A well-balanced guide to changing vital parts of one’s life for the better.
Debut author Reynolds’ self-help book aims to motivate and educate readers on how to effect real, positive change in their lives.
The Australian author establishes himself as something of a Renaissance man who found million-dollar success in a variety of fields, including computer science, finance, and real estate. But he’s also had his fair share of struggles, including the tragic loss of dear friends, depression, and a financial crisis that bankrupted him. Now a motivational speaker, he shares what he’s learned throughout his life. First, he asserts that one must have the courage to change—to let go of negative emotions and perceptions, and commit oneself to personal growth using positive motivation. In terms of relationships, he says that one should strive to become mentally and emotionally independent, and to develop love for oneself; however, he also points out that “being independent doesn’t mean living like a hermit.” Finally, Reynolds shares his wisdom about maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle and becoming financially literate, as well as offering additional resources for further study. At first glance, this might seem like just another, generic self-help book, but one quickly finds that its quality is above and beyond other works of its type. The prose reads effortlessly, for one thing, and it’s organized in a way that smoothly and topically guides readers through its ideas. It also includes elements that some self-help books miss, such as specific, practical financial tips and the reasons behind them (“Pay off the high-interest debt first, so that you can actually keep any money you make by investing”); there’s even insightful instruction on how to best use other instructional books (“Information in self-help books cannot be digested like novels”). Reynolds promotes self-confidence, but not arrogance, and personal progress, but not at the expense of others. This is a book that will keep on giving, as long as readers are willing to study and apply it.
A well-balanced guide to changing vital parts of one’s life for the better.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0596-9
Page Count: 92
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2017
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
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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