Occasionally inspiring but fatally uneven.
The Today show fourth hour co-anchor and Dateline NBC correspondent offers encouragement to those who are unfulfilled with their lives to break through the "gray clouds of frustration and worry" and "create a life that’s both fun and rewarding."
In her third book, Kotb (Ten Years Later: Six People Who Faced Adversity and Transformed Their Lives, 2014, etc.) recounts her interviews with men and women who honored their life's callings despite formidable obstacles. She shuns an overly flattering tone and relates her stories in a plain, straightforward style (unfortunately, several passages read like dry Wikipedia entries). The author comprehensively details her subjects’ life events and accomplishments. After an introduction (each story “will identify the guideposts that led to a place of peace and fulfillment”), the author begins with a deeply moving account of a girl's triumph over poverty and a fractured family life to her acceptance to Harvard Medical School, a journey that showcased her superhuman resilience and resourcefulness. Another, about a socialite couple who sponsored a nonprofit foundation in Haiti to place orphans with adoptive parents, is Kotb's best example of two dissatisfied people who conquered great trepidation and found their passion by surprise. Some chapters start strong—e.g., the heiress-turned–sustainable living advocate, and the Wall Street one-percenter–turned-minister—but then get bogged down by their length. By contrast, the celebrity profiles—including Touched by an Angel star Roma Downey and boxer Laila Ali—are far too brief and inconsequential. Oddly, Kotb's profile of comedian and activist Margaret Cho doesn't feature any of her jokes or trademark candor. This brief, gift-style book contains some gems, but others are seemingly thrown together and make readers impatient for the payoff.
Occasionally inspiring but fatally uneven.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5242-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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