Refreshingly uncomplicated ways to improve relationships with a partner or with oneself.
McCandless’s self-help guide combines spiritual techniques with nudity and intimacy.
The presence of the terms Naked and Juicy in this book’s title and subtitle, respectively, initially give the work the vibe of a sex manual, and chapter titles such as “Seeking Satisfaction,” “Getting Lucky,” and “Slipping Into Something More Comfortable” don’t dispel this impression. But the author ably goes on to show that there are many aspects of nakedness other than the erotic. Being unclothed, the author writes, also means getting in touch with one’s authentic self, which exists apart from social conditioning. The book offers numerous practices that aim to show readers how to access this self, beginning with counting one’s thoughts and letting each one float away during meditation, as well as physically lifting particularly persistent thoughts up to the sky in one’s palm. Nudity is also characterized as a way to experience reverence; while bathing in a warm pool with other nude people at Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California, McCandless writes, she realized how beautiful all body types were. Shame is often associated with nakedness, but the author offers ways to heal from this self-perception. “Pink light” visualization entails imagining others with a loving glow, including those who’ve done one wrong. The author, who’s a sexual assault survivor, also discusses her reclaiming of the idea of being a “dirty girl” in the context of her erotic relationship with her husband. The book’s latter part deals with couples more specifically but effectively focuses on the emotional and spiritual aspects of their relationships. The book also explores some dark themes, but McCandless maintains a playful attitude throughout most of the book. She has a relatable style that reveals her own vulnerabilities in accounts of her husband’s infidelity and her negative thoughts about her own body. Her practices and techniques are inviting throughout, because they can be done anywhere, take little time, and require few additional materials.
Refreshingly uncomplicated ways to improve relationships with a partner or with oneself.Pub Date: July 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781803415673
Page Count: 304
Publisher: O-Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
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