An intriguing but uneven manual that focuses on eradicating negative thoughts and feelings.
A guide offers step-by-step instructions for how readers can cure their harmful emotions through writing.
Ildikó, a researcher from Slovakia, has written a short manual for readers wishing to heal what she calls “information cramps”—“a phenomenon that directly affects the human central nervous system.” She claims that these cramps overload readers’ brains with stimuli, causing “depression, anxiety, and personality disorders.” To cure these cramps, she provides the following remedy: “write as much as possible about things that are bothering you,” crumple, tear, throw the paper away, shower, take a break, and smile. In Slovakia, the author felt judged by society for being a young widow, so she used her knowledge of cognitive processes to develop this guide to eliminating negative emotions. For the first step of this process, she recommends that readers write down everything: “sadness, pain,” and feelings of failure. The author claims her simple manual will heal cramps faster than other guides, which are “incomplete and incorrect.” Ildikó delivers some useful tips in this well-intentioned and thought-provoking book. But her instructions are a bit repetitive, urging her readers to “Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Draw. Scratch. Write. Write. Write.” There are also a lot of platitudes in these pages. For example, “Smile and laughter are the best medicines. Don’t forget to laugh. Laugh a lot. It’s medicine. Have a wide smile at this guide. Well done. Smile is your medicine.” And: “You are a strong life. Remember it, and believe in yourself. Believe in yourself, and remember all the nice and beautiful things.” The book would benefit from the author’s expanding the instructions with prompts and presenting more information on how writing helps the central nervous system.
An intriguing but uneven manual that focuses on eradicating negative thoughts and feelings.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72834-064-7
Page Count: 62
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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