by Maggie Lane ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 2011
Robust, unflinching thoughts on piloting life through all the reefs and shoals, whether you cherry pick her ideas or devour...
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Lane’s deeply spiritual relationship with God touches each of these short, essayistic considerations of life’s facets, from acceptance to children to respect to self-discipline.
Lane has structured this book as an abecedarium, starting with reflections on acceptance and wending her way to wisdom and words. As in her earlier Relation Education Journal (2011), there is a strong infusion of Christianity—“Only the Spirit of Christ will lead our souls to freedom.” Still, there is never anything less than an abiding sense of inclusiveness, an invitation for all to dip into her thoughts in hopes that readers may partake of ideas that will be preventative, rather than having to partake in a long recovery process. The writing has a uniform polish to it, striving for an economy of expression, but not at the expense of burrowing into her topics, going deep, bringing her appreciation of God to bear, tendering her experiences, thinking and feeling her way to some crux. For instance, she starts her thoughts on right and wrong with a quick broadside against selfishness, then follows a thread to appearance (“Whether we appear right or wrong has more to do with the one who is looking.”) and then awareness (“when we are aware, our choices need to be bringing goodness and happiness to others…and that includes making good choices for ourselves.”) As in her earlier book, there is much to pull from these pages even if you do not share her Christianity. She has wise, often overlooked things to say about shaping character when young—“Start when they are young, with close-ended choices and their sense of cause and effect…develops along with great character”—though readers may quibble with “Character can only be learned in the formative years, otherwise consequences become the teacher.” Can’t one learn through consequences? But then Lane is all about engagement and never shies from tackling a topic; witness her frank and sprightly comments on sexuality.
Robust, unflinching thoughts on piloting life through all the reefs and shoals, whether you cherry pick her ideas or devour them whole.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-1453748930
Page Count: 590
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Maggie Lane
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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