Category Archives: autobiographies

100 Rules for Living to 100, by Dick Van Dyke****

Posted on by
Reply
Version 1.0.0

Dick Van Dyke was a wonderful part of my childhood, and this lovely audiobook has put a little more bounce in my step. It’s not really about rules, of course, but the format is a perfect scaffold for a combination memoir and self-help book. My thanks go to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Van Dyke entered my consciousness when I was a kindergartener, and the original movie Mary Poppins brought droves of families to theaters. I was not the only family member that was entranced, and all of us sang along to the sound track once the record was on our stereo turntable. The movie, and its lead characters, played by Julie Andrews and Van Dyke, glowed with humor and optimism.  What a wonderful message to share, the idea that the best we can give our children is our time and our attention. In the early 1960s, the suggestion that adults ought to listen to children was ahead of its time and much needed.

Many of the anecdotes the author conveys have to do with experiences shared between him and Arlene, his current wife. Despite the May-December romance, it sounds like a wonderful union. He talks about the recent and horrific events with the Santa Ana fires that took the homes of so many—though his own was spared. My favorite parts, though, are the ones in which he discusses the future roles he’d like to play, because he isn’t really retired from the industry. Way to go, Dick!

Reader Tom Bergeron does a nice job, and as a bonus, he sounds quite a bit like the author.

I recommend this little gem to everyone that could use some positive energy, and to all that love the author.

Heartbreaker, by Mike Campbell and Ari Surdoval*****

Posted on by

Mike Campbell is a musician and songwriter who served as Tom Petty’s lead guitarist and songwriting partner from the band’s inception until Petty’s death in 2017. I’m a sucker for a strong musical memoir when I can find it; although the galley for this book was available, I chose not to request it, instead using an audiobook from Seattle Bibliocommons. I didn’t want the pressure of a deadline. I wanted to be able to lose myself in Campbell’s story, to take unlimited side trips to stream songs that he refers to, either because I haven’t heard of the song and want to listen to it, or because he’s identified a song that I have loved for a long time and want to hear again.

Although I listened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the late ‘80s onward, I was never one to follow the news about individual band members. In fact, before I read Warren Zanes’ biography of Petty, I didn’t even know who was in the band. I just knew that when I was in the car and I heard Petty’s voice on the radio, it was time to turn up the volume. And so I come to this memoir without any preconceived ideas, and also without a lot of prior knowledge. Sometimes when a luminary dies, people that have only known them peripherally come out of the woodwork with their stories, looking to make some quick money by inflating their own importance in that person’s life. Once I begin listening to Campbell—who narrates his own audiobook—I can see that this is definitely not that.

It’s also not a Tom-and-me kind of memoir. Petty appears in it of course, but this story is about Campbell, not about Petty, and once it gets rolling, I can tell that Campbell has plenty of interesting experiences worth hearing about independent of anyone else.

The audio takes me a little while to get used to. As it begins, I note the delivery that is nearly a monotone, and a less than fluid reading style. In a strange way, it reminds me of being in an elementary school classroom that’s doing round robin reading aloud. We have come to the student that doesn’t want to read aloud because he knows he won’t sound good. And just as I am thinking that surely for a book that has the kind of reach I expect it to have, they could have found a more engaging narrator, the penny drops, and I realize—oooh, this guy is reading his own book! That being the case, I resolve to stop being so picky and accept the author’s narrative style. Eventually I grow accustomed to it, and it’s a good thing, because I find Campbell’s experiences fascinating! What a lot these musicians endured in order to be heard. Hunger, homelessness, and the derision of their elders; broken down cars, unfriendly cops, and shifty bar owners that want the music, but don’t really want to pay for it. And I am so glad they persevered, because the world of rock and roll would have been so much poorer without them.

I strongly recommend this memoir to those that enjoy listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Class Clown, by Dave Barry****-*****

Posted on by

4.5 stars, rounded upwards.

The first time I read a Dave Barry column, it was 1984, and a friend sent it to me. We had only snail mail back then, but it was so funny that she snipped it out of the airline magazine she’d read on a business trip and mailed it to me. I don’t remember which column it was, but it left me gasping for air, I laughed so hard. This was a difficult time for me, a young mother with two small children, a third on the way, and almost no money, and I floated along on the laughter that article brought me for a solid month. I hung it on the fridge where I could reread it whenever the urge struck me. That is how I became a Dave Barry fan.

