A book of practical and valuable advice, whether one is looking to mend old relationships, forge new connections, or simply...
Pharmacist Cooper offers a guide for fostering connections and living a more personally fulfilling life.
The author, a self-proclaimed “reforming mean girl,” shares her journey from a period of social disconnection to her discovery of how to find and build value in relationships. The book covers a broad range of topics, including establishing healthy boundaries, fighting fairly during verbal disagreements, resisting gossip, and embracing kindness and respect. Each chapter provides insightful strategies and reflections on how readers may improve their interactions with others. The discussion on the damage of gossip is particularly poignant; reflecting on her past, she admits, “We judged people's outfits and attitudes—yet we were the ones who needed help.” This honest self-reflection sets the tone for a book that’s as much about personal redemption as it is about building stronger personal ties. Another powerful message is the importance of recognizing and valuing the uniqueness of others: “When you stop to identify what makes a person unique, you are stopping to identify part of what makes them valuable.” This perspective shift is a cornerstone of the book’s philosophy, as it promotes empathy and deeper understanding. Overall, this is a compelling and practical guide for anyone looking to enhance their social lives and general well-being. Its blend of personal narrative, actionable advice, and philosophical insight makes for an enjoyable book, and perhaps its most inspiring message is that small, positive changes in one’s behavior can have a significant and cumulative impact: “When you focus on improving your small part of the world, you make the greatest impact in your life.” Readers may find this emphasis on personal responsibility and incremental change to be motivating and empowering.
A book of practical and valuable advice, whether one is looking to mend old relationships, forge new connections, or simply be a kinder person.Pub Date: May 19, 2024
ISBN: 9798989841707
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Oak Leaf Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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