A gift for Beatles fan.
A lively firsthand recollection of the Fab Four.
British singer, musician, record producer, and host of SiriusXM’s radio program From Me to You, Asher makes his book debut with a bright, rambling memoir about his long association with the Beatles, which began in 1963 when Paul McCartney, who was dating Asher’s sister, moved into his house. At the time, Asher was half of the duo Peter & Gordon, performing in pubs, clubs, and coffeehouses, and soon under contract with the prestigious EMI Records. Asher eventually quit performing to become head of A&R for Apple Records, where he managed such artists as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Cher, and Diana Ross. The author’s self-described “personal and at times idiosyncratic” take on Beatles music, which follows their playlist alphabetically, is bursting with anecdotes about each song’s composition and the circumstances of recording it. He opines on the songs’ structure, content, effect, and quality, and he digresses about anyone and everyone associated with the Beatles—collectively and individually—as well as performers connected to his career as a record producer. Reading this memoir is like listening to an entertaining, though nonstop, monologue from someone reprising a golden time, blithely jumping from one memory to another as new thoughts and stories pop into his mind. Halfway through his “alphabetically inspired yet meandering pace,” Asher arrives at the letter L, which gives him a chance to comment on “Love Me Do,” the Beatles’ first single, and also on Sean Lennon and Julian Lennon, whose musicianship Asher much admires. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” writes the author, was inspired by Julian’s childhood drawing of his friend Lucy, “against a sparkly sky”—and not, as some have speculated, about LSD. The letter Q gives Asher pause: He writes about “Queenie Eye,” a solo McCartney song, and expounds on the Quarrymen, string quartets, and what he deems is the quietest Beatles song (“Blackbird”).
A gift for Beatles fan.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20959-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