Since then, his work has either hit or missed for me; almost all of the time, it has hit and although times are easier for me now, laughter is always a balm. When he misses—which is rare—he misses bigtime. But this time he’s golden, the Dave I remember reading that first time.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

It strikes me again how frequently the funniest humorists, be they journalists, novelists, standup comedians, or comic actors, have tragic backgrounds. Barry has experienced more than his fair share, with a schizophrenic sister who’s been institutionalized, a father that died too young, and a mother that couldn’t recover from his loss, and took her own life. Barry wrote about her when it happened, and he reprints some of it here.

He reprints some other things, too, and I expected that. I don’t think that it cheats the reader when he documents parts of his professional journey by reprinting some of the things he wrote; he’s been writing prolifically for thirty years, and it seems to me that it was probably a lot of work just choosing what to include and what to leave out. It feels strangely like a school reunion, rereading the excerpts from drop dead funny columns that I enjoyed for the first time when they were originally published. Oh, my heart, “Ask Mr. Language Person!” I’m an English teacher, and I’m in stitches all over again.

The thing about an autobiography is that the author is also the subject, and so when he decides what parts of his own life to write about and what to keep private, we readers need to accept that. At the same time, it does seem disingenuous to completely pass over his marriages and divorces. A paragraph for each, maybe? Just give us the benchmarks.

I hadn’t known that he was responsible for Talk Like a Pirate Day, and both I and my middle school students owe him for that one! But the thing that is most striking to me, and that I appreciate most, is his reflection about the political discourse in the U.S., and the way we have become polarized and too often, uncivil. In the past—and he cites the Kennedy/Nixon campaign—arguments between family and friends were “heated, emotional, sometimes angry, but never nasty. At the end of the night everybody hugged everybody, because they were friends, and they understood that they could disagree about politics without believing the other side was evil. Mistaken, maybe. Evil, no.” All I can say about that is thank you, Dave, and amen.

Because I was running late, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons. Barry does his own reading, and it’s even better that way.

There are a lot of hilarious experiences he recounts, but the thing about Barry that binds all of the experiences, the columns, and the books he’s written is his refusal to take himself too seriously, and it is his complete and delightful intolerance toward pretentiousness that keeps me coming back. I cannot imagine Dave Barry snubbing anybody, ever. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone was like that?

Highly recommended.

This American Woman, by Zarna Garg*****

Posted on by

Zarna Garg is an immigrant, born and raised in India. She was rich, except for when she was poor; more on that in a minute. Ultimately, she came here for the same reason many people do: she had to make a break for it.

My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book is available to the public now.

Garg works now as a stand up comic, but she has done many things, and worn many hats. First, of course, she was a runaway bride, more or less, bailing from India before her very wealthy father could marry her off as part of a business arrangement.

“If I hadn’t done that, right now I would be a Mumbai grandma in an arranged marriage to a much older, boring industrialist. I would be draped in brocade silk saris, but I would have a giant padlock on my big mouth.”

Garg’s immigration—fast and sneaky, which was the only possible way–was made easier by her older sister, who was already living in Ohio. Since then, Garg has finished law school and passed the bar, married another Indian immigrant, had three children, and done a number of other impressive things, but it was her own daughter that asked her mother whether she’d ever considered a career in comedy. It takes someone that’s mentally tough to succeed in that realm, but the streets of Mumbai, where she’d lived hand-to-mouth for two years as a runaway teen following her mother’s death, prepared her well, so she was ready for the gritty world she was entering. She explains,   

            “…I had played a show at a club on the Upper East Side and a cockroach fell on my head. The night before that, as I walked to the stage I had to step over a communal puddle of throw up from a bachelorette part who refused to leave. They just kept throwing up and laughing. So far my comedy career had been physically revolting—but it was still my dream! Now here I was in my very first New York City green room that smelled like air…I walked out on stage. Two thousand white ladies politely applauded. Oh my god. What was I doing? Would this audience even understand my humor? For them India is incense and chanting. Were they ready for a foul-mouthed real-life Indian auntie who hated meditation? “

I wondered, after watching some of Garg’s stand up work online, whether the book would be a duplication of her routine, more or less; it’s happened with other comic authors. But although there’s a small smattering of shared content, the memoir is mostly unique, and I never had the sense that I’d already seen this before.

