A short, colorful book of spiritual happiness.
A quick, inspirational work about how to achieve one’s dreams.
In her nonfiction debut, Mills reconceives the typical length of a self-help or motivational book, offering an attractive, graphics-heavy, pamphletlike work that can be read in a quarter of an hour but pondered for much longer. She uses brightly colored page segments and oversized typefaces to lay out what she sees as the key essentials of life, such as seeking inner peace and remembering the simplicity of childhood play. She also addresses the necessity of happiness and how one may find it in even the darkest moments. The tone throughout is one of exuberant encouragement—a pep talk in primary colors. For instance, she tells readers that they are already the best versions of themselves, declaring that “There is virtually nothing that you are not capable of achieving.” She liberally peppers the text with inspirational quotes, culled not only from Scripture, but also from a wide selection of motivational speakers and current writers (with a few oldies but goodies thrown in), and it’s all gathered around the book’s central ideas: visualize the life you want, locate what can help you achieve it, and then move forward. Throughout the book, there’s a very pleasing emphasis on personal action—the idea that your fate is very much in your hands. However, it’s also cognizant of the fact that some readers might need a little help, and it quickly zeroes in on what form that help should take. After vague mentions of “the Divine and perfect Love” inside each person, Mills gets more specific, urging readers to “let go and let God” and referring to an “Angelic Support Team.” The book’s Christian target audience will likely find this to be an immensely cheerful little book to keep in their pockets, and even non-Christians may enjoy its heartfelt message of encouragement.
A short, colorful book of spiritual happiness.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0467-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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