Perceptive musings ready-made for artistically inspired readers and those with short attention spans.
A bounty of short, sound advice and commentary from a Canadian improvisational-theatre instructor.
Together with good friend Heti, Glouberman, a former manners columnist, facilitates the popular Trampoline Hall spoken-word series, where amateur lecturers take center stage. Heti, consistently awestruck by her co-collaborator’s vast knowledge base, decided to team up with Glouberman on a book elucidating “everything he knows.” Transcribing the author’s words verbatim produces fresh, pithy perspectives on a wide range of diverse subjects, issues, pleasures and irritants. With a collective slant toward the younger reader, Glouberman’s sage, instructional and often unintentionally hilarious commentary addresses how to navigate urban Toronto life while respecting others’ personal space (“A city is a place where you can be alone in public, and where you have that right”), how to make friends (“You’ll have to spend time with people who seem initially interesting but then turn out not to be”), acquiesce leadership roles, learn manners and some unconventional chatter on what he believes energizes cocktail parties (“people’s fear of being seen not talking to anyone”). While some of his advice borders on whimsy, the author shines when he shares personal anecdotes and revelations—e.g., his civic involvement in the development of a local neighborhood Resident’s Association advocating against the proliferation of noisy nightclubs in residential areas. He saves his greatest revelation for last in describing how he quit a heavy smoking habit using a self-rewarding method and the development of a conscious, steely decisiveness that continues to fortify his life today.
Perceptive musings ready-made for artistically inspired readers and those with short attention spans.Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-86547-945-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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
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
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