A rewarding, enthusiastic meditation on appreciating the countless benefits of aging gracefully.
A septuagenarian ponders the meaning of getting older in this guide.
Now in her 70s, O’Brien was 60 years old when she found herself struggling with her own personal relationship with aging. Eventually, she refocused her attention on aging positively rather than buying into modern society’s obsession with youthfulness. After years spent researching the process of aging, she shares this knowledge and celebrates it throughout this robust manual, encouraging a radical change in how readers think about growing older and how they perceive elders around them. The author nobly considers aging to be a manifestation of how life is summed up and the “most important experience you have as a human being.” With an energetic and welcoming prose style, she urges readers to abandon modern Western declinist, anti-aging prejudices in favor of an upbeat stance boosting reflections on personal, lifelong accomplishments. O’Brien also explores global views through Eastern mindsets, rituals, and customs and examines common perspectives on aging throughout history, referencing the works of literary scholars, historians, therapists, physicists, and philosophers as well as incorporating her own anecdotes. In addition, the book offers advice on employment in one’s later years and the benefits and blissful joys of retirement. She recommends that readers resist the compulsion to be in touch with others constantly via social media and cellphone apps and instead enjoy a refreshing, solitary “mini-Sabbath.” Most importantly, she advocates for older adults to acknowledge their wrinkles, praise their unique eccentricities, make peace with their aging bodies, and stand proud as role models for younger people. The author’s crisp narrative repeatedly stresses the limitless value of growing older with pride and dignity and letting go of “the burdens of middle age and accept[ing] the bounty of elder life.” Convincing and contagious, O’Brien’s thoughtful message of embracing aging is universal and the kind of considerate advice that’s timeless. To the author, the sunset years are simply ruminative “days to fall in love with yourself, do what pleases you, and appreciate who you’ve become.”
A rewarding, enthusiastic meditation on appreciating the countless benefits of aging gracefully.Pub Date: March 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-97-723152-9
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.
The comic and television personality turns serious—semi-serious, anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book.
Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished.
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593596579
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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