A methodical yet fun approach to brightening and expanding the everyday.
A memoir that also serves as a self-help guide to making big changes incrementally.
Lamp used a sensible strategy—build an entire structure one piece at a time—to plan a different life for herself in late middle age. After her sons grew up and moved out of the house, the stay-at-home mom felt a little unmoored. She still had church, pets, friends, and activities, but nothing that sparked great passion, and she feared upending her life. When her husband accepted a job offer in Nashville, Lamp remained in Houston for four years before deciding to join him in Tennessee. Alone in an unknown city while her husband worked, the author devised a plan; she’d try to do something new every day for a year. It could be something ordinary, like learning how to cut a whole pineapple or drinking coffee from a pretty tea cup she got in Paris instead of worrying that it would break. Lamp went to movies and concerts alone, growing to enjoy doing things solo. She took a sewing class, figured out how her phone worked, made her own pasta, and joined a book club. Going topless on a beach in France gave her courage. At last, after a year of stretching herself in unfamiliar ways and becoming more present in her life, she discovered what gave her joy. To help others on their own self-discovery process, the author, along with mapping her own progress, includes prompts and blank lines for readers to brainstorm ideas for trying new things. She suggests creating different lists—for example, of local activities, items never used because they’re being saved, what play means to the reader, delayed dreams, etc. Lamp’s writing voice has the flow of a conversation. She urges the anxious reader, who’s afraid to try low-stakes new things, to “GET OVER YOURSELF.” Her advice isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s well organized and practical. The emphasis on small steps makes Lamp’s achievements seem attainable, especially since she presents herself as having no special talents, and her end result is worthy of emulation: a gratifying life.
A methodical yet fun approach to brightening and expanding the everyday.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781956370331
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Clovercroft Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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