A rousing pamphlet that deserves to spread like wildfire.
A brief self-help volume that covers the basics of life in a humorous, no-nonsense manner.
Blunce, formerly a workaholic investment banker, has plenty of candid advice for living a happy, emotionally healthy life. His book is broken into chapters corresponding to potential readers’ teenage years, the decades beyond and the challenges unique to the various stages. Early on, he emphasizes respect for oneself (i.e., maintaining good hygiene, getting an education) and for society (paying taxes gladly, drinking responsibly). Throughout, he adds bullet-point specifics and “offhand bits of advice.” His discussion of life in your 20s (“The Go-Go Years”) mainly covers—for the purpose of broad appeal—graduating from college, getting an office job and navigating the perils of the workplace. Subsequent chapters, “30 to 40—The Making It Years” and “50 to 60—The Worldly Years,” detail practical ways to raise children, buy property, see the world, retire and acquire the proper health care. Blunce includes funny, insightful visuals (an image about “the chains that hold us” shows a horse tied to a plastic chair) and famous quotes (“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”). More controversial subjects appear, like religion’s negative effect on the world and the emptiness of accumulating wealth (rather than earning and enjoying it). For his debut, Blunce boldly dives into the self-improvement arena, offering a refreshing, down-to-earth work that isn’t padded with anecdotes. There’s also unabashed playfulness; in a segment on dressing for a job interview, Blunce says, “If your suit exudes ‘loser,’ your interview might as well have the sound of a toilet flushing in the background.” He also admits to being a Type A personality, and his advice may not appeal to those seeking a more creative, reflective life. His finale is a frank denunciation of religion as an unnecessary barrier toward living in global harmony. Luckily, Blunce remains jovial even here, sending us off with the message, “I love you...see you soon.”
A rousing pamphlet that deserves to spread like wildfire.Pub Date: March 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1481169066
Page Count: 192
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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