Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, Brené Brown

George Agnew Reid, Call to Dinner, 1886-87

(Jan. 7) I can’t say Daring Greatly made me want to read any more of Brené Brown, but I guess I saw this one come out and be mentioned by all the usual suspects so I put it in my holds queue… and then I got it, and saw that it was a nice short book,… so I went for it. 

Braving the Wilderness made me realize what it was that was so unsettling about Daring Greatly: Brené Brown’s thirst to be seen as a scientist. Perhaps what she’s doing in this book is a little more desperate… this book feels like it got rushed out to address the hopelessness being caused by the Trump presidency… almost every best-selling self-help author is getting something out right now to shore up the faithful. 

I did notice particularly in this one that the cures to the ills Brené Brown finds are often expressions of her own values -- church-going, Christian family values (although “research” is given the credit).

She does blow you away with the intimacy of her personal stories. And I do think her message is solid gold -- she is basically saying we can have a more humane future if we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to show vulnerability. I think she's absolutely right. 

But no more of this science for me.

Swimming Home, Deborah Levy

David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972

(December 1)  I really liked this book (long short story, really? novella?). It was so nice to be reading fiction again… I feel like I haven’t in a long time… and it was also a story I looked forward to going back to and thought about in between reading.

This was a bit of an expedient reading choice since it’s short and I am so far behind. Erica Davies and/or Alex Stedman (bloggers and Instagrammers I follow) recommended this title (or the author). It was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

Early on you sense there could be death or a near-death because of the way the tensions are ramped up… then as the story goes along you wonder if there might be more than one death, or if the character you didn’t think of at first would turn out to be the casualty or the near-casualty, and then you wonder further how anything can possibly be reconciled without a death…

Short but powerful. Vivid in terms of capturing depression and mental illness. Ends with a shock.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

(October 29) ‟I am always thinking about how this book was put together. There is so much careful attributing of each scrap of an idea to the proper name, to one of the two joint authors of this 176-page ‛book.’ It’s funny they want so much copyrighting. And it’s very light stuff anyway. But the binding together is somehow too noticeable, distracts from the message.”

Those were my notes while reading this little book, but for a long time I couldn’t find them... and thought I would have to write something up for this blog based on my memory of the book... and the only memory of the book I had two years later was of how shocking and traumatic Sheryl Sandberg’s husband’s death was, and how awful it was for her to have to tell all the people to whom it mattered -- their kids, his parents, his siblings, her parents, her siblings, all their friends. I could really relate to the agony of the latter activity. But this whole section was very vivid.

I don’t now remember the advice or ‟the message” at all... and now, having found my notes, it’s funny to see that there must have been a message of some kind. It was completely nonabsorbent.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Mark Manson

"Fuck You" (Hatsukoi-Yokochou manga)

(September 25) This is the fastest I’ve read a book in a long time, not because it was hard to put down or anything, just because it’s very short, and chattily written, blog style, so not that great a reading challenge. ::shrug:: 

I anticipated hating this guy because all the hype about the book emphasizes the “refreshing slap in the face” style self-help -- so I was dubious -- thought it would be just pointless and negatively oriented, probably sensationalistic… but by p. 4 he says trying to act positive just focuses on the lack of positivity, which is reassuringly Abraham-Hicks. His main topic is not trying, like Edward Slingerland’s Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity, only now the point of view is that of a young male blogger who uses a lot of foul language rather than that of an erudite scholar.

Manson is pretty young to be making a lot of the pronouncements he makes about human behaviour and he has the classic arrogance of the inexperienced -- ‟if it happens like this for me it must be the same for all,” and ‟if it never happens that way for me it’s not true.” He’s also very fond of a broad generalization.

In a lot of ways, though, his advice for living supports Abe-Hicks.... it’s just the teen-diary version.

When You Find Out the World Is Against You and Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments, Kelly Oxford

Wayne Thiebaud, Supine Woman, 1963

(September 4) This was recommended by Busy Philipps, whose Instagram I enjoy following; when I looked it up on the library system there was an impressive waiting list for it, which surprised me, since I’d never heard of her till then, and meanwhile this was her second book, her first was a best-seller, apparently she’s been a well-known funny woman for some time. And she’s Canadian! *head-scratch-emoji*

The book is a pleasant read… it’s a collection of short stories, memoir-fashion… it was not laugh-out-loud funny to me, and only occasionally did I heh-heh, but there was a lot of “inner smiling” and wry grins and enjoyment of the point of view. I looked forward to reading it in between bouts, but I didn’t steal time from other activities to read it. A classic 3 stars!

