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
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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