An appealing guide to lessening anxiety and increasing overall wellness.
At the start of the book, the debut author, a licensed psychotherapist, notes that her work is not intended to replace medical or psychiatric treatment and advises seeking professional help to deal with the effects of trauma or anxiety that occurs along with depression. In the pages that follow, readers can find simple and practical tools for coping with difficult circumstances. Even people who’ve had past experience with therapy are likely to find ideas in the book that they’ll find beneficial. A popular phrase in the world of psychiatry is “name it to tame it,” and Leeds seems to draw on this idea, attempting to help readers identify ways to “claim” and therefore “name,” their anxiety. Putting a name to stressful thoughts and feelings, this book notes, puts one on the path to lessening or eliminating them. The author helpfully includes specific tools for reframing anxiety via techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy, self-help author Byron Katie’s “The Work,” and focusing on the positive. Leeds’ good-natured tone and sense of humor are evident throughout, with chapter titles such as “The Importance of Not Being Perfekt” that also manage to drive her points home. In the final section of the book, Leeds gives readers several detailed methods to “tame” anxiety, such as breathing exercises, meditation, and tapping exercises. Many of these will be familiar to readers, but other notions, such as finding time for play or simply doing a brand-new activity, offer helpful reminders for trying times. The book is geared mainly toward women, and early on, the author notes that “Women in this country are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and we’re much more likely to be put on medication than our male counterparts.” However, readers of any gender are likely to find useful support here in their quest for calmer lives.
An appealing guide to lessening anxiety and increasing overall wellness.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9999015-0-2
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Calm Day Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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