by Lillyin Love ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2024
A readable and reassuring compendium of personal wellness tactics.
Love offers a series of exercises designed to help readers break free from anxiety and depression.
In her nonfiction debut, the author, a therapist, suggests a variety of approaches to navigating the pitfalls of anxiety and depression to follow a path to “a calmer, more centered existence.” Anxiety, Love asserts, is more like a messenger than an enemy, and the author compares the emotion to a flickering flame: “It can either consume us in its fiery embrace or ignite within us a newfound resilience and strength.” Love breaks down the various characteristics and manifestations of both anxiety (including generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and panic attacks) and depression (indicated by such things as a loss of pleasure, lack of energy, and a drastic change of appetite) and proposes a series of countermeasures that emphasize the holistic and the personal over psychiatric or medical perspectives. Central to all of these approaches is her “ABC model” for “cracking the code” of anxiety by means of understanding “activating events,” “beliefs and interpretations,” and “consequences,” both emotional and behavioral. In beautifully illustrated chapters (the color artwork is by the author), Love puts forward a wide variety of possible wellness fixes, from dietary tips about avoiding excess sugars and processed foods to cultivating new habits like keeping a personal diary; she notes that that “fun-filled activities trigger a symphony of neurochemicals, including dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins.” Although she’s an upbeat and energetic presence on the page, Love walks a fine line with some of her advice, as serious anxiety and depression are medical conditions requiring medical solutions. Nevertheless, the author is consistently on point when urging her readers to treat themselves with more kindness, frequently using the metaphor of the caterpillar that eventually transforms into a butterfly. Her gentle insistence on inward self-care will be a boon to those who suffer from anxiety and depression no matter what other therapeutic measures they take.
A readable and reassuring compendium of personal wellness tactics.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9798989236220
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2024
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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