An overly simplistic self-help manual that’s warmly written but glosses over important details.
Price presents a simple guide to choosing happiness over unhappiness with concrete examples to help readers gain—and keep—a positive outlook.
The author prefaces her advice with the disclaimer that she’s not a mental health professional and is offering “just my interpretation of life and things that I’ve gone through, learned along the way, and/or watched others go through.” This includes the idea that “the choice is happiness or not happiness. There really is no in between.” One can do this, she says, by making daily conscious decisions, such as not blaming others for personal setbacks; allowing oneself to sit with a negative emotion instead of attempting to bury it; and remembering that people often act rude because of their own insecurities. Each chapter tackles a different form of, or setting for, happiness in one’s friendships, careers, and romantic relationships. There are brief poems at the end of each chapter that reflect on its theme (“Relationships can be fulfilling, / or they can be hard to bear. / It’s important to love yourself firstly, / then great friendships will always be there”). In addition to these philosophical musings, the author gives concrete suggestions for increasing happiness, such as spending more time in nature or using one’s “given gifts and talents” to help others. Price’s book is a brisk, uncomplicated read. However, the content never moves beyond basic platitudes, skimming right over issues that it can take people years to untangle. For example, when discussing triggers and trauma, she instructs readers with a blanket statement: “Just be honest and open with yourself to be able to heal any wounds you have associated in your mind.” A prompt includes “List a few of your triggers here” and “What can you do to heal them?” Overall, the book is clearly well intentioned, but it presents nothing groundbreaking.
An overly simplistic self-help manual that’s warmly written but glosses over important details.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 93
Publisher: Anchor Heart
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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