Good for beach-readers interested in celebrity memoir and famous comedians.
That Girl star and Emmy-winning TV veteran attempts to find out how humor works.
Thomas (The Right Words at the Right Time: Volume 2: Your Turn!, 2006, etc.), the daughter of funnyman Danny Thomas, builds on her thriving second career as a nonfiction writer. Each chapter contains an autobiographical section—with the author’s memories of encountering funny famous folks during her upbringing in Southern California—along with an interview section featuring big-name comedians in the league of Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal. Although interview banter with natural wits like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert is an easy sell, it’s Thomas’s autobiographical musings that are the most compelling aspect of the book—e.g., the surprisingly affecting story of her determination to carve out an identity as an actress without the help of her famous father. Particularly refreshing is the description of her coming-of-age in Beverly Hills at a time when the neighborhood still had a middle-class feel and was full of unpretentious eateries and mom-and-pop shops. Even more surprising to learn is that her father, unlike so many celebrity fathers, seems to have been a kind, caring, loving patriarch. On the downside, Thomas’s interviewing style is fawning at best, and except for a chat with a feisty and recalcitrant Elaine May and the always-amusing Don Rickles, the author’s questions fall too often in the “So, you were the class clown?” category. Her responses are often limited to “That’s so funny,” “Ah-ha” and “Wow.” Although all her subjects have big personalities and star-quality wit, there’s rarely any original, penetrating insight into the formative human experiences that coagulate to create the perfect comedic brain. There are patterns, of course: Often a comedian will come from a funny family or use humor as a way of masking insecurities, but these are hardly major revelations.
Good for beach-readers interested in celebrity memoir and famous comedians.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4013-2391-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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