As refreshingly southern and satisfying as a cool glass of iced tea.
With all the charm of Robert Fulghum, screenwriter Johnson spins a few yarns, shares a few vignettes and offers a variety of commendable life lessons.
Johnson was raised in rural South Carolina, a place where the difference between Baptists and Methodists matters; where people call soda “Co-Cola,” never Coke (or, God forbid, Pepsi); where Conway, S.C. is considered a metropolitan area. As a child he was taught to appreciate the simple things in life, and he learned the importance of hard work and community–not to mention good food. Indeed, the story is redolent with fine Southern cuisine: country ham, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, pecan pie, banana pudding and more. Not just a paean to home cooking, Johnson has also crafted a loving ode to his parents–his dignified, selfless mother and his inquisitive, loving father–who raised him right. At the end of the day, he can barely remember the four-star restaurants he’s visited as an adult, but he has lasting memories of the simple meals he enjoyed with his family at the IHOP. Also enlightening is the author’s take-no-prisoners critique of contemporary communication technology–cell phones, caller ID, email. We may use these gizmos to facilitate relationships with our loved ones, he says, but in reality, we hide behind them. In fact, says Johnson, we now live in a throw-away culture where we casually discard whatever seems inconvenient, whether “Styrofoam or marriage.” Compared to the homey, comfortable world of Johnson’s childhood, today’s cell phone landscape seems bleak. He concludes the final chapter by acknowledging that we all just get through life “the best damn way [we] can.” Good advice for anyone, and Johnson’s musings offer soothing companionship along the way.
As refreshingly southern and satisfying as a cool glass of iced tea.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58348-232-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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