by Michael Humphries ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2011
One man’s progress toward achieving peace of mind.
Humphries’ debut is partly an inspirational tract and partly a love letter to his family, though he welcomes all to the table.
“This book is about my life and I ask you to dance with me looking at my experiences and lessons learned,” Humphries says in this disarmingly upbeat story. On the surface, contrary to the title, it hasn’t all been good in his life. His father committed suicide (he’d been undone after being paralyzed by a bullet in the back when his illegal still was raided), his mother suffered dementia, cancer ran a ragged path through his family and he often had to scramble to make ends meet. But the author is a silver-lining kind of guy, as well as open-minded, bighearted and inclusive—“We need to respect everyone for who and what they are. You should never get to the point of believing you are right and everyone else is wrong.” He provides an intimate portrait of his footloose life in the American South in the 1960s and 1970s—singing gospel, hopping from job to job, selling insurance or faux finishes or cars, flipping fixer-uppers, working as a roofer and shuffling from Florida to Texas to Oklahoma. Humphries’ bubbling enthusiasm results in some scattershot pages, and his story jumps between autobiography and inspirational tome. Elsewhere, his words of encouragement occasionally feel flimsy and incomplete—“Make sure everyday you are performing to your optimal potential!... Miracles will happen.” But the author’s positive attitude shines. Humphries doesn’t despair, even when he is down to his last bologna sandwich, because he has persistence, gumption and lots of friends and family, all of whom the author warmly references in these pages. Ultimately, Humphries’ message is undeniable and salubrious—don’t grouse and grumble, but give thanks and face life with a smile.
One man’s progress toward achieving peace of mind.Pub Date: April 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460953860
Page Count: 160
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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