A book full of daily mediations on faith and religion suffers from its journal-esque structure.
A journal of spiritual reflections meant to inspire others to dedicate their lives to God.
For each day of the year, Noble’s spiritual guidebook offers short entries about different aspects of faith and God. For example, one entry discusses the Transfiguration (when God speaks to Moses and his disciples through a cloud). The interpretation encourages people to go directly to God with their troubles in order to build a strong relationship with him. Other entries focus more on Noble’s own spirituality. In one instance, she shares her struggle about the joy she felt when she found out her ex-husband cheated on the woman who had been his mistress during their marriage. Unsurprisingly, some entries resonate more strongly than others. In a May entry, Noble outlines her belief that, by his hanging on the cross, Christ blessed the wood itself. But how readers apply that to their own lives isn’t very clear. Entries about End Times and her stance against gay marriage will be off-putting to some. At times, the structure of short entries works against the book’s purpose. Instead of concentrating and fleshing out her ideas, the author briefly mentions them and then moves onto the next. At one point, she describes how she wants to model her approach to ministering on Melchizedek, a priest appearing in the Bible; e.g., she would “pop onto the scene, deliver a blessing and drop back out.” And while that might work in other contexts, in book form, the short entries create a fast pace where one day’s insight slides into the next. The book would probably best be read as it was written: one entry per day. Otherwise, an entire year’s worth of religious insight is overwhelming. Still, Noble sets forth a good framework for one who wants to live a more godly life, and she characterizes her views clearly: It’s not enough to just go through the motions; one must actively practice one’s faith through attending church, praying throughout the day and developing a strong relationship with Jesus.
A book full of daily mediations on faith and religion suffers from its journal-esque structure.Pub Date: March 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490820422
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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