An energetic guide to bringing greater intentionality to daily life.
DeFoore provides a blueprint for greater mental clarity and effectiveness in this self-help guide.
“Goodfinding” is “the practice of gratitude for the benefits of your past experiences, appreciation of your present blessings and opportunities, and optimism about the positive possibilities that lie ahead for you,” writes the author, emphasizing what he refers to as the “time travel” aspect of the human mind, capable of pondering the past, assessing the present, and planning for the future. His practice involves three key changes in thinking: a shift from negative to positive thinking, a change from outer focus to inner focus (to remind the reader that one is “the driver of your own car, the captain of your own ship, and the creator of your own reality”), and a pivot from “living at effect” to “living at cause.” DeFoore asserts that by following this practice, one is “learning to use your brilliant mind to its maximum benefit, contributing to your own well-being and that of the world around you.” The author frequently references Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995), assuring his readers that they have brilliant minds (“I’m not saying that because I know anything about your intelligence,” DeFoore writes; “I’m saying that because a brilliant mind is standard equipment in the human organism”). This tone of strong encouragement runs throughout the book, which advises readers on everything from improving their finances (“a positive relationship with money is essential to your ongoing health and happiness”) to the practice of “gratitude journaling.” The author has a large number of abstruse topics to cover, and he’s very much aided in doing so by a clear, straightforward, explanatory style when clarifying his terms: “If a thought, belief, or course of action promotes life, health, and happiness and doesn’t harm you or others,” he writes, “then it is authentically positive.” Such plainspoken bits of wisdom will make DeFoore’s book appealing to readers seeking a bit of reinvention.
An energetic guide to bringing greater intentionality to daily life.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2022
ISBN: 9798765235676
Page Count: 374
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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