Spencer, Justin. One Life, One Legacy. Concord: One Life Publishing, 2014.
Never mind that this isn’t published by some big, well known publisher. In the grand scheme of things it probably wouldn’t have gotten very far in that world anyway.
I first came across Justin Spencer after watching him and his buddies put on a percussion act in Las Vegas. You got to “meet the drummers” after the show. Yes, please! It was one of those interactive gigs; something you would see on America’s Got Talent. In fact they were on that very show and as a performing act, they were good. All of them.
I bought Justin’s book because I thought a) he mentioned something about proceeds going to a charity fighting bullying or something like that and b) I really didn’t need another pair of souvenir drumsticks. One Life, One Legacy turned out to be a pretty cool purchase. It’s not overly flowery prose. Spencer won’t be winning any literary prizes anytime soon. It’s not overly long or complicated. You could read it in a day without a dictionary by your side. What it is is this: thought-provoking. Once I turned a blind eye to the typo or two (the first one being on page xvii) I was able to concentrate on sentences that stuck. Words like, “scorch the Earth” (p xxv) and “smell the honesty” (p 6) made me think about pursuits and endeavors. I can’t say that I followed Spencer’s advice to the letter or that I committed his meganodes to memory, but I certainly had as much fun reading his book as I did catching his Vegas show.
~*LunaSea*~ 