Though the writing isn’t notable, the author comes across as genuine, and some of her vignettes are genuinely entertaining.
Frank memoir by debut author Pulos, a regular on the Bravo reality TV shows Flipping Out and Interior Therapy.
Known for her seemingly endless patience and sweet nature as the calm assistant to her obsessive, hot-tempered boss, realtor Jeff Lewis, on Flipping Out, Pulos pulls no punches in her autobiography-cum–self-help guide. Hers, she declares, is a “ ‘don't give up’/‘hang in there’/‘you can learn to be happy’/‘keep going’/‘own your own flaws’/‘succeed anyway’ book,” and her first tenet is to “tell the truth about yourself.” To that end, with the assistance of veteran co-author Morton (co-author, with Al Roker: Never Goin' Back: Winning the Weight-Loss Battle For Good, 2012, etc.), Pulos lays out the personal lows and highs from her life, including her then-husband ending their marriage on national TV. She also looks back at her successful career in entertainment, which followed being told that she was destined for Hollywood failure. Pulos' confessions and insights possess a disposition that's simultaneously sunny side up and self-deprecating. Her talent for revealing herself and laughing about her mistakes is endearing; her candid sharing of her foibles and embarrassments makes her triumphs, in love and work, feel earned. Her overarching story is one of self-transformation, specifically how she changed from playing small in order to please people, including those who underestimated her, into a woman who takes ownership of her life and happiness. Having embraced imperfections and mistakes dating back to her childhood (embarrassing photos included), Pulos laughs easily. Despite her insistence that this is not a how-to book, the author includes numerous lists, tips, sidebars and inspirational quotes from historical figures.
Though the writing isn’t notable, the author comes across as genuine, and some of her vignettes are genuinely entertaining.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-02819-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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