Self-Help / Relationships
Idea/Concept: Colleen Georges's RESCRIPT the Story You're Telling Yourself centers on the author's eight-part "RESCRIPT Framework," which she has designed as a guide to helping readers flip the script on the narratives they tell themselves about their own lives and selves. Georges's formulation is unique and thoroughly thought through, and she packages it with clear-eyed examples, practical strategies, helpful testimonials, and smart and accessible organization.
Prose: Georges's prose is strongest when she is in a prescriptive coaching mode, guiding readers with warmth and clarity through her RESCRIPT Framework with thorough strategies and examples. Less assured, however, are the passages at the start of most chapters where Georges discusses the debilitating tendencies in thinking that her framework addresses. Passages concerning people's general drift of mind sometimes can be vague or confusing or center on ambiguous subjects. Occasionally, the tone becomes so conversational that the prose might be transcribed from speech. Fortunately, Georges continually offers examples, metaphors, and exercises that elaborate upon her assertions, so the occasional hard-to-parse sentence usually gets clarified elsewhere in the text.
Originality: While tenets of Georges's advice are familiar at times, RESCRIPT is unique in its central framework, its many examples, its clarifying metaphors, and its exhaustive trove of strategies for changing habits of mind.
Execution: Georges is a sincere, impassioned coach who generously overstuffs her book with strong, practical, inspiring advice. "RESCRIPT" outshines many books in its genre, thanks to this dedication and thoroughness. The author also has organized the book effectively, and she makes up for the occasional weakness of the most generalized passages by getting highly, helpfully specific. That said, kicking off the introduction with a disquisition on a familiar quote from "Forrest Gump" might suggest to readers that this book is less accomplished and unique than it is.
Idea/Concept: Stoller's Becoming Lucid is an attempt not just at another guidebook for achieving "lucidity" in dreams or in finding divining meaning from them; instead, its author is applying hypnotic practice and lucid dreaming techniques to waking life as well. Stoller also distinguishes Becoming Lucid by including transcripts of detailed "hypnotic sessions" as well as a link to a Dropbox account that includes recordings of them. These work better in mp3 form than on the page, of course, but their inclusion is welcome. It might not be clear to readers, however, that this book's ideal audience is people already somewhat versed in the literature of lucid dreaming.
Prose: Stoller demonstrates deep, authoritative knowledge over his material, and he writes in the elevated, searching, often rigorous style of a theorist rather than a mass-market self-help author. His metaphors are often striking in their illustrative clarity, and his instructions for readers and dreamers in the book's many exercises are precise and unambiguous. Less clear, though, are Stoller's explanations of his key concepts, which is due both to those ideas' slipperiness -- he acknowledges in the first chapter that there's no one clear definition of lucidity with regard to consciousness -- but also from his tendency to get caught up considering philosophical and scientific puzzles. When the author is offering instructions or recounting a narrative, the prose is clear; when he's contemplating how or why our minds and dreams work as they do, the prose becomes more tangled, and Stoller offers readers fewer guideposts than might be ideal.
Originality: Stoller relies on no received wisdom and freshly thinks through even the book's most familiar ideas. His exercises, examples, and insights are unique and helpful.
Execution: For all its originality, Becoming Lucid demands some familiarity with the existing literature and techniques of lucid dreaming to be best appreciated. In chapters that appear in outline to lay out the basics, Stoller often riffs about, muses upon, or contests prevailing beliefs -- and he doesn't always invite readers not steeped in the material along for the ride. The book's energy often goes into disabusing readers of ideas they might not actually have rather than walking them persuasively through Stoller's own opinions. This creates an occasionally argumentative tone.
Going Deeper: How the Inner Child Impacts Your Sexual Addiction
by Eddie Capparucci, LPC, C-CSAS, CPCSRating: 7.25
Idea/Concept: Capparucci's account on sexual addiction is extensive. With candor and empathy, the author offers insight and tools for those wishing to better understand an emotionally and psychologically complex condition.
Prose: The author educates readers about sexual addictions using clear, straightforward language, along with anecdotal examples that provide real-world applications of the concepts introduced.
Originality: There are other accounts on the subject of sexual addiction, but Capparucci's guide is particularly intuitive and insightful. Capparucci encourages readers to think beyond their immediate circumstances to their childhoods, in order to better understand their struggles.
Execution: Capparucci explores the topic of sexual addiction, its manifestations, and possible origins, in a structured, organic manner. Readers will find the author's approach to be intelligent, thoughtful, and illuminating.
Idea: This book’s “heal thyself” stratagem is commendable, especially since illness can be lifestyle-inflicted, but danger lurks beneath a misdiagnosed condition while utilizing any method. An outstanding and thorough compilation of information, including simplified, natural treatments, fills these pages with power to eradicate sickness.
Prose: Intriguing, yet repetitious, this carefully written medical guide seeks solutions to common problems using terminology that is comprehensible and fascinating. Composed of organized lists and reassuring advice, the book will appeal to people who have failed to get long-term relief through traditional medicine alone.
Originality: Books on holistic medicine are a popular and valuable contribution to publishing, available in staggering numbers, each with a distinctive angle on the topic. This title is not an exception within category standards, and although it fulfills the demands anticipated, expert competition may draw readers to alternatives.
Execution: This engaging text explores the connection between body and mind while addressing the importance of diet and health, as well as providing details about natural healing supplements. Like other medical books intended for the public, its comprehensible statements and optimistic encouragement could alternately persuade or dissuade adherence to the recommended plan.
Practice Makes PURPOSE: Six Spiritual Practices That Will Change Your Life and Transform Your Community
by C. Paul SchroederRating: 6.50
Plot: This uplifting and wholehearted guide to spiritual living offers a consistent, clear, and highly readable structure.
Prose: The author writes with warmth, ease, and intimacy--the veritable equivalent of sitting with the parish priest over coffee.
Originality: This work is very much in keeping with familiar formulas found in self-help titles purporting to possess a key to acting with compassion and purpose. The book's mysticism may strike readers as overly general in nature.
Character/Execution: Readers who take the book's instruction to heart, may indeed discover incremental improvements in their interpersonal relationships. The “masters of the Egyptian desert” stories do little to enhance the book's overall credibility or resonance.
