One man’s approachable and worthwhile compilation of the life lessons his faith has taught him.
A Christian guide focuses on helping readers discover their purpose in life.
Garguilo grounds this second edition of his book in his own personal history of happiness, adversity, and Christianity, which he embraced at an early age. His rebirth is dramatically described at the manual’s beginning: “At that moment I felt an urgency to open up my Bible to find the answers I needed.” The hardships are likewise encountered in the guide’s early pages: The author donated a kidney to his brother, experienced post-operation depression that he combated with antidepressants, became a real estate agent, and got thrown into financial chaos by the Great Recession of 2008. Finally, he decided to put his faith in God’s guidance and chased his dream to become a horse farmer in Kentucky. And yet, as he narrates, he still didn't feel completely satisfied, and the self-help books he was reading at the time reinforced one basic question: “What were you put on this earth to do?” Garguilo became a “Christ-centered life coach,” and the bulk of his brief work consists of the useful lessons he’s learned along the way. During the course of his helpful manual, he shares this knowledge mostly in the traditional way of extrapolating life lessons from various Bible tales. He examines the story of Joseph and his brothers, for instance: “We can all relate to feeling betrayed, but holding on to resentment will take your focus off of your vision and cost valuable energy you will need for your incredible journey. I encourage you, like Joseph, to choose compassion over revenge.” The author very effectively blends these Sunday school lessons with his own hard-won life experiences; Christian readers will find it all relatable.
One man’s approachable and worthwhile compilation of the life lessons his faith has taught him.Pub Date: May 19, 2022
ISBN: 9798985145014
Page Count: 75
Publisher: Promised Land Productions LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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