Atypical, engaging self-help fare that offers well-meaning advice for living.
A personal collection of observations about overcoming life’s harsh obstacles and finding positivity in the darkest of times.
In this series of short meditations, cancer survivor and motivational speaker Ward (Finding Your Positives, 2012) shares numerous insights gleaned from his own challenges, and universal strategies for fighting depression, seeking out new experiences, and finding balance and peace. He writes that leading a life of goodness is of paramount importance and emphasizes faith, forgiveness, humor and communication—tools that allow one to actively engage not only with friends, family and other people, but also with everyday trials. The book is quite remarkable for its inclusivity; even though the author is clearly religious, he embraces the varied spirituality of others, emphasizing the importance of faith no matter what belief structure lies behind it. Ward offers personal anecdotes only occasionally, with little ego, and usually as an impetus for readers to think critically about their own hardships. The book’s philosophy of active engagement extends to how readers interact with the text, which provides short questionnaires and numerous lists of suggestions on how to pursue goodness, with blanks provided for readers’ contributions and ideas. Ward’s “notes” offer insights into such topics as coping with unexpected grief or prolonged malaise; they also offer financial advice and guidance aimed specifically at parents, artists and caregivers. Other notes are more general, making the book a resource to revisit rather than a one-off read. Like most motivational writings, it employs rhetoric and metaphor excessively but not recklessly. For example, when it introduces a metaphor, such as a baseball allegory in “Life’s Note 48,” the prose sticks with it and never mixes it with another. Such simple competency lends greater credence to the overall text.
Atypical, engaging self-help fare that offers well-meaning advice for living.Pub Date: July 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475995589
Page Count: 224
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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