Useful tools for living a more balanced life.
An easy approach to integrating different realms of your life and achieving a healthy lifestyle.
It was a wake-up call when doctors told Colman that she had an 87 percent chance of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis in her lifetime. With a sister already in the midst of her own grueling battle with the disease, Colman had a choice: accept that a cancer diagnosis was nearly inevitable or “create a new health destiny” for herself. She chose the latter, stepping off the corporate fast track to earn a master’s degree in holistic health education and remake her life. Colman rejects the idea that healthy living simply means eating well or getting enough exercise, instead choosing to see health as “a state that emerges from four areas—four quadrants—Mind, Body, Relationships, and Environment.” By taking positive actions in each of these four areas, Colman says, the reader can improve his or her health, reduce the risk of serious disease and live a better life. The book’s four sections discuss each quadrant in detail, offering straightforward solutions for improving health, many of which can be implemented right away. This small-step approach to improving life is notably appealing, since it’s easy enough to follow suggestions such as striving to find humor in stressful situations or switching to nontoxic household cleaners. Other recommendations are more intensive and won’t be as easy to put into action as Colman sometimes makes them sound. For instance, getting out of toxic relationships by “exiting stage left” may be a real challenge for some, and Colman offers few tips on how to break free from such unhealthy bonds. Some of the advice is so brief that it seems like filler, including a chapter on rethinking one’s attitude toward weeds, which features vague tips on avoiding pesticides and embracing native plants. Nonetheless, Colman packs plenty of sensible suggestions into this slim book. What might come off as judgmental in less-deft hands is here more like gentle advice from a close friend.
Useful tools for living a more balanced life.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-939288-22-6
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Four Quadrant Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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