A brisk, useful self-help guide about changing the way we “wear” our lives.
A self-help guide to enriching your life.
In her nonfiction debut, Rose gathers a collection of her essays about “personal resilience, finding joy and creating a life of adventure and freedom.” An experienced yoga instructor and life coach, Rose assures her readers that they already have all the tools they need for a life on the edge. “Now it’s a matter of unlocking what you’ve secreted away inside yourself,” she writes, “thinking it wasn’t right, or good, or enough.” In Rose’s thematic conceit, our lives are full of boring, commonplace “plaid suits” that we hardly consider anymore. “They’re the stories we tell ourselves about who we are,” she writes, “they’re our patterns of behavior, and habits.” And often we don’t even know we’ve “shrugged them on.” In order to change these suits, she insists, it’s vital to first recognize not only that we wear them, but that they can also be counterproductive to our progress in life; getting rid of these suits can enhance our sex lives, bring us deeper contentment, and spur our creativity (“Give yourself permission to think creatively,” she urges her readers, “and you’ll increase your creative output along with building confidence in your own abilities”). In clear and forceful prose, Rose explores all the aspects of human nature that seem to keep everybody figuratively clothed in plaid. She’s always ready with upbeat, straight-talking strategic encouragement, amounting to what she accurately calls “a gritty-nitty-let’s-not-waste-time-get-right-to-it guide” to improving all aspects of our lives by changing the delusional narratives we so often comfort ourselves with. The author is obviously a born teacher; this is a no-nonsense personal motivation book with real heart.
A brisk, useful self-help guide about changing the way we “wear” our lives.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781639885886
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautifully written tribute to underappreciated emotions.
The author of Quiet turns her attention to sorrow and longing and how these emotions can be transformed into creativity and love.
Cain uses the term bittersweet to refer to a state of melancholy and specifically addresses individuals who have “a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.” With great compassion, she explores causes for these emotions by candidly chronicling her personal experiences and those of others throughout history who have suffered loss, including Plato, Charles Darwin, C.S. Lewis, Leonard Cohen, and Maya Angelou. “As Angelou’s story suggests,” she writes, “many people respond to loss by healing in others the wounds that they themselves have suffered.” Cain argues persuasively that these emotions can be channeled into artistic pursuits such as music, writing, dancing, or cooking, and by tapping into them, we can transform “the way we parent, the way we lead, the way we love, and the way we die.” If we don’t transform our sorrows and longings of the past, she writes, we may inflict them on present relationships through abuse, domination, or neglect. Throughout, the author examines the concept of loss from various religious viewpoints, and she looks at the ways loss can affect individuals and how we can integrate it into our lives to our benefit. Cain contends that the romantic view of melancholy has “waxed and waned” over the years. Currently, a “tyranny of positivity” can often be found in the workplace, and the “social code” of keeping negative feelings hidden abounds. However, she points out the benefits that can come from opening up versus keeping everything inside. As a first step, she encourages us to examine our lives and ask ourselves what we are longing for, in a deep and meaningful way, and if we can turn that ache into a creative offering.
A beautifully written tribute to underappreciated emotions.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-451-49978-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
