Nothing groundbreaking, but a candid and inspiring true story of conquering obesity.
One woman's journey of weight loss.
"I spent decades under the misperception that my weight was just another thing beyond my control," writes Johnson in her honest narrative about her decision to lose more than 50 pounds. Fearful that her job as a contributor to Good Morning America was on the line, she decided that her work and her happiness were more important than anything. She knew she had to lose the weight. Over the years, Johnson had tried a variety of diets but had always given up when she had not reached certain goals fast enough. Then she went right back to eating large amounts of food and felt terrible when the weight returned. What she needed was a mental shift: "I realized that what I put in my head is far more important than what I put in my mouth." With this basic philosophy to lean on, Johnson began the slow process of learning to eat smaller portions, eating healthier, low-carb foods, and learning to say no when people tempted her with high-calorie foods. Gradually, the weight began to drop, and Johnson discovered she liked her leaner body, the way it moved and looked in the new clothes she bought for herself, and the energy and sex drive she discovered as she inched toward a smaller waistline. In straightforward prose, Johnson admits there were moments, even days, when she was tempted to splurge and did; she didn't discover some quick fix to drop weight. Although she avoids listing her starting weight, with her new determination, Johnson dropped more than 60 pounds and is still losing. Her sincere desire is for other overweight women to learn what she has: that "the perfect moment to start is, and will always be, right now."
Nothing groundbreaking, but a candid and inspiring true story of conquering obesity.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4013-2492-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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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