While the writing quality remains uneven, this book deftly mixes autobiography and advice.
This debut self-help book encourages empathy, financial stability, and self-confidence.
Alimam, born in 1961, was raised in Sudan. In 1997, he moved to Denver, where he initially worked as an airport security screener and cabdriver. This book originated, he explains, after he got his MBA in accounting in 2004 and failed to find work in his field. “That situation led me to embark on a healing journey, as an attempt to protect myself against breakdown,” he writes. Through reading self-help books and mulling his own experiences, he progressed from depression to gratitude for the life he has. In 52 short thematic chapters—the work could easily lend itself to weekly devotional use—Alimam discusses what he’s learned, including understanding the value of forgiveness and relinquishing control to God, and how to develop proper self-love. The author and his family have experienced Islamophobia in America, yet he is determined not to take it personally but to forgive the slights, whether accidental or deliberate, as they often result from ignorance. “Compassion is the life line that connects all people,” he asserts, so it’s important to resist the urge to brand people and instead recognize that everyone contributes in different ways. The author affirms the eternal existence of the spirit, and though he’s coming from a Muslim point of view, his religious references—to Adam and Eve and to a story of the Prophet Muhammad’s that resembles that of the Samaritan woman—should resonate with readers of other faiths, too. Being prudent about possessions and money is a major theme that recurs in multiple chapters, with personal anecdotes reinforcing his lessons. The advice in Chapters 26 and 41 stands out: “Make Your Hay Earlier” (don’t wait until retirement to enjoy life) and “Don’t Preach Hate.” A section on defeating procrastination and perfectionism and another giving 10 tips for combating insecurity are additional highlights. But the book is let down by its awkward, non-colloquial phrasing (for example, “despoiling comfort zone”; “He may act in heat but cooler later”; “glutenous people”), subject–verb agreement issues (“when that money go away”; “Before it fly away and forever”), and typos (“planing” for planning; “honoring our gusts” for guests). This means that some would-be profound aphorisms fall flat.
While the writing quality remains uneven, this book deftly mixes autobiography and advice.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5078-6381-7
Page Count: 162
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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