A bright-minded and very winning call to look on the bright side of aging.
Othmer presents an alphabetical guide to the many joys and challenges of getting older.
In the face of an aging population and increasing anxiety about old-age years, the author here offers a collection of thoughts, inspirations, and encouragements arranged around an alphabetical structure (from “Awake” to “Zen”). Othmer’s advice isn’t concerned with practicalities like navigating health or finances; rather, she concentrates on the emotional and behavioral sides of getting older, always with the aim of helping readers age “intentionally with wisdom, grace, and fun.” Each of the book’s brief chapters takes its alphabetical cue, ruminates for a bit on the topic, and ends by offering some suggestions as to how readers might pursue the cue further on their own. Noting that “N” is for “Nature,” Othmer discusses the Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku (“forestbathing”) and encourages readers to get in touch with the wild world: “Being in nature for two or three hours a week is proven to boost mental health, reducing the stress hormone cortisol,” she writes. Warning against the personal isolation that can be so damaging to the elderly, she consistently emphasizes the need for community (“S is for Socializing”). “Cooking, eating, and cleaning up together, sharing ideas, learning from each other, teasing, and relying on each other,” the author asserts, creates a “forcefield of care” that takes some of the sting out of being older. On every page of this slim volume, Othmer is encouraging and optimistic, highlighting the joys and opportunities of getting older and always reminding her readers (whether they’re getting older themselves or know someone who is) that they can change their own attitudes. “Make joy your habit,” she urges. “It is your good fortune to be alive on this day.”
A bright-minded and very winning call to look on the bright side of aging.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781737602804
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Joyous Longevity Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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