Although short and somewhat awkwardly written, this volume contains some profound truths and offers a concise survey of how...
A slender self-help treatise on the aspects of humanity that contribute to a healthy, community-engaged life.
George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Why I Write” was a precise, slender, and gorgeously written survey of the impulses and practices necessary to becoming a writer. Readers may get the feeling that Maritz is attempting a similar feat in this manual for self-improvement, which outlines 11 tools to improve one’s life. They include “Reality,” “Character,” “Originality,” “Freedom,” and seven others. The book attempts poetic beauty (“Like a little bird in the sky, you can fly from the one place to the next”), but it often stumbles into rather amusing metaphors for human development and growth, such as its use of the ocean as a symbol for retaining one’s inner peace and getting rid of harmful personal relationships: “The ocean...looks after itself which sometimes means that it punishes those that exploit its resources to remind them to be grateful again e.g. by drowning ships.” There’s nothing wrong with Maritz’s overall philosophy, which is grounded in a wise and humanistic approach. However, the book might have benefited from a stronger edit, as the brevity of the work amplifies the import of each sentence. Regardless, the book does make excellent observations on human nature and, more importantly, offers sound advice on how to create a functional, healthy communal environment. Particularly apropos is the notion that a person’s greatest achievement is how he or she contributes to forming a healthy, prosperous community: “A society or group of people is only as strong as its weakest link.” The author observes that if a person adopts a standardized societal role that doesn’t accurately reflect his or her complexity, it ultimately doesn’t do anyone any good, as the person will feel frustrated and trapped within an inflexible set of expectations. Instead, Maritz encourages everyone to develop themselves fully and, by extension, develop a well-rounded, self-sustaining community.
Although short and somewhat awkwardly written, this volume contains some profound truths and offers a concise survey of how to attain not only inner peace, but communal harmony.Pub Date: March 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1508847762
Page Count: 40
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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