Capably carries out its valuable mission.
A straightforward, practical, and somewhat humdrum guide to coping with stress, with emphasis on the workplace.
In her debut as a solo author, Hird summons her years of experience as a corporate and personal counselor to offer concrete methods for responding to the ever widening scourge called stress. These methods appear to apply most to stressed-out, overworked employees in small offices and corporate divisions. Hird’s bottom-line advice to the overburdened is to request a sit-down with the boss, supervisor, or colleague seen as causing the stress; such a manner would lay out the problem in a civil, formal fashion that cannot be ignored. This approach, she says, is most likely to yield an acceptable solution. She presents numerous if sometimes slightly wooden examples to show how the process works and advises that the meeting requester come armed with suggested solutions to put on the table. This seems like very sound advice and a far better way to handle workplace stress than by, say, having a meltdown or being a doormat and suffering in silence. From an employer’s point of view, following Hird’s counsel could bring hope of improving subpar job performances and cutting down on absenteeism due to stress-related health problems. The emphasis throughout is on managing rather than succumbing to stress. For the sufferer, this begins with frank self-analysis of one’s own personality type and a lifestyle overhaul, if necessary, to help shed stress. A stress test to detect physical and psychological signs of incipient or already present stress is helpfully included. At the book’s core is Hird’s instructive analysis of what she identifies as the five basic coping strategies (not all of them positive or recommended) people use when stress strikes. Flight, for example, isn’t going to work well for someone who detests the job but needs the paycheck. The writing isn’t inspired but rather the competent work of a professional doing what she does best, though one imagines she probably does it even better in an actual group or one-on-one setting. Nonetheless, the print adaptation is nothing if not clearly presented, comprehensive, and almost certainly helpful in reducing stress.
Capably carries out its valuable mission.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1458217028
Page Count: 202
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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