by Bradley Franc ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2014
Practical, optimistic tips for focusing on goals in business and in life.
A business consultant and entrepreneur shares his advice on how to live a purposeful life, both personally and professionally.
In clear, jargon-free language, Franc writes about how people can discover their purposes in life. Once you discover your purpose, he writes, you can focus on the various roles you need to take on in order to fulfill it. In his own life, these roles ranged from Christian, husband and father to entrepreneur, partner and friend. He wisely notes that sometimes one’s roles can conflict; then, he says, it’s necessary to remember one’s overall purpose, as it provides a foundation for decision-making. Although the book doesn’t break a lot of new ground, readers who are familiar with self-assessment will benefit from being reminded of the basics; Franc, who uses many sports analogies, writes that even professional baseball players will visit the slower batting cages “to work on the fundamentals.” The book might have benefited from a stronger edit to catch punctuation and spelling errors; it refers to former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, for example, as “Jack Welsh.” Franc’s habit of referring to sayings also grows tiresome (“As the saying goes, ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be,’ ”; “As the saying goes, time waits for no man”). Although the book is clearly focused on how to achieve success, Franc is quick to reveal some of his own failures, yet he doesn’t dwell on them—and he doesn’t think readers should focus on theirs. Each chapter ends with a reminder of key points, and there are useful charts for readers eager to start tracking their own short-term and long-term goals. Overall, Franc’s upbeat tone makes the book a pleasure to read, and it’s hard to think of anyone who couldn’t benefit from its advice.
Practical, optimistic tips for focusing on goals in business and in life.Pub Date: March 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1466479814
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Cheryl Strayed
BOOK REVIEW
edited by Cheryl Strayed
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2018
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.