A clear, conversational exploration of one’s connections to home.
In this spiritual guide to creating wellness in any space, debut author Ross delivers practical advice, strategies, and clear explanations of the ways people interact with their surroundings.
The author, a teacher and public speaker, offers a wealth of knowledge and solutions in this guide to developing a nurturing, calming relationship with one’s environment. Ross explains that although most people have a place that they call “home,” they may still feel “exiled” if they don’t feel at home emotionally. Ross begins with the powerful advice to start a “conversation” about a room, asking oneself questions such as, “When you go to bed, are you able to let go of the day easily?” and “What are your typical routines in the space, and are they really restful?” She then suggests that small changes can shift one’s relationship with a space—one that has usually formed from unconscious habit. She suggests “reading your environment”: noticing things that feel “off” about a room and examining what those things say about you. For example, Ross includes an anecdote about a woman named Helen, who found that paper piled up in her living space; this signaled to her that she wasn’t good at making decisions. By simply placing a recycling box near the door, Ross says, Helen empowered herself to make immediate determinations about what to save and what to recycle, which allowed her to clear her mind and her environment at the same time. If one feels “not at home,” Ross explains, “it’s important to understand why. A chair that is too close to the carpet edge or a bookcase crammed beyond capacity is a message.” Ross skillfully explains the concept of chakras and the ways that they act as energy centers in the body, and then delivers an intriguing, easy-to-understand explanation of how the body contains centers of control and calm. Although other self-help books also explore such topics, this title does so in a logical fashion that makes it great for readers who’ve never explored chakras, meditation, or other topics of holistic wellness.
A clear, conversational exploration of one’s connections to home.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61852-098-2
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Turning Stone Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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