A winner. Bridget Jones meets Buddha in this plucky, heartwarming, comical debut memoir.
London-based journalist Power chronicles the harrowing, often side-splitting adventures she embarked on while pursuing happiness and inner peace.
“At thirty-six,” writes the author, “my friends were ticking off the various life stages while I was stuck in the same life I’d had since my twenties. I was always single, I didn’t own a house, and I didn’t have a plan.” One weekend, while suffering through a particularly wicked hangover, Power decided to undertake an extended safari through the wilds of the self-help aisle. For years, the author had turned to self-help books for “comfort,” affirming the commonality of her “insecurities and anxieties.” Now, she hit on “an idea that would stop me from being a depressed, hungover mess and turn me into a happy, highly functioning person: I wasn’t just going to read self-help, I was going to DO self-help.” Power set out to act on “every single bit of advice” offered by a different self-help book each month for a year in hopes of “systematically” tackling her flaws “one book at a time.” What began as a 12-month “plan” slowly morphed into a 16-month “roller coaster” as the author torturously plumbed the recesses of her psyche at the behest of self-help and spiritual behemoths like Susan Jeffers (Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway), Tony Robbins, Stephen R. Covey (Power gave up at Habit 2 of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), and Eckhart Tolle, all in hopes of achieving “some sort of profoundly moving (but neat and tidy) epiphany.” During her grand inner tour, Power faced down some of her darkest demons. Throughout this consistently entertaining book, she writes with unflinching honesty—and bald hilarity, especially as she encountered deadpan reality checks from her mother, sisters, and skeptical friends—about the throes of facing her fears, tackling money issues, living in the present, opening herself up to rejection, and getting over her hang-ups with men (“all Power of Now zen vanished in the face of dating”).
A winner. Bridget Jones meets Buddha in this plucky, heartwarming, comical debut memoir.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2906-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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