An amusing and highly informative, albeit occasionally challenging, read, best for radio buffs.
Mahoney fondly recalls his career as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio technician in this memoir.
In 1988, the 23-year-old author realized it was time for him to get a real job, one that would support an adult lifestyle. Across the street from the Toronto apartment Mahoney shared with three other young men was the CBC Radio building. He walked in and told the receptionist he was looking for a job. When she asked him what kind of a job, he replied “something technical.” To this day he doesn’t know why he said that, but his response would define his career over the next three decades (his memoir focuses on the 20 years before he advanced to a managerial position). His first job was keeping track of all the signal frequencies connecting the CBC network that stretched across Canada: “The idea was to patch the audio down these lines one after another and work with other audio engineers across the country to measure the frequency response.” By the time he was encouraged to move into management, he was a recording engineer and producer, a job he loved. In dozens of amiable, frequently humorous vignettes, Mahoney describes the plethora of equipment that had to be set up, monitored, calibrated, and modified, all to produce the perfect sound for transmitting across four time zones. The decidedly upbeat, conversational tone of his prose will help nontechies past the stumbling blocks of text heavy with technological jargon and the minutiae of putting together a successful radio program (Mahoney includes a useful glossary of terminology). And although only a few of the numerous luminaries he has worked with will be familiar to non-Canadian readers, the stories are entertaining. They contain a wealth of information about the intricacies of creating sound effects that will enable listeners to mentally visualize action as Mahoney details the nuances involved in picking the right mic, the best buffer, the acoustically appropriate flooring for different footsteps, and a host of other elements.
An amusing and highly informative, albeit occasionally challenging, read, best for radio buffs.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781999431167
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Donovan Street Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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