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One Last Question Before You Go: Why You Should Interview Your Parents
Kyle Thiermann’s One Last Question Before You Go is part memoir, part field guide for emotional courage. It begins as a practical project, recording conversations with his parents before it’s too late, but evolves into a moving exploration of love, misunderstanding, and reconciliation. Thiermann opens his life with remarkable honesty, describing a childhood shaped by idealism, tension, and unconventional choices. His storytelling blurs the line between instruction and confession, reminding readers that asking questions can be both a form of preservation and an act of healing.
Thiermann’s writing balances clarity and lyricism. He recounts moments from his youth in Santa Cruz with humor and unease: surf sessions laced with danger, family debates over truth and science, and a mother whose belief in conspiracy theories fractures their bond. When he writes, “Now when my mom and I look up at the same blue sky, she sees chemtrails, where I see clouds,” the simplicity of the line reveals something profound about distance and love. It’s this honesty, direct, unsentimental, but deeply felt, that gives the book its emotional weight.
His reflections on interviewing parents are both practical and philosophical. Thiermann treats listening as a skill that requires humility and patience. His advice to start with simple questions, to let silence breathe, feels genuine and attainable. He doesn’t posture as an expert but as someone learning in real time. When he describes forcing himself to write “bad questions” until something true appears, it captures the imperfect process of reaching toward another person.
The book’s rhythm is conversational yet purposeful. Thiermann alternates between intimate family vignettes and broader reflections on communication, mortality, and forgiveness. He resists the urge to offer neat resolutions, allowing discomfort and ambiguity to remain. That restraint makes his insights resonate more deeply.
One Last Question Before You Go manages to be both instructive and profoundly human. It’s a reminder that asking hard questions is not about control or closure, it’s about connection. This is a book for readers who value sincerity over polish, who want to bridge emotional gaps with their own parents, or who simply wish to understand their family stories before time takes them. Thoughtful, unguarded, and deeply affecting, Thiermann’s work lingers long after the final page.
Pages: 156 | ASIN : B0FR8JLM98
The Ten Permissions
The heart of this book is simple but powerful. Author Jillian Reilly invites readers to tear up the old rulebook for what it means to “be an adult” and instead write our own permission slips. She offers ten guiding principles like “Be Willful,” “Go Astray,” and “Forget about the Future,” each meant to help us navigate a world that feels more uncertain and chaotic than the one our parents knew. Through personal stories, global perspectives, and plenty of gentle nudges, she frames adulthood not as a rigid set of milestones but as a creative and ongoing act of self-authoring.
The writing is warm, conversational, and at times almost conspiratorial, as though she’s leaning in and whispering, “You really don’t have to live that way anymore.” I found myself nodding along, sometimes with relief and sometimes with a pang of recognition. Her insistence that we give ourselves permission to fail, to wander, to feel lost felt both liberating and oddly radical, especially in a culture so obsessed with status and achievement. It made me think about how many of my own choices have been steered by “supposed to” rather than “want to,” and that realization was uncomfortable, but also motivating.
Some of the ideas, while inspiring, felt easier said than done. “Travel light,” for example, sounds freeing until you remember that debt, kids, or aging parents don’t exactly let you toss everything overboard. And yet, even in those moments, I didn’t feel dismissed. Instead, I felt challenged to consider what lightening my own load might look like, even if only in small ways. Her stories, especially those about her sons, gave the ideas a grounding in real life, and I appreciated that she didn’t pretend to have it all figured out.
I found the book energizing. It’s the kind of read that makes you want to scribble in the margins, dog-ear pages, and then hand it to a friend with an urgent, “You need this.” I’d recommend it to anyone feeling stuck, burned out, or caught between old definitions of success and the life they actually want. It’s not a how-to manual, and it doesn’t give you a neat five-step plan. What it gives is something more vital: permission to imagine, to try, to fail, and to keep going. And honestly, that feels like exactly what adulthood in this messy century requires.
Pages: 176 | ISBN : 1963827295
LITERARY TITAN 