A noble and well-intentioned guide; social media tidbits for optimists.
A timely overview explores how to use social media wisely.
The dark side of social media, a component of which is incivility, seems to dominate current news cycles, so it is refreshing when a book focuses exclusively on the network’s positive potential. Leary (Lord Help Me…I’m Single, 2006) rightly recognizes that social media is merely an enabling tool for individuals who “must understand how much power our actions truly have.” The manual’s approach to the subject is both liberating and limiting; offering “101 ways” allows the freedom of a great number of entries but restricts each to the briefest discussion, often a single page. The concept forces content into tiny segments that cannot help but be so simple as to be obvious, as in “Answer Questions,” “Like a Page,” and “Really Mean It.” The restrictive format also promotes repetition; one would be hard pressed, for example, to distinguish between “Don’t Post in Anger” and “Leave Your Crankiness Offline.” On the positive side, though, the intent of the sincere guide is to encourage high-minded, ethical usage of social media; in that regard, it succeeds admirably, and perhaps being obvious and repetitive helps achieve that goal. Who can argue with such decent statements as “Choose your reactions wisely,” “Take care in posting anything that is overly personal about your child,” and “When something makes you laugh, use social media to spread the joy.” One of the more topical entries, “Avoid Fake News,” is addressed early on. “Fact-check your news, people,” urges Leary. “Be part of the movement that stands for sharing truthful news with the world…and speak out when you see fake news being perpetuated.” Also included are some tips that could enlighten and inspire: The book recommends gleaning daily wisdom from Notes from the Universe, viewing inspirational videos shared by Upworthy, and learning something new via TED Talks. The volume’s last entry, which touts “soulcial” media as a way “through which users communicate authentically and ethically to create positive impacts,” is appropriately uplifting.
A noble and well-intentioned guide; social media tidbits for optimists.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982203-20-7
Page Count: 180
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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