I debated that, though, because of the wonky ending. Following a series of mildly entertaining stories about her early and current life, Oxford suddenly launches into a diatribe against Donald Trump’s sexism… purely understandable in terms of the window of time in which she wrote it (well before he got elected)... but kind of lacking in impact once her book comes out and he’s already been elected. Everyone’s written the same diatribe. It made for an out-of-tune book ending.

This work also may be suffering a bit from second-book syndrome, the collecting of all the left-over bits that never made it into the debut best-seller, thrown quickly together to fulfill a contract. If this was Oxford’s B material, though, her A material, Everything’s Perfect When You’re a Liar, must be pretty good.

The artwork above was suggested by Oxford’s own Instagram -- she has a print of this in her house. It seemed like the right illustration, even though her fashion vibe is totally different.

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, Jen Sincero

Olga Shvartsur, Unicorn Rainbow Watercolor, 2016

(August 21) Sydney Poulton on Instagram recommended this on her Stories; when I looked up the title at the library in March, there was a huge queue for it -- so I jumped on that bandwagon.

I quite liked it ...looked forward to reading it whenever I wasn’t, which I don’t usually experience with non-fiction. It’s a life-coaching book, intended to help you find your power in your uniqueness & etc.

There’s an interview with Jen Sincero on the Daily Mail online in which she says:

“To be honest, I don’t think I’m saying anything all that brand new. I think I’m just saying it in a new way. You know, one of the motivations for me writing this book. I’ve read like 10,000 self-help books. There was nothing that was kind of funny and curse-y and irreverent, and I was like, man, that’s what this industry needs.

 “You can read the same thing a hundred times but somebody can say it in a certain way and suddenly everything changes. That’s sort of what I wanted to do with this book, was to not only make it entertaining but to give somebody who wasn’t quite getting it the opportunity to get it from a different voice….”

She is absolutely right in assessing her own work in this way… and that’s why I like her: she is honest and she is right, and although the concepts were familiar, this book opened up some new reading interests for me.

The unicorn drawing above is not there to make fun of the book or Sincero -- she herself jokes about unicorniness several times throughout the book and she would laugh her ass off at this illustration for a review (and the rainbow is oddly inaccurate anyway).

Life's Work : From the Trenches, A Moral Argument for Choice, Dr. Willie Parker

Graffiti from El Salvador

(August 24) I read this because of Gloria Steinem’s Instagram: ‟His book, Life’s Work, will change you.ˮ

I have always supported the right to abortion and never had any moral qualms about it, but Parker lays out all the reasons why abortion must be legal in a humane society and all of the reasons why anti-abortion activists do not have any claim to higher moral ground, so logically and serenely, so incontrovertibly, that I felt actively proud to be pro-abortion.

He points out what’s really going on with anti-abortion activists… they are not just blind but actually evil (not his word but the ultimate goals of anti-abortionism are pretty harrowing).

And you think -- wow, if a guy as righteous and spiritual as this can take this position and moreover argue it so persuasively… how can any of us have the slightest qualm?

So it was a very interesting and empowering read.

The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy Schumer

Tom Labaff, Amy Schumer: Sadlarious, 2016

(June 14) Overall, I really liked it… I laughed out loud or at least guffawed out loud quite a few times. But when I look at my notes, they’re all complaints… and this is often what I do with a book I do like… I start going, “it was great but …” and enumerating all my issues with flaws.

But in truth, although I liked this book and laughed along with Schumer in the same way I did with Kathy Griffin or Miranda July, there was just something a little… (the word for when you’re gross and insulting and ignorant in order to make people laugh but you are trying to be meta about it so that everyone knows that what you really value are tastefulness, kindness and sensitivity… you’re not really that gross girl, you just know what makes people laugh and deep down you are the angel girl).

So that was very palpable… she is very careful to show how much she cares about the girls who were killed at a showing of her movie, for example, and to emphasize that while she can do a cheap joke she supports all the right causes and understands political correctness…

What it amounts to, though, is an undercutting of her humour… she isn’t that proud of herself.

