A lively, if familiar, guide that urges readers to embrace their inner compasses.
An outspoken blueprint focuses on finding true passion in life.
Rooney opens her advice book with a series of basic questions that many of her readers have likely asked at some point in their personal and professional development. “Do you long for recognition and kudos because you are a rock star, but hear crickets?” she asks. “Do you crave external validation to quiet the self-doubt brewing in your brain?” Dramatized by several incidents that the author presents throughout the guide, these questions—and the unsatisfying answers people often receive from their corporate superiors—raise the subject of what Rooney calls “Heart Value” (“Your understanding—on a cellular level—of who you are and what lights you up, and how that synergistically connects with others”). She urges her readers to remember that they are the world’s leading experts on themselves and that their own instincts already know how to help them reach what the author refers to as their “True Stride” (“Your metaphor for trusting your inner compass to direct your life, set your pace, overcome resistance and honor your Heart Value with each step you take”). Rooney fills each energetic chapter with vivid anecdotal stories, inspirational quotes, and exercises she calls “checkpoints,” all designed to remind her readers that they know themselves best; their instincts are ultimately trustworthy; and their ambitions should be for others to recognize their Heart Value. Her repeated emphasis on implicitly trusting instincts will raise flags with readers who favor manuals that stress rational planning. And many of the pieces of homespun wisdom she dispenses verge on clichés (if you feel stuck, for instance, she suggests trying an introspective activity like taking a walk or running a bath). But Rooney’s legion of loyal “Striders” will love having her invigorating life plan in book form.
A lively, if familiar, guide that urges readers to embrace their inner compasses.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73686-097-7
Page Count: 308
Publisher: True Stride
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2021
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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