacay with your hubby…by the time you come back, the kiddies will be healthy as can be.” Other times, the hints mock traditional manners with suggestions such as, “Conversation at a lull while you are at a formal dinner? Convince your table mates to do ‘the wave’ whenever the help enters with another course.” The book covers everything from advice on how to arrange one’s shoes (“by length of time you can actually walk in them”) to the etiquette of changing one’s mind about attending an inauguration or coronation (“always send a personal note of regret—or, if need be, make a quick, last-minute phone call”). The collection does tend to grow stale when finished all at once, but read occasionally, it will elicit a smile or two.
A volume of humorous hints that may be best suited as a gift for someone who’s tired of traditional advice books.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 59
Publisher: Ginger Jam Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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