An often funny but uneven mix of self-help, memoir, and travel anecdotes.
A frequent flyer turns tales of travel woes into career tips in this guide.
As a consultant holding the “Million Miler” status with a U.S. airline, Blewett is well-versed in the air-travel problems that come from the “forced intermingling of complete strangers under pressure and in close proximity for prolonged periods of time.” His book is written for well-traveled professionals like him, who will sympathize with the common pain points he identifies and perhaps learn some larger life lessons on how savvy travelers can avoid such pitfalls. The first chapter imagines an amusing collision between two people whose attempts to catch their plane are thwarted by a combination of Uber drivers, Google Maps, and airport security. Blewett then addresses, chapter by chapter, what he’s identified as the “Six Habits of Highly Annoying Travelers.” These include “Gate Lice” (people who clog the boarding area for no reason); the “Overhead Tetris Flunkee” (who refuses to check their bag); and the self-explanatory “Eager Exiter.” In each case, the author offers a funny story from one of his numerous journeys before relating the core problem to his career in sections titled “as applied in reality.” He compares boarding passes, for example, to connections to high-earning jobs, and backpacks swinging wildly in aisles to his own difficulties pivoting to consulting. Blewett’s book is most entertaining when it’s at its snarkiest. When Blewett judges the less well-traveled or overly emotional vacationers, he conjures rapid-fire jokes and memorable imagery: Lost travelers, he says, move with “the fervor of a cheetah on a cocaine bender,” and a troubled airport experiences a “Gatequake that registered north of a Dante ‘nine’ on the ‘gridlock’ scale.” The blend of professional memoir and self-help is less successful when its veers into familiar advice about staying fit, listening to colleagues, and building a solid network. With each chapter, the metaphors feel more forced and drift further from the humorous tone that works so well.
An often funny but uneven mix of self-help, memoir, and travel anecdotes.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9798339626466
Page Count: 138
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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