She makes all the right noises -- she claims to be body-positive and not to care that people might think she’s overweight… but she mentions this so often that it becomes “the lady doth protest too much”...

And she gets very serious and repetitive about all the right causes -- the need to make women equal, the need to reduce domestic violence, the need to keep children safe, etc., etc. -- they’re all good causes but it’s like she invented them… it’s like she really really really needs to make us see she is a fine upstanding woman.

I mean, I like that she is using her platform to support good causes… I just don’t need the constant reminders that she is someone who supports good causes. “I’m a good girl.”

Anyway -- I just want to quote “Uptown Funk” to her: “If you freaky then own it.”

Also -- she gets gross and she can get really gross… sometimes it’s too much for me… and in one particular case (actually more than one -- two similar stories) I wonder at her taste AND ethics… this is related to the artist’s rendering above… he thought Amy’s stories of her dad shitting in public were “sad and hilarious” at the same time… I didn’t see the humour, and I think it really should be her dad’s prerogative to get laughs from talking about shitting his pants… they’re not her stories.

Also, she “cancels” her mother -- probably for very good reasons -- but with all of these elements it’s like you can feel this river of molten lava flowing aggressively under the charming surface landscape and it’s a little distracting..

But I’m focusing unfairly on weaknesses -- I loved reading the book overall.

A Short History of Gardens, Gordon Campbell

Lodewijk Toeput, Pleasure Garden with a Maze, 1579-84

(September 13, 2019 ¬_¬ ) Gah, I can't believe how long it took me to struggle through this book! I chose it initially because of its shortness (184 pages, pages the size of a mini iPad) and thatʼs why I didnʼt just give it up -- I kept thinking SHOORLY I could get through it.

But it was awful reading, both physically -- the type is small and tightly spaced, there is maybe one paragraph indent per page, the pages are dense grey -- and literally -- the prose is dry and academic, and the organization is nothing more than grocery-listing.... and you could tell that space was at a premium by the content as well as by the printing, because Campbell is at pains to fit a lot in. It covers all the gardens in the world, from the beginning of time, in 184 pages! Put together for us by an old-school scholar who merely marshals the facts and dully regurgitates them.

Also, for a book on gardens, which are after all a visual art, there is almost no illustration -- there are a few tiny colour plates tucked in the middle of the book, and a few black-and-white photos throughout the text, but really it is all a bit of an insult to the topic.

I just kept renewing and renewing this library book, putting it aside till the next renewal in favour of more interesting books, knowing that I would never not have access to it. No one else would ever want to borrow it.

But this past spring (2019) I was introduced to a few of the Monty Don garden series on the BBC (French Gardens, Italian Gardens, Around the World in 80 Gardens, The Secret History of British Gardens, Big Dreams, Small Spaces, etc.) and was fully blown away by the beauty and interestingness of the topic -- it was like enjoying my old fine arts courses.

So then I came back to the Gordon Campbell book, thinking surely he will at some point mention Monty Don, since Don was so obviously an expert on the history of gardens and on the importance of certain gardens, and all of his books and series predated Campbellʼs book.

But he never mentions him once, nor includes any of his books or films in the reference section. He only comments at one point that the British people are very fond of gardening and armchair gardening to the tune of an important number of GNP pounds per year, alluding to shows like Monty Donʼs (and thereby echoing Monty himself who several times mentions in various series how big an industry gardening is in the U.K. GNP-wise and how beloved).

So I realized what was going on here -- Gordon Campbell saw how scholarly and art-historical the topic could be thanks to Monty Don and his ilk, and decided to stake a claim to it as the bona fide academic (professor at Oxford) and therefore more credible expert. Heʼs “discoveringˮ the topic as far as serious academics are concerned.

Then, he couldnʼt get a lot of money together to support a big book with lots of colour illustration (and maybe, as an academic, would not have wanted to produce anything too showy anyway), so he put out what he could -- a tiny, crammed pocket dictionary of a book.

I say “Yuckˮ to you, sir.

Why do I give it even 2 stars then? Because it's acceptable academics and, though dull, the prose is error-free and understandable. And, obviously, he recognized a good topic.

