by Beth Wonson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 22, 2022
A thoughtful and well-written explanation of how to communicate.
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A guide focuses on managing productive conversations in challenging circumstances.
This self-help book encourages readers to approach potentially fraught conversations with a clear understanding of goals, emotions, and boundaries in order to set realistic expectations and achieve the best possible results. Wonson explains her trademarked “Navigating Challenging Dialogue” process, which, she asserts, allows her to be “a steward of healthy conflict.” After describing her background in communication, relating how she learned to combat unhelpful emotional responses, and incorporating a smidge of neurobiology, the author lays out a four-step process for readers. With numerous examples drawn from her consulting clients, Wonson explains how to avoid emotional triggers, adjust assumptions, listen to the other party's responses, and maintain an open curiosity in order to reach an acceptable resolution. The author reminds readers that conversations can succeed when they accept that they only have control over their own emotions and reactions, not those of anyone else in the exchange, and adjust their expectations accordingly. The book’s discussion of how to respond to tears is particularly intriguing, offering strategies for reacting appropriately to strong emotions without making assumptions about how the other party is feeling. For instance, Wonson suggests saying “I see tears. Can you tell me what they mean?” before drawing conclusions about why a conversation has led to crying. The manual also does a good job of providing scripts that readers can employ when they need to pause a conversation in order to regain control of their own emotions. The volume’s many anecdotes are well chosen and serve to illustrate the more abstract concepts in Wonson’s framework, making it easy for readers to adapt it to their own needs. While the fundamentals of the process will be familiar to those who have read other works on healthy communication, the author’s clear explanations of how she came to understand and apply the common concepts make for an effective introduction. She builds a solid case throughout the text for the value of following the steps she enumerates.
A thoughtful and well-written explanation of how to communicate.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73645-893-8
Page Count: 178
Publisher: NCD Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Nicole Avant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2023
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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by Matthew McConaughey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2020
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
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New York Times Bestseller
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All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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by Matthew McConaughey illustrated by Renée Kurilla
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