Garg is funny enough that I’ve let her speak for herself here. Anyone that needs to laugh hard, and that enjoys reading about the disorientation and culture shock experienced by those new to America should read this book. Highly recommended!  

Shattered, by Hanif Kureishi***

Posted on by

A while back, I read a novel by Hanif Kureishi titled The Last Word.  It was not his most successful book in terms of sales, but I was gob-smacked by his cleverness, and so when I saw that he had a memoir coming out, I felt compelled to read it, even though it was likely going to be sad, since it is, at least in part, a memoir of what it’s like to be almost completely paralyzed.

My thanks go to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Kureishi is a seasoned writer and journalist, and as he writes about this horrifying event alternately with the earlier parts of his life, we see happier times as well. I thought it would be a narrative that I would need to take in small bursts because of its tragic nature, but that I would nevertheless appreciate it for its brilliance. What a surprise; I can read about his accident, hospitalization, and the experiences he has as a disabled person without a lot of difficulty, but I am drawn up short by the numerous passages about his sexuality.

You see, I am of the old school that believes that just because a thing is true, that doesn’t necessarily mean that its many details belong in a memoir. For example, sometime during nearly everyone’s life, we have digestive difficulties brought on by a case of the flu or some other thing. Has it happened? Yes. Do we need a detailed description of the writer’s vomit and bowel movements? Perhaps not. And this is the way I feel about his fondness for porn, for explorations of his own sexuality with various partners and all by himself (ew!) and even his fondness for street drugs and booze. Why would I want to read about any of this?

Sadly, Kureishi says that he no longer enjoys reading or writing fiction, and since that is the part of his work that I admire, I think we’re done here.

To be clear, he is a capable wordsmith, and those that are curious about what a disability might be like can get a taste of that here, which is why there are three stars and not fewer. I cringe when I read about his plane flight, with people shoving past him, even as they glance pityingly down at him. But like many Boomers, I have tasted a less extreme aspect of this myself, and so Kureishi’s version of it feels to this reviewer like a busman’s holiday.

This book is recommended to those of his readers that have appreciated his earlier nonfiction work, and to those with an interest in the lives of paraplegics and quadriplegics. For others, there are numerous online reviews that include large excerpts, and I recommend reading those before you invest in this book.

You’ll Never Believe Me, by Kari Ferrell**-***

Posted on by

My thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public January 7, 2025.

The blurb for this book had me at hello. Korean baby girl adopted by Caucasian Americans, who then become Mormons; a childhood and adolescence rife with alienation, discrimination, and ultimately a life of crime; prison time, followed by social crusades, among them prison reform, which is hugely necessary. I was all in, but that was before I read this thing. My own daughter is half Japanese and has to listen to “Where you from?” a fair amount, so this is a sensitive area for me, too. Racial teachings within the LDS (Mormon) church are a veritable minefield, and indeed, I can see how Ferrell’s upbringing would have been fraught.

And yet, the memoir that I read was not what I expected. The memoir, the blurb said, would be laugh out loud funny; I chucked a few times at the outset, and then was mostly just horrified. I received both the digital and audio galleys, and halfway through I abandoned the audio, because Ferrell, who provides her own narration, sounds so ebullient, so proud of herself, that I couldn’t take it. Reverting to the digital made it doable, but I found myself finishing it from a sense of obligation rather than a desire to read more.

Ferrell’s friends during her adolescence are what most adults would consider to be the wrong crowd. Truancy, petty theft, lying, drinking, and drugs are hallmarks. But Ferrell neither stays there as an adult, nor reforms herself once she reaches adulthood, though her parents, even though they divorce, likely can provide her with psychiatric treatment or counseling. Instead, she escalates, and commences stealing and defrauding her friends, pretending to need an abortion, pretending to have cancer, receiving so-called loans and gifts from those that don’t have a lot of money but love her dearly, and then disappearing. Steal in Utah, move to New York City. Steal in New York, go home to the folks in Arizona. And it continues until, at long last, she is arrested, tried, and convicted.

