by Joe Gurkoff Anna Ranieri ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 20, 2012
As a primer, reference or for regular practice, this guide contains all the tools needed for friends in need.
Ranieri and Gurkoff adapt their therapy skills to create a self-help book for readers looking to help others.
Sometimes, just being heard is all you need, claim the authors and trained therapists; “not all problems require dramatic solutions.” Of course, reading their book won’t make you a “professional helper,” but with practice, their techniques and exercises can give readers “confidence and competence in listening and responding” to friends undergoing a challenge. Friend, in the authors’ usage, stands in for family, colleagues and acquaintances. Ranieri and Gurkoff’s combined experience leads to helpful case studies on identifying and dealing with friends going through all sorts of problems. First, three basic requirements must be assessed: a mutual desire of both parties to help and be helped, a defined relationship between the two and an established time commitment. Helpfully, also included are chapters on referring especially troubled friends to professional help, as well as guidance for “leaving the helping role” with the same discipline as in taking it on. In the author’s technique, allowing friends to put their thoughts into words leads to facts, which can be analyzed objectively before pinning down specific feelings. Once those are identified, working toward a solution means establishing a goal. “Contemplating action is the antidote” to the angst generated by isolation, inaction or confusion, since action helps restore a sense of control. The authors also recommend what they call “confronting,” which, although it sounds argumentative, Ranieri and Gurkoff mean as a kind of “reality check.” Despite the foreseeable risks, they claim it’s the most effective way to end denial and evasion, while enabling your friend to see “where she’s blocking her own progress.” Although Ranieri and Gurkoff tend to repeat themselves and overexplain some of their simplest ideas, they’ve laid out an excellent game plan in plainspoken English with an upbeat tone that encourages progress. Bullet points, sidebars and questions act as convenient yield signs along the way, giving readers a moment to recall and reflect. Even if “active listening” is second nature, it “can’t hurt to revisit the basics.”
As a primer, reference or for regular practice, this guide contains all the tools needed for friends in need.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1479255849
Page Count: 178
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 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
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
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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