A winningly personal guide to dealing with life’s pitfalls.
A debut book intertwines an inspirational manual with the autobiography of a young wife.
Early in her narrative, Holm recalls the impatience and near desperation she felt about wanting to find a good man, marry, and start a family with him. For far too long, prospects seemed grim, but then she met a man named Anthony, who eventually (although not soon enough to suit the author’s impatience) proposed to her. The two were on their honeymoon when they received news from their doctors about prospective pregnancies: each of them carried a recessive gene for a deadly infant malady, meaning that there was a 1 in 4 chance any baby of theirs would be born with the disorder and die within a year. The news was devastating, and Holm tried to calm herself through a combination of personal balance and lessons gleaned from various self-help authors. She recounts events that happened during this and every other stage of her marriage while at the same time trying to impart lessons to her readers about the things those incidents taught her. Thanks to her considerable narrative gifts, this pairing of story and lesson works unusually well throughout. “When your mind begins to race and your heart starts to feel the weight of fear, you are either gripping onto the embers of your past mistakes, or your thoughts are reeling for a future that cannot be controlled,” she writes about those horrible days spent trying to make herself enjoy her time with Anthony regardless of how her future pregnancies went. “In order to get a hold of your anxiety, you must learn to become present.” Each of the book’s chapters ends with a “Trail Journal” of questions designed to get readers thinking about how Holm’s experiences might raise issues in their own lives. The pedagogical aspect of this is saved from any hint of condescension by the approachable way the author tells her own tale, warts and all, and by the frequent glints of humor. “Germany was surprisingly pleasant,” she writes. “It wasn’t as German as I thought it would be.”
A winningly personal guide to dealing with life’s pitfalls.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9983782-0-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grace Strategies, LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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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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