I tried to put my finger on what it is that makes me edgy here. Why do I not believe she’s all that sorry? Partly, it’s that other people appear only briefly and vaguely here. Of course it’s Ferrell’s life that’s the focus, but I would have expected some passages that flesh out the people that have loved her and tried to help her, even if it is necessary to conceal their identities as a matter of their own preferences. What happens to them later? What hardships, if any, do they suffer because of her actions? Instead, all of them come across as shadows, and as if they don’t really matter. I would have expected some emotion around reconnecting with some of these people, trying to make amends and financial restitution, even if they don’t want to see or hear from her. She talks a fair amount about the realization that her behavior is a form of self-sabotage, cutting herself off from positive relationships, but she doesn’t talk much about how she has sabotaged, or even completely blown up, the lives of others.

Lastly, I’m disturbed by some of her assumptions. The one that comes immediately to mind is when she reminds us—as if this is well known—that lying is fun. What??

In order for a memoir to be successful, the reader must be able to bond with the author. I have been unable to do that, either because Ferrell enjoys talking about her crimes and betrayals a little too much, or because she is unable to convey remorse in her writing; either way, I cannot recommend it to you.  

Between Two Trailers, by J. Dana Trent*****

Posted on by

And you thought your childhood was difficult.

Dana Trent is the child of two drug addicted schizophrenics who met and fell in love on the psych ward. The fact that she lived to adulthood is astonishing. Her story is captivating; my thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This memoir will be available to the public April 16, 2024.

“’Kids make the best hustlers,’ King told me the week after I was expelled from preschool. He lifted me onto the counter and coated his arms with palmfuls of petroleum jelly from the biggest Vaseline tubs Walmart sold. Then he greased up mine. ‘No one expects a runt in a Looney Tunes T-shirt to shank you,’ he explained. ‘Budgie!’ he said and pointed to my chest, then sealed my street name with a Vaseline cross to my forehead. ‘Budgie,’ I parroted, finger to my own chest…‘Guns are for idiots,’ he added. ‘Here.’ He handed me my first pocketknife, a foldout two-inch blade with a horse and buggy painted on the handle. Knives teach you to accept the inevitable. ‘You’ll get stabbed,’ he said, ‘but you’ll survive. No big deal.’”

The nickname “Budgie” was chosen because she was his lookout on drug deals. She would ride along with him, his trunk stuffed full of drugs, and when he got out, she was stationed on the highest available vantage point. If she saw someone—an ambush, the cops, anyone—she was supposed to sing like a bird. (Even other drug dealers and manufacturers questioned the wisdom of hauling a three year old on such expeditions, but King, as her father was known, was not easily influenced.)

At such moments, one might wonder where her mother was. Usually her mother was either unconscious in bed, or on the way into or out of that state. Because her father was awake and slightly more predictable, Dana considered him the more reliable parent. Before she was old enough for kindergarten, she understood that it was up to her to take care of The Lady.

My initial response to this scenario was to be bitterly angry at whoever decided to expel this child from preschool. Boom, there went that tiny girl’s one tie to the safer, saner world. How could anyone look at her behavior, her clothing, her hair and not call Children’s Services? I’m still fuming.

Miraculously enough, Trent made it to adulthood, and after years and years of therapy, she is able to lead a normal life. She’s achieved a remarkable amount, with a Ph.D. to her credit along with a solid career in academia.

And she can write! There is never a slow moment in this memoir, a hair raising read that I brought out at lunchtime, but never at bedtime. There is very little by way of dialogue, and that makes the swift, steady pacing even more remarkable.

Between Two Trailers is one of the year’s best reads. Highly recommended.

Scattershot, by Bernie Taupin*****

Posted on by

I was a teenager when Elton John’s music exploded onto the radio, and to this day, there are certain songs that I play in celebration, or when I need my mood lifted. For decades it lay in the back of my mind, wondering what was behind these lyrics or those. Never one to delve into the lives of celebrities all that often—a few shallow attempts convinced me that usually the most interesting thing about them is their work, which I’ve seen or heard already—I nevertheless filed it away, to find out about those lyrics one day.

