A pleasant but predictable read.
One woman’s yearlong mission to adhere to the advice Oprah Winfrey offered in her show, magazine and website.
At age 35, Chicago-based yoga teacher and graduate student Okrant kicked off 2008 by swearing to follow all of Oprah’s directives and record her experience in a blog, “Living Oprah.” She conceived of this quest because, in her view, no one other than Oprah “reaches as deeply and thoroughly into every corner of a woman’s existence.” The book is organized by month, and each chapter is prefaced with an overview of how much money and time she spent on the projects. The exact measurements of her endeavor are broken down at the end of each chapter in charts recording cent and five-minute increment devoted to watching every Oprah episode, including reruns, taking online quizzes about her happiness and health and adopting a shelter cat. Her journey required an inordinate amount of shopping for “must-have clothing,” Oprah-endorsed food items, gardening equipment, a weighted Walkvest (“Oprah said, ‘Get that thing’ ”), XM Radio, recommended movie tickets, Dr. Oz–approved supplements, a weekend getaway, home hair dye, etc. Though she grew increasingly exhausted, Okrant maintains a jovial, self-effacing tone. But the results are mixed. The author finds the talk-show host overly focused on physical appearance, and, by June, her “capacity to enjoy repetitive infotainment ha[d] dwindled.” Benefits include de-cluttering her apartment, committing to both the Best Life Challenge and a 21-day vegan diet, trying new recipes and invigorating her sex life with her seemingly good-natured, patient husband. The greatest upside, of course, was the attention the author’s blog garnered, evidenced by her thousands of readers and unsolicited attention and publicity, including an appearance on NPR, tickets to the Oprah show and a book deal. Unsurprisingly, Okrant’s memoir reads like a printed-out blog, tracking quotidian tasks and revelations, the most significant of which is the value of finally turning off her television.
A pleasant but predictable read.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59995-239-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Center Street/Hachette
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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
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