Animal lovers in particular will find much to savor in this endearing, breezy memoir from a young, enterprising Hollywood...
A TV actor reflects on his life (so far) and a love of birding.
Noting that at 30, he is too young to pen a memoir, Harding, known for his role as Ezra Fitz on ABC’s Pretty Little Liars, instead compiles an affable collection of stories, anecdotes, and memories of his time in Hollywood and his affinity for bird-watching. Though they don’t appear on the West coast, cardinals are plentiful in Virginia, where Harding grew up in a military family, and he writes fondly of how these birds still bring serenity and a sense of protectiveness for him. The author connects many of his Los Angeles adventures to his experience as an avid birder and a lover of the natural world around him, though as an adolescent, he hid his unconventional interest out of fear of being ostracized by classmates. Harding also explores his childhood penchant for tantrums and troublemaking; exhausting a steady stream of babysitters, he behaved in a manner that starkly contrasted with his “practically angelic” older sister, Sarah. Elsewhere, tales of acting classes at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and a bold, postgraduate, cross-country move to Hollywood after driving for four days demonstrate Harding’s sheer dedication to acting. Fledgling actors will appreciate chapters on the craft of acting, the author's acquisition of the TV role that established him in LA, and the mechanics of on-set scenes. Thoughts on mockingbirds, woodpeckers, the massive California condor, and Harding’s palpable excitement over an arctic loon “rare-bird alert” are equally fervent. The author deftly interweaves both acting and nature loving into a unique group of memories and experiences. Harmless and pleasantly innocuous, the narrative stays in the safe zone yet is revealing enough to leave fans and birders satisfied.
Animal lovers in particular will find much to savor in this endearing, breezy memoir from a young, enterprising Hollywood actor.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11707-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
