by Jerome "Jay" Isip ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 2014
A well-written, if somewhat uneven, self-help guide that offers many humorous personal anecdotes.
Debut author Isip writes about his 10 tried-and-tested tips for success.
In 2001, Isip walked out of a placement exam at a community college after realizing that a life that began with filling in a standardized test had nothing to offer him. It’s an offbeat beginning to an often untraditional motivational guide. Many other books stress the importance of building a solid foundation of self-esteem and proactive thinking, but Isip favors a slightly bawdier, less cultivated approach, often to great effect. He encourages readers to perform a list of desired daily activities that will help them accomplish long-term goals, “[b]efore we check our phones, before we go on Instagram and Facebook, or before we light up that first roach or stogy.” Later, he movingly relates the lowest point of his own self-absorption, when he attended his uncle’s funeral drunk; he then realized that he’d deeply wounded his father with his flagrant substance abuse and his lack of interest in the feelings of others. These are unusually frank portrayals of a lifestyle that strays from the common self-help template. However, the book’s format (including chapters titled “Dream a Little Dream” and “Fight the Fear”) shares many of the genre’s clichés: Readers are encouraged to write down their goals or thoughts in a workbooklike format, and bullet points abound. Overall, its inevitable march to self-actualization isn’t as original as Isip’s colorful asides. Oddly, though, the author’s combination of street smarts and playful, somewhat shallow observations—such as complaining about having too much empty sex—is simultaneously its strength and its weakness. The book’s many unabashed references to illegal activities, for example, ultimately mark the author as a successful hustler, which may not be the best role model for confused, lost souls. That said, this book is a passionate affirmation of the inherent possibilities of life and of the irrefutable power of the entrepreneurial spirit.
A well-written, if somewhat uneven, self-help guide that offers many humorous personal anecdotes.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502960269
Page Count: 146
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Mark Manson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2019
Clever and accessibly conversational, Manson reminds us to chill out, not sweat the small stuff, and keep hope for a better...
The popular blogger and author delivers an entertaining and thought-provoking third book about the importance of being hopeful in terrible times.
“We are a culture and a people in need of hope,” writes Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, 2016, etc.). With an appealing combination of gritty humor and straightforward prose, the author floats the idea of drawing strength and hope from a myriad of sources in order to tolerate the “incomprehensibility of your existence.” He broadens and illuminates his concepts through a series of hypothetical scenarios based in contemporary reality. At the dark heart of Manson’s guide is the “Uncomfortable Truth,” which reiterates our cosmic insignificance and the inevitability of death, whether we blindly ignore or blissfully embrace it. The author establishes this harsh sentiment early on, creating a firm foundation for examining the current crisis of hope, how we got here, and what it means on a larger scale. Manson’s referential text probes the heroism of Auschwitz infiltrator Witold Pilecki and the work of Isaac Newton, Nietzsche, Einstein, and Immanuel Kant, as the author explores the mechanics of how hope is created and maintained through self-control and community. Though Manson takes many serpentine intellectual detours, his dark-humored wit and blunt prose are both informative and engaging. He is at his most convincing in his discussions about the fallibility of religious beliefs, the modern world’s numerous shortcomings, deliberations over the “Feeling Brain” versus the “Thinking Brain,” and the importance of striking a happy medium between overindulging in and repressing emotions. Although we live in a “couch-potato-pundit era of tweetstorms and outrage porn,” writes Manson, hope springs eternal through the magic salves of self-awareness, rational thinking, and even pain, which is “at the heart of all emotion.”
Clever and accessibly conversational, Manson reminds us to chill out, not sweat the small stuff, and keep hope for a better world alive.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-288843-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2019
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by Will Smith with Mark Manson
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by Mark Manson
by Bill Walton ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2016
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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by Bill Walton with Gene Wojciechowski
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