Retirement came, and so with extra time to spare, I finally learned that Elton didn’t write those words. None of them! It was his writing partner, Bernie Taupin. I found this out only after reading an Elton John bio. I searched for one of Bernie’s and found empty air instead. When I saw this galley, I had to read it, and I am so glad that I did. Big thanks go to Net Galley and Hachette Books for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Sometimes a public figure will publish a memoir, but either openly or secretly, they require a ghost writer, and in the cases of some others, we may wish that they had. Taupin, however, is a writer, and boy does it show! His eloquence is undeniable, hilarious in some places, moving in others. His judgment is unerring, knowing when to be brief and when to use detail, and his candor is refreshing as well. The result, for me, is that when I’ve finished reading, instead of the usual five or six quotes that I’ve highlighted so that I can select one or two to use later, I instead find that I’ve highlighted eighty-eight, and some of these are multiple pages in length! I’ve spent an hour trying to choose which one to share, and it’s hard because they’re all brilliant. Since choosing just one is impossible, let’s just go with the first, which is near the beginning of the book, the beginning of the Bernie and Reg (Elton, later) show. The chapter begins:

“Sheila hated my coat. I can’t say I blame her. It hung on a hook on the back of our bedroom door like a Neanderthal artifact from the Natural History Museum…when it rained, which was often, it smelled like an uncured yak hide. Afghan coats were in style, as were kaftan jackets, three button tees, and velvet pants. I’m positive we didn’t succumb to the latter, but as for everything else, my new best friend and I did our very utmost to look the part…Sheila was Reg’s mother.”

Born in a tiny, isolated hamlet into the very bottommost scrapings of the working class, Bernie knew from an early age that he wanted out. He loved his family, and later, when money came his way, he took good care of his parents, but he never wanted to live in that place again, and became Californian down to the marrow of his bones the instant he landed in Los Angeles.

Taupin doesn’t hold much back, that’s for sure. The most essential ingredients of a top notch autobiography are that the person has lived an interesting life; knows how to write about it; and is willing to talk about just about every aspect of it. Taupin gets top marks in all three areas. Early on, I became concerned about his attitude toward women, given that the first we learn of his having married is when he makes a side reference to his first marriage dissolving, and I thought, Seriously? You tell us all of the everything, but don’t even mention your marriage? Small wonder it didn’t take. I maintain that concern through two more marriages that get little ink; but then we reach his current, and most likely permanent union, and everything changes and I feel much better.

Taupin has stories about just about every celebrity on the planet, and he does talk about the inspirations for his lyrics. I would have finished this book much sooner, but the greatest joy of reading a rock and roll musician’s memoir is reaching back to listen to the songs whose lyrics he scribed, as well as the many musical influences that shaped him. (Country western, I kid you not!) This book became such a prominent part of my day that my family was leery of turning up during the lunch hour, because I had passages to read aloud. And yet they had to admit that many of them were pretty damn good.

This book is highly recommended to all that love rock music, Elton John, and also to those that just love a resonant, well written memoir.

Biting the Hand, by Julia Lee****

Posted on by

Julia Lee is not amused, and she’s decided to say the things nobody else is saying. In this deeply analytical, provocative memoir, she tells us about her own experiences growing up, and the issues faced by Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in the United States, where “we are critical to the pyramid scheme of the American Dream.”

My thanks go to Net Galley, Henry Holt Publishers, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

In some ways, I feel as though I am reading someone else’s mail as I read this, because it is clearly intended for an audience of people of color. However, I did read it, and I’m going to review it.

When the discussion of race in the U.S. comes about, it is, as Lee states, almost always a conversation about Black people and Caucasians. Those that don’t fit into either group are sidelined. Perhaps more harmful is the way that people of Asian descent are presumed to be sympathetic to the status quo. Ever since a major news periodical dubbed Asians as “the model minority” back in the early 1960s, expectations and assumptions have leaned in that direction. And the roots of this division—Black versus Asian—make this a particularly thorny assumption to untangle. After all, a large percentage of African-Americans can trace their lineage to slavery; their ancestors weren’t born in the States, nor did they choose to come here, but were kidnapped and brought by force. Angry? You bet! But Asian immigrants came of their own accord, oftentimes fleeing untenable circumstances in their countries of origin. And so, their children, and those that have come after, have largely been indoctrinated to be appreciative. If things don’t go well, they tell them, then we must work harder!

