An engaging retirement self-help guide.
Two octogenarians share their wisdom on nonfinancial aspects of retirement.
Many retirement books focus largely on the bottom line: financial planning, retirement savings accounts, Social Security benefits, and the like. A handful of works take a different tack, though, such as this one, which the authors dub “a guidebook to help you plan the next chapter of your life.” Certainly, both authors are accomplished retirees: Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware, and Hiland is a former business executive and consultant, both 81 years old at the time of the book’s writing. Their approach is to lay the groundwork for the reader’s transition to retirement, based on their own experience and informal research they conducted with other retirees. This slim but personal volume intentionally lacks “prescriptive advice”; instead, it features descriptive examples and thoughtfully constructed worksheets. Kaufman and Hiland start with a straightforward overview of retirement itself that seems geared primarily toward executives and professionals like the authors themselves; they note, for example, that “In the workplace, your position establishes your status with commensurate respect and privileges. With retirement, you become a ‘formerly’ or ‘used-to-be.’ ” For this audience, this work offers a brief but valuable perspective. Much of it highlights areas of concern in short chapters that focus on how to maintain one’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Kaufman and Hiland effectively facilitate such self-reflection by posing direct, insightful questions and offering checklists; most notable is a provocative “What I Value” worksheet and a “self-assessment of your emotional intelligence,” which applies a ranking scale to five dimensions (self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, empathy, and motivation). Toward the book’s end, Kaufman and Hiland share their own retirement stories to demonstrate how “Very different approaches can accomplish a successful result.” Given their impressive backgrounds, these intimate anecdotes make for fascinating reading. In closing, Kaufman and Hiland discuss their later years with candor and grace. The authors also point to additional books and websites, within the text and in appendices, which may help extend readers’ knowledge base as they mull over their futures.
An engaging retirement self-help guide.Pub Date: April 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1683-7
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Houndstooth Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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