by Cathy C. ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2016
An impassioned plea to restore God to an alcoholic’s recovery program.
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A debut meditation guide focuses on one of the founding principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Step 11 of the AA 12-Step Recovery Program urges addicts to seek an improved contact with God through prayer and meditation. The step is of a piece with a great many other components of the program, which has always stressed not only fellowship with other alcoholics, but also faith in a higher power. Cathy C. uses Step 11 as the centerpiece of her work, which opens with the personal story of how she was driven to drink in the aftermath of a horrific car crash that took the life of her fiance and so badly injured her (broken bones, a brain contusion, the loss of memory and motor functions) that when she fought her way back to some semblance of civilian life, her doctors referred to her as a “miracle patient.” It was through this combination of trauma and desperation that she found AA, where “God started doing for me what no human power could.” And it was in Step 11 of the 12-Step Program that she discovered the benefits of prayer and meditation (“The negative effects of my brain injury have decreased significantly since I have been consistently practicing prayer and meditation. I believe a big part of that is because practicing Step 11 is helping me have more emotional balance”). Her book is a careful, patient guide to teaching others some of the lessons about serenity and emotional control she learned the hard way. “You can start over with God any time you choose to do so,” she assures readers, and the bulk of the volume consists of straightforward and passionate encouragements for alcoholics to seek God through prayer, being mindful to set aside a regular time to “connect” with him. Her book includes 90 meditation exercises to help newcomers and experts alike. Although these meditations are overwhelmingly steeped in the vocabulary of monotheism, Cathy C.’s skill at generalizing her points about love and transformative caring should make the work of interest even to the most blatantly nonreligious reader who might come across her text.
An impassioned plea to restore God to an alcoholic’s recovery program.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-5404-2
Page Count: 146
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Oprah Winfrey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 2, 2014
Honest messages from one of America's best known women.
A compilation of advice from the Queen of All Media.
After writing a column for 14 years titled “What I Know For Sure” for O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, Winfrey brings together the highlights into one gift-ready collection. Grouped into themes like Joy, Resilience, Connection, Gratitude, Possibility, Awe, Clarity and Power, each short essay is the distilled thought of a woman who has taken the time to contemplate her life’s journey thus far. Whether she is discussing traveling across the country with her good friend, Gayle, the life she shares with her dogs or building a fire in the fireplace, Winfrey takes each moment and finds the good in it, takes pride in having lived it and embraces the message she’s received from that particular time. Through her actions and her words, she shows readers how she's turned potentially negative moments into life-enhancing experiences, how she's found bliss in simple pleasures like a perfectly ripe peach, and how she's overcome social anxiety to become part of a bigger community. She discusses the yo-yo dieting, exercise and calorie counting she endured for almost two decades as she tried to modify her physical body into something it was not meant to be, and how one day she decided she needed to be grateful for each and every body part: "This is the body you've been given—love what you've got." Since all of the sections are brief and many of the essays are only a couple paragraphs long—and many members of the target audience will have already read them in the magazine—they are best digested in short segments in order to absorb Winfrey's positive and joyful but repetitive message. The book also features a new introduction by the author.
Honest messages from one of America's best known women.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250054050
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Flatiron View Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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by Jessica Simpson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2020
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
Rolling Stone & Kirkus' Best Music Books of 2020
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
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