A warm-hearted New Age guide to well-being, mixing practical wisdom with soulful effusions.
Addison offers advice for channeling spirit guides in this self-help book.
The author begins by recounting her journey into spiritualism, which reached a milestone on September 22, 2018, when she began direct communications with spirit guides Kevin, a gentle, kindly, male energy; Florence, a vivacious, fun-loving, female energy; and “Sh”eila, a bustling, nurse-like energy. She goes on to provide readers with steps for developing their own spiritual practices. These include meditative visualizations of a wilderness waterfall and a golden light that infuses one’s body; a medley of prayers; and a mindfulness exercise in which one contemplates everything that goes into eating a tomato—from the tomato seed to the sunshine and rainfall that nourish it to the grocery-store shelving that displays the ripened fruit to the debit card that purchases it to the mouth that relishes it. The bulk of the text reprints 366 messages from her guides; their content ranges from fitness tips (“[w]alk 10,000 steps daily or do cardio for thirty minutes at least five days per week”) to soothing lifestyle koans (“Don’t stress. Just let things be”) to therapeutic abstractions (“Don’t be afraid of change. Change is good”). In later chapters, the author urges readers to sign an “annual abundance contract” that petitions the universe to grant one’s desires in exchange for commitments to be a good person, undertake steady self-improvement, and accept a “World Challenge” to donate one percent of one’s income to charity. Addison and her spirit guides reassure readers that they can escape their ruts of negativity in elegant prose that moves from firm confidence-building (“You know you can do this, and you know this is something you have to do”) to frank parental scolding (“[c]lean up your bedroom and closets”) to rapturous mysticism (“Every heart is a heart of God”). Readers seeking a vigorous jolt of uplift and motivation will find it here.
A warm-hearted New Age guide to well-being, mixing practical wisdom with soulful effusions.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781039155626
Page Count: 223
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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