A meandering, thought-provoking series of essays that will appeal to memoir and social-history fans.
A collection of columns reflecting love, life and old age.
As a college professor and columnist, Wolf enjoys expounding on his ideas. It doesn’t really matter if those ideas are trite or if the stories that explore them are a tad mundane–the author believes he’s providing readers with valuable insight. He succeeds intermittently, but he always provokes some curiosity about how he developed his opinions. For instance, Wolf believes sexual indiscretion should be mandatory and that concealing faults in a relationship protects feelings from getting hurt. Although he briefly discusses a few of his relationships, his thesis stirs questions about those arrangements. The book is arranged in sections that also touch on sadness, perception, conversation and immigrant stories, among other topics. The author’s columns were regularly published in newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury and the Daily Californian, as well as Dutch and Finnish publications. All the columns are brief, ranging from two to three pages in length, and Wolf’s wizened, cynical voice is consistent throughout. The book’s title refers to the predicament that elders often discover as they age–that the world is the same yet changed, taking on the strangeness of a foreign country. It’s with his tales of foreign experiences and observances that Wolf shines. From discussing the quiet success of Muslim women in Western Europe, to the fact that drug dealers are allowed to deduct firearms and pit bulls as business expenses in the Netherlands, the author engages readers with interesting points. He also offers the interesting perspective of an immigrant who has absorbed a large part of American culture but questions the rest. As a whole, Wolf has supplied an uneven yet worthwhile read.
A meandering, thought-provoking series of essays that will appeal to memoir and social-history fans.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-595-52423-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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