The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben (translated by Jane Billingshurst)

Patricia Kozowyk, Winter Woods, 1993

(April 14) I really loved this book -- the things trees are doing and going through are amazing... It gets to be a cliché in the book, but it’s like finding out that animals have emotions or that foreign people “are just like us.”

I have always liked and anthropomorphized trees and I like to project compliments and mental support at them when travelling but now I am in absolute awe of them, and feeling very maternal about them.

The fact that they communicate with each other, and with other plants, and look after each other, and raise their children -- it’s all quite stunning and beautiful.

And Wohlleben has such a lovely way of writing about them -- he is so gentle and loving in his descriptions of them, you can’t help but feel he’s talking about another kind of human being -- for example, he calls tree seedlings “tiny conquistadors” when describing their efforts to conquer new worlds.

Wohlleben may also have referenced Suzanne Simard’s TED talk since she was the one who discovered that trees and fungi use each other to share information and nutrients, but I seem to have heard about both the book and the talk around the same time separately.

Really makes you want to be an eco-warrior.

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brené Brown

Melysa G., Cowardly Lion, 2011

(March 9) My note on the book in the library system says: “recommended by Jillian Michaels on Instagram,” which kind of surprises me now because I thought I got the urge to read it from the Glennon Doyle Melton book, as well as Facebook or Instagram posts by Elizabeth Gilbert… they are all interwoven, these women… they reference each other in their books, they regram each other’s Instagrams, they support each other’s causes… and they like to quote Leonard Cohen lyrics and some specific poems that I didn’t enumerate as carefully... It’s interesting there’s this cabal... there’s probably an official name for them, but I call them the “self-improvement memoirists”… Brené Brown is not so much a memoirist, but she frequently tells stories about herself to illustrate a point, and you can tell it’s because she knows that self-revelation helps people buy a concept (and, initially, identify with and like an author).

Pages 36-37 caused a lot of anguish for for me… tears streamed down my cheeks as I read these stories of people’s shame and humiliation… not because the stories were so terribly horrific (and anyway they are about events that everyone experiences in one form or another)… but just because in that moment it hurt so much to think of people going through all this sorrow and pain all the time, all over the world…

However, although there were passages that were very strong for me and I agree with every insight Brown offers and every recommendation she makes, I couldn’t rate the book above 2.5. Brown tries to rally respect and scientific cred for her conclusions about human behaviour by constantly using academic terms -- she uses the word “research” a lot, and loves buzzwords like “evidence-based” and “research-based.” She reminds us repeatedly that she has master’s and doctoral degrees and that she consults with a lot of people who have degrees as well...

From my point of view though as a lapsed academic, she stretches the meaning of “research” quite a bit. What her work has really been is talking to people (“research subjects”) to find a comment that proves a psychological barrier or condition exists, then interpreting the cause and cure for the problem using the big-picture wisdom of a leading expert in psych stuff (consulting them is more “research” as well).

I think what she’s saying is so great, so insightful and so useful, that it doesn’t need this propping up... but, so, because she props so hard I have to feel suspicious about it.

She is even worse with this in Braving the Wilderness.

Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle Melton

Medici Venus (wax anatomical model), 18th century

(December 26, 2016) Recommended by Elizabeth Gilbert on her Instagram; I brought it along to read in Lachine over the holidays since it’s relatively short (250ish pages) and (I thought) an easy read: spiritual / personal development stuff and all that… easy, right?

I was then totally surprised and amazed at how powerful this book is. This woman is some writer. At first it was compelling just because Doyle Melton was so open and so vulnerable, and you felt like you were meeting a real woman and making a good friend

But then she begins to talk about every fear and dislike and worry, etc., I’ve ever had, and removes all the shame and disgust from them, and that was so welcome and such a relief.

And she is so relatable -- discovering the wonder of yoga, bonding with the seaside, fussing about her weight / looks, and so on and so on. So then I stalked her all over the place on-line, liking her and identifying with her more and more, unable to believe I had never heard of her before now.

Will I read her first book, Carry On, Warrior? Not right away probably -- her wisdom is somewhat exhausting and I need a wee rest from this. But I was basically blown away by this book. (Also, everything she says and reveals for you is in line with Abraham-Hicks.)