An encouraging resource for self-knowledge and mystical healing that seems more focused than previous installments.
This third entry in Barbaria’s (Abracadabra: Create as You Speak, 2007, etc.) motivational series offers “antidotes” to spiritual and psychic “poisons” as it promotes day-to-day wellness.
At its core, the author’s newest self-help resource is a collection of prescriptions for living that focuses less on achievements and more on the notion of self-healing. It also continues to advocate for the rejection of the mundane and for the reclamation of imagination through positive thinking. Along the way, Barbaria draws on anecdotes ranging from her success in real estate, her experience as a mother, and the myriad characters she’s encountered during her own struggles and spiritual explorations. Many of her lessons encourage meditation, prayer, and good humor while avoiding negative influences; they also advocate turning anxious energy into positive motivation. She often frames the lessons in terms of psychic “jujitsu” or in the language of spiritually based healing. The philosophy that emerges cherry-picks ideas from numerous areas of study, including but not limited to Hinduism, Buddhism, aikido, and yoga, while also citing the ideas of controversial figures, such as the late Japanese author Masaru Emoto, as proof of a more magical world. In addition, the author stresses the importance of addressing old traumas by showing how they can later manifest as new suffering. Her book employs a formula that’s easy for readers to approach and revisit; each section offers a short observation or hypothetical situation accompanied by light counsel by the author and quotations from various people, ranging from Albert Einstein to Friedrich Nietzsche to James Brown. This structure makes it possible to address passages either separately or together and in any order that the reader might choose. The mixed metaphors and verbosity of previous Abracadabra books return here, but it’s impossible to deny the author’s enthusiasm. Barbaria’s willingness to expose her own vulnerabilities, and even the shortcomings that she saw in her earlier books, breaks up the excitable argot.
An encouraging resource for self-knowledge and mystical healing that seems more focused than previous installments.Pub Date: July 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9794143-1-2
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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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