A quick, welcoming read full of infectiously positive retirement advice from a man enjoying it.
As much an anecdotal meditation as an instructional guide, Dorenbush’s (Senior Online Dating, 2013) follow-up to his first book is a sensible, contagiously delightful look at the golden years.
After past events, including his wife’s death, had left him depressed, Dorenbush is now determinedly “grateful for any day above ground.” Writing primarily for his generation (he’s now in his 80s) and those lucky enough to have jobs with retirement provisions, he offers sound general financial advice: “An intelligent curmudgeon should not plan to burn through savings and income in just a few years.” Stay stimulated, he says; read the news; learn about computers, email and the Internet (“discard the old Encyclopedia Britannica”). Sly jokes abound, as does kind yet prickly sarcasm: “Should you still have the physical wherewithal for coping with print media, do it in front of the younger generation. They will be amazed at how clever you once were.” Retirement takes creativity, but it doesn’t mean hastening toward death. Consider the free time as a gift, he writes; don’t let it terrify you. Travel early in retirement, since mobility will decline. “If finances permit, try to fly business or first class,” he says. “As a curmudgeon, I tell you that if you do not, your heirs will.” Dorenbush often turns his wry sense of humor on himself, as when he crashed trying to revitalize his roller skating skills. “Relying on [his] keen sense of senior intellect,” he stopped. In addition to standard advice to the aging—stay busy (like sharks, we must keep moving), meet new people, learn something new (in his case, ballroom dancing), eat healthfully—there are also sartorial tips: A “spotted tie” signals a depressed senior, for instance. “You are above ground, the future still exists, although markedly changed,” he writes. Above all, live.
A quick, welcoming read full of infectiously positive retirement advice from a man enjoying it.Pub Date: April 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495248702
Page Count: 70
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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