A refreshingly blunt self-help guide that occasionally oversimplifies the challenges of change.
Jean presents strategies to harness a fulfilling and meaningful life in this straightforward motivational guide.
The author asserts that while most people have surface-level life experiences, there’s a “world behind the world” in which “invisible forces” such as ambition and desire shape outcomes. He describes fear as “the first wall between you and the life you’re meant to live,” preventing people from taking opportunities that could change their lives. He presents awareness—of self, others, and patterns—as the first step to mastery. Jean frames thoughts as the “steering wheel” of life, encouraging readers to strengthen the “protective mind” rather than the “sabotaging mind.” The author warns of falling for charming, charismatic people, instead advising readers to pay attention to how people make them feel rather than to what they say. He cautions against taking things personally because “people often project their inner world onto the outer world.” Discipline is the choice to value “your future over your feelings,” which the author describes as a form of freedom that “makes you unstoppable.” Jean praises humility and courage, which support a growth mindset, and insists that one must “reprogram [one’s self] intentionally” in order to move from survival mode to success. He characterizes pain and emotions as messages that people should work to understand, and he posits that identity is built by small, powerful habits, not big events, and that protecting peace and cultivating healthy, honest relationships are additional steps toward a better life. Ultimately, he encourages readers to “stop living accidentally and start living deliberately” and to consider their legacy by creating a “life that outlives [them].”
Jean inspires readers to take charge of their lives in this empowering guide. The book is composed of short, direct statements that are easy to follow and remember, such as “Low standards destroy high potential.” The author’s emphasis on awareness as a skill invites readers to identify red flags, emotional triggers, and repeated behaviors, allowing them to pause and respond rather than react impulsively. Jean normalizes emotions and offers advice for using them productively; for example, he reframes fear as a signal that growth is imminent. (“The life you want—the relationships, the growth, the opportunities, the peace, the strength—all live on the other side of the decisions you’re afraid to make,” he states.) Similarly, he positions pain as a valuable tool that exposes unhealthy relationships, emotional wounds, and bad habits that must be addressed. (“Sometimes pain doesn’t come to ruin your life—it comes to remove something that would have ruined you later,” Jean elaborates.) The book provides concrete recommendations for recalibrating thoughts—for example, instead of thinking “What if I’m not ready,” try, “I’ll start and learn as I go.” However, the language can come off as judgmental in statements like “Confident people feel fear and move anyway. Weak people feel fear and obey it.” Some advice echoes sentiments commonplace in the self-help genre, such as “If you want a new life, start with new thoughts” or “Rewrite the story you tell yourself,” and the author’s intense focus on self-responsibility leads him to overlook the systemic causes of suffering. A refreshingly blunt self-help guide that occasionally oversimplifies the challenges of change.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9798218879747
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Supreme Legacy Press
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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