An affirmative, spirited prescription for coping in a post-pandemic world.
A guide offers inspiration for life after Covid-19.
As a result of the pandemic, internationally known motivational speaker Kim saw her face-to-face business evaporate. Instead of surrendering, she conceived of four formulas to make “order out of chaos.” This book explores her “Reboot Formulas,” explains how to write a “Reboot Scenario,” and discusses how to survive in a post-pandemic world. The author begins with a pragmatic overview of the universal impact of Covid-19 on everyday life. She subsequently describes the four formulas, illustrating how she applied them to her own business as well as providing solid examples from other companies. The first two formulas revolve around transitioning from in-person to online communications and accepting the broader goal of digital transformation. Kim not only drove this metamorphosis in her business, she understood that the digital data she acquired about customers could be used to segment and personalize products and services. The third formula recognizes the way in which the pandemic has changed the relationship between employee and employer, creating the “Independent Worker.” The author believes millennials in particular have embraced working independently. Still, she perceptively thinks the workplace is changing, resulting in the need for everyone to consider becoming independent employees. In discussing the fourth formula, “Safety,” Kim accurately cites her native South Korea’s world-leading response to the pandemic: “The choice that Koreans made, even if it required loss and sacrifice, ended up saving Korea and its being acknowledged as an advanced country when it came to safety.” A particularly instructive portion of the book is the detailed, three-stage approach the author proposes for writing a reboot scenario, followed by her enthusiastic encouragement to become “a chaser,” someone who realizes it is never too late to take the first step toward a goal. Kim’s strong emphasis on self-education as well as learning from others is a critical part of a successful reboot. The author closes the manual on a philosophical note: “We may have lost everything but not ourselves.” Consistently positive throughout, Kim delivers wise, motivational words and actionable strategies for moving forward.
An affirmative, spirited prescription for coping in a post-pandemic world.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-54-452137-4
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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