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IT'S TIME TO BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

Name: IT'S TIME TO BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
Author: Tammy OBrien
ISBN: 9781039188259

THE PATHWAY HOME

written and illustrated by Tammy OBrien ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2023

A useful, thought-provoking but familiar collection of meditations.

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A devotional offers daily lessons in practicing positivity and cultivating self-love.

In 2021, OBrien was inspired to start a Facebook group called “It’s Time to Believe in Yourself.” Now, that band is more than 45,000 members strong, and the author has turned what she has learned through facilitating the group into this devotional, a guide “to a new perspective and a new way of living.” Many of its underlying concepts will be familiar to self-help fans—especially those who read manuals designed and packaged for women. The author delivers the now-conventional dictum that we cannot take care of others until we take care of ourselves. Yet most of the guidance presented here focuses more on the self and not so much on the others. This may be precisely what some readers need to hear, but those interested in systemic, communal change—rather than personal transformation—may long for something more. OBrien does encourage readers to work on their relationships with God—also referred to as “source energy” and “my higher self”—but, again, this is more about increasing their own happiness than serving a greater good. “Make God your partner in life,” she writes. “Go on a journey together and create an amazing and beautiful life in alignment with love.” One fundamental premise of this book, which features paintings by the author, is that individuals create their own realities. This idea comes from the New Thought movement of the 19th century and is likely familiar to some readers from such self-help classics as The Power of Positive Thinking, You Can Heal Your Life, and The Secret. This is a powerful concept and—clearly—one that resonates with people eager to take control of their own destinies. OBrien’s writing style is clear and unadorned, and, although each entry is brief, they all contain plenty to think about. The myriad reflections are in the spirit of Simple Abundance(1995) by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

A useful, thought-provoking but familiar collection of meditations.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2023

ISBN: 9781039188259

Page Count: 462

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2023

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | SELF-HELP

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THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

by Nicole Avant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2023

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

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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

Categories:

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955

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This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.