A provocative manual for achieving happiness that’s punctuated with original, intriguing images.
A debut New Age meditation guide that combines captivating illustrations with suggestions for attaining inner peace.
The academic-sounding title of this work doesn’t adequately convey the idealistic and magical nature of its contents. In an introductory paragraph titled “Sand Dune Poetry,” Link describes his drawings and paintings as “glyphalalia,” a word he derives from “glossolalia”—speaking in tongues. His illustrations seem to radiate a lively spirituality with their abstract figures and invented runic alphabets. The images’ dynamic colors and shapes pair well with Link’s pithy meditations, which often come in the form of instructions: “Surrender. Give up. Accept the fact that you’re not going to solve all the world’s problems.” The illustration for “Transforming the Blessings” is apparently drawn on a paper napkin, with lines and figures leaping off its crinkled edges, as the text instructs, “Thank Mother Earth for giving you a home. / Feel your connection to her gravity.” As the book’s title suggests, the overarching theme is joy, and most meditations do offer a path toward delight. Some are mystical, such as “Sands of Joy,” which bids readers to “Become a Pillar of Light,” while others are distinctly pragmatic: “Keep your agreements. Broken agreements often create guilt and anger.” Even some cynical readers might be tempted by Link’s playful challenge to brighten up a grim roomful of people by silently chanting the word “enjoy.” Occasionally, the text offers tired truisms, such as “Kindness is its own reward,” but more often, it showcases unexpected lines: “Cherish the cavewoman who is your ancestress” or “Sometimes, watching television can create a feeling of joy.” The author’s distinctive vision, coupled with the transcendent illustrations, may make this book a well-thumbed favorite.
A provocative manual for achieving happiness that’s punctuated with original, intriguing images.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9909255-0-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Coyote Eye Press
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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