Walking in this World

September 30, 2002
Touted as the long-awaited sequel to The Artist's Way, Cameron's latest is so similar in look and format to the original that they could be sold in a boxed set. Previous follow-ups, including The Vein of Gold
and The Right to Write
and a slew of little spin-offs, here give way to a 12-week course of encouragement and exercises promoted as an intermediate level of The Artist's Way
(inviting us to anticipate an advanced volume). At first and for a long way into the book, we encounter the wheel-greasing exercises that worked magic for millions, helping people discover their innate creativity by devising gentle ways around the myriad obstacles that block us (e.g., listing things we would secretly love to do.) Cameron re-introduces the basic tools—the daily morning exercise of hand-writing three free-flowing pages and the weekly solitary "artist's date," designed to help us romance our inner artists—and she adds the ancient practice of walking as a means of getting in touch with our deeper feelings and truer thoughts (hence the title). "When I can, I walk with friends, noting how companionable our silences become, how effortlessly deep our conversations," Cameron writes. Cameron does indeed capture the feeling of strolling and talking with an old and trusted guide. Her core insights are the same as in earlier volumes, yet her words seem to have grown wiser. She writes about the distractions of success, and about the long solitary stretches "climbing the glass mountain" it takes to bring a large-scale creative project to completion. Her latest book reveals how reaching higher also means going deeper. 10-city author tour.

June 1, 2003
Some 44 years and 40 albums after launching her singing career, Collins reflects on surviving the pain of her son's suicide.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2003
Celebrity tell-alls can be counted on for some kind of feel-good, inspirational payoff, and Collins' book is no exception. Her only child, Clark, an alcoholic like his mother and both grandfathers, took his life while only in his thirties, a blow from which his mother hasn't recovered--what mother could from such a loss?--though she has managed to go on. That act of bravery informs the book throughout as Collins speaks candidly about her father's drinking as well as her own, her drying-out at Hazelden, and her search for grace. She wrote the book, she says, "to shed more light upon the dark taboo of suicide," and as she does, she brings her own dance with near-death to light. In the end, her report, even peppered with illuminating song lyrics and journal entries, speaks of the struggle to understand, cope with, and, after a fashion, accept personality, loss, and life. Collins tells her story engrossingly and engagingly, and her fans as well as those dealing with addiction and loss will want to hear it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)