Jenkins’s superb memory and solid writing chops break him out from the pack of true-life adventure scribes.
A wildman follows the call of the wild.
If Anthony Bourdain went Iron John—and cut back significantly on the libations—he’d be Mark Jenkins (The Hard Way: Stories of Danger, Survival, and the Soul of Adventure, 2002, etc.). An obsessive hiker, biker and traveler, Jenkins is also a husband and father, so he has to balance being at home with wife Sue and daughters Addi and Teal against his addiction to worldwide adventure-seeking. Over the past few years, he has traveled to Alaska, Russia, Greece, Switzerland and points north, south, east and west. Along the way there have been outings both physically and emotionally painful: He almost had his arm ripped off in a cycling accident, and he missed seeing his daughter take her first steps. Yet he persevered, sacrificing the comfort and love of home for the excitement of the unknown. A regular contributor to Outside magazine as well as a veteran travel and fitness writer, Jenkins comes off here as an über-macho dude with an engaging sensitive side—his friends and family are as important as, say, a jaunt to Tibet, if not more so. He’s an adrenaline junkie, far less interesting when he slows down to offer some history of an area he’s visiting. However, these sections are generally separate from the main narrative, so those inclined can skip them and get back to tales of the author tearing leeches from his legs or attacking a mountain in Tasmania.
Jenkins’s superb memory and solid writing chops break him out from the pack of true-life adventure scribes.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59486-707-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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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