Far less scandalous than “rock drummer writes book” might suggest but far more interesting, too.
Recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Rush lyricist/drummer extraordinaire returns with another collection of essays about life on the road, the pleasures (and perils) of the journey and lessons learned along the way.
In continuing to chronicle his unique way of getting to “work”—that is, motorcycling between concert venues while his band mates, or the “Guys at Work,” travel by more conventional means—Peart (Far and Away: A Prize Every Time, 2011, etc.) serves up both a chronological and thematic sequel to his last collection. Originally published on the author’s website, these essays are very much intended for a core audience of Rush/Peart fans, though references to the band’s music and performances are less prevalent than might be assumed. Instead, the focus is on roads less traveled—primarily physically but also metaphorically—and the challenges and benefits of pursuing such paths, whether on a motorcycle or intellectually. As the author is fond of saying, “The best roads are the ones no one travels unless they live on them,” and he makes it his business to seek them out whether he’s traveling through the American Southwest, Canada or Eastern Europe. With the assistance of his riding companions/longtime friends/security detail, Michael and Brutus, Peart peppers the text with a series of photos that frequently show him riding off on his two-wheeled steed into parts un(der)explored. The author’s flair for mixing in local color, historical anecdotes and personal philosophy keeps pages turning even when the formulaic nature of the entries becomes repetitive. His sense of humor, by turns sophomoric and sophisticated, may induce occasional groans, but it’s a small price to pay to experience the sheer joy Peart takes in life and his passion for sharing it with others.
Far less scandalous than “rock drummer writes book” might suggest but far more interesting, too.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1770412576
Page Count: 312
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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