This Caucasian reviewer comes to you without the Asian background, appearance, or experience that Lee speaks of; yet I live in a city that has one of the largest Asian populations in the U.S., and am married to an Asian immigrant, and parent to a child that is half-Japanese. So many of the stories—strangers that ask where you’re from, and won’t accept the truth of “California,” where Lee was born, or “Seattle,” my daughter’s hometown, are familiar ones.

Lee is fed up with the mainstream news stories that endeavor to pit Asian and Black people against each other. Her parents were small business owners in a mostly Black part of Los Angeles during the riots of 1992, and her experiences inform her conclusion, that there must be solidarity between all people of color in order to successfully fight for significant change.

The one bone I have to pick is the casual manner in which she dismisses the question of social class as a key factor. Her very brief note about this is that it’s a tomato and to-mah-to issue, not worth much discussion, because most people of color are working class. This is simply untrue, and it enforces a stereotype of Black people as being mostly poor and dispossessed, when in actuality, eighty percent of Black people in the US live above the poverty line. There are African-Americans that have far more money than I will ever see; some of the many Asian groups have a higher median income than Caucasians. So yes, social class is a huge factor here, one that Lee should examine more critically. There are working class Whites that can be allies; there are wealthy families of color that would shut down the struggle, given half a chance. The missing star in my rating reflects her failure to recognize this, and to offer concrete solutions to this problem.

The book’s title comes from Lee’s mentor at the otherwise very white-supremacist dominated Harvard—Jamaica Kinkaid. I actually gasped when I saw this. What a luminary she found to guide her!

Both the audio and print version of this book are equally readable, so go with whatever you usually prefer.

This is a fine resource for those seeking to examine Asian and Asian-American racial dynamics. Read it critically, but do read it. There’s a lot here that has needed to be said for a long, long time.

The Answer Is, by Alex Trebek*****

Posted on by

I first sought to read this book when its author was still alive. I couldn’t get the galley, and so I obtained a copy of the audiobook from Seattle Bibliocommons, by which time Trebek had left us.

It’s a curious thing, the attachment so many of his viewers, myself included, felt toward him. He was a game show host. There are other game shows that have longstanding hosts, but when they die—if they haven’t already—it will register as nothing more than a footnote, a handy answer in Trivial Pursuit. But somehow, with his polished yet soothing demeanor, Trebek found his way into our hearts. Go know.

The audio is read alternately by Trebek and by Ken Jennings, a record-breaking champion that found a measure of fame himself. It works nicely. Here are the things that surprised me. First, Alex’s family lived in a small town in Canada near Ottawa. They struggled financially, and so in order to pursue higher education, Alex had to have a scholarship. He got one, but while enrolled, he got into a power battle with a particularly hated teacher. Alex was expelled. That was a good school, though, in spite of the man Trebek so hated (and about whom he never changed his mind!) In the end, he and his father returned to the school, met with the administrator, and begged. A more sympathetic teacher/mentor agreed to be in charge of young Alex, and he was able to go back and complete his degree.

His career started in radio, working as a disc jockey. He had a love of classical music, and found his way to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Later, he was invited to audition for a game show in the States. So much more money! From there he hosted quite a number of game shows, finally landing his berth in Jeopardy in 1984. Later on he briefly considered trying to move into acting, but he came to know some actors that worked on the same set where Jeopardy was filmed, and he soon found out that they were making the same money as he was or less, but he only worked for a couple hours each day, home in plenty of time to eat dinner with his family and pursue hobbies and whatnot, whereas the actors were keeping grueling schedules. At that point, he decided he liked it just fine right where he was.

In parting, he reminded his listeners that everybody dies, and he is in his nineties. He’s had a good life. It’s time to go. I found this tremendously graceful, because pancreatic cancer has a reputation for being one of the most painful forms of the disease. But maybe that was Trebek’s magic:  always putting the other person at ease.

Highly recommended.