Little of what’s included seems like more than a one-time experience, providing diversion rather than transformational depth.
A blog sparks more of a self-help attitude than a book.
Readers who feel the need for a life coach can turn here instead—especially readers similar to the co-authors, two female friends in their 40s, both happily married and with families, who weren’t exactly dissatisfied with their middle-class lives but felt like they were stuck in a rut. So they started a blog “as a fun idea between two good friends. Our plan was to get going again, get unstuck and just feel better. This book is our story, but it is also an inspirational blueprint to help others get going again.” For all its good intentions, the book is repetitive and not especially deep. The key to getting unstuck is to get out of your comfort zone and try new things, which is a point belabored multiple times within each chapter. What new things? Go to a shooting range. Eat blueberries for breakfast. Try nude yoga. Test-drive a sports car. Study the cabala. Take time to reflect or even meditate. Give to those who are suffering or less fortunate. “If you listen to Bach,” they write, “try the Beatles. If you listen to Beyonce, try Bach.” This isn’t a collection of blog posts, however; instead, it’s more of what the authors discovered through their personal experiences, interspersed with testimonies from “52 Weeks Experts” and quotes from the likes of Dr. Seuss, Woody Allen and Ellen DeGeneres. Each chapter ends with bullet points and lists, and then there are much longer lists of suggestions at the end of the book. And worksheets. It likely worked better as a blog, but those who need a prod will find themselves prodded repeatedly here.
Little of what’s included seems like more than a one-time experience, providing diversion rather than transformational depth.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-718-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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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