An energetic, if sometimes stale, self-improvement guide.
A success manual with a self-help focus designed to bring about outward success through inner awareness.
In quick, concise chapters, Shuja and Khawaja primarily concentrate on personal realization, the kind of mental and emotional experience that, according to them, involves experiencing positive emotions while diminishing negatives like jealousy, hatred, or anger. Throughout, they quote generously from such self-help gurus as Tony Robbins, including his classification of four types of experiences (fulfilling, challenging, escapist, and wasted), and Wayne Dyer, who proffers the odd contention that you should care about other people without caring about what they think of you. Throughout, the authors comment on a broad spectrum of self-improvement topics—from financial advice to overviews of good eating and exercise habits—and always include pragmatic reminders: “Knowing what to eat and how to exercise is essential,” they remind their readers, “but doing it is even more critical.” Like many self-help writers, the authors occasionally lapse into clichés or non sequiturs. “If you don’t love yourself, you can’t love others,” they write at one such point, though readers might vehemently disagree. Another unhelpful note: “If your first goal is to become a better person who has excellent qualities and moral values and the capability of managing more significant enterprises,” they write, “then the money will take care of itself.” Many will be able to testify to the contrary. These bromides weaken the overall optimistic momentum of the narrative, but they don’t destroy it completely. The guide’s main strength comes from its compartmentalization of inner improvement: concentrate first on addressing relationships with other people (and one’s god), move on from there to improve job satisfaction, which will improve productivity, which in turn will improve “financial health.” The clear presentation of these stages will probably be a boon to readers looking for such organization.
An energetic, if sometimes stale, self-improvement guide.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-68-027866-6
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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