A welcoming guide to a dreaded and morbid subject—conversing with loved ones about death.
A journalist/author and an Episcopal priest reveal how to talk about the intricacies of death with family and friends.
This small book by Crampton (Manners! I Know, Right?, 2017, etc.) and debut author Jones makes a big contribution to the ever growing literature about death and dying. Far from being a lugubrious and solemn read, the guide offers a lot of substance in a warm and approachable fashion. It is aimed at those who may want to talk with family and friends about their deaths and what they want from the experience but who may shy away from this difficult topic that most people scrupulously prefer to avoid. While not everyone will share the Episcopalian context that interlaces the content with inclusions from the Book of Common Prayer, the advice and research the authors provide prove insightful, thorough, and, well, fun. The authors do mention briefly other faith traditions, but the writers stress the Christian context. Some of the tips are surprising. “It may seem peculiar to write your own obituary,” the authors say about one of the exercises discussed in the book, “even to noodle around with a few words mostly for amusement.” The authors have a serious purpose, though—relieve the family of the burden of writing an obit during the stressful funeral time. The manual’s useful topics include how to deal with reluctant or resistant family members; how to appoint a health care representative; living wills; advance directives; where and how to retain all-important paperwork for family members; funeral planning; and the advent of green funerals. The authors write about these and many other not-so-obvious aspects of death planning with a thoroughness belied by the brief length of this book, which also features a selected, annotated bibliography as well as a helpful topical index. The authors are organization freaks, and they bring their obsession for order to this presentation that offers readers a challenge to engage in planning for life’s end instead of just avoiding the inevitable.
A welcoming guide to a dreaded and morbid subject—conversing with loved ones about death.Pub Date: March 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4834-9450-0
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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