Review: 101 Almost Random Thoughts About Relationships
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 28, 2012
I'm sorry to say that I couldn't give this book a better rating than 3 stars (and I had to struggle to get it that high). The author certainly addresses a very important subject in everyone's life, and among the 101 "random" thoughts, at least a few are bound to resonate with each reader (even I found a few).But even so, the book doesn't seem to have any particular point or theme about relationships -- how could it have a single theme, with 101 pages of unorganized, unsorted, unordered thoughts. I was fortunate to buy this book on a Kindle daily deal for $0.00, and I'm glad that I paid that much for it. I imagine that in hardcopy there is 1 short idea per short printed page, making it a "cute" stocking stuffer book for a few minutes of Christmas enjoyment and laughter. But I don't think it is a serious book, for sure. There are far better relationship books out there, such as John Gottman's works such asThe Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert.Probably I should be skeptical of ANY book whose title is "101 ... (of anything)". That's just too many ideas for a good theme, and it has the flavor of someone dragging random thoughts into quick printed form just to make a buck with a cutesy "101 Things" title.I think this work would have been better if the 101 (magic number?) ideas were at least organized into themes or belief cluster groups, but author made no such attempt. For example, all the ideas about men needing and enjoying the chase to "conquer" women could be in one cluster group. Another group could have all the ideas related to logical men who look and evaluate reasons for commitment or whatever. That way the book could be "Relationship Ideas for 5 Kinds of Men", and readers could easily skip to the ideas that resonated with them or their men.Similarly, if the author wants the book to be taken seriously, I think he should cut the 101 cuteness, organize the material, support it a little better with some statistics on how many people he talked to, what they said in aggregate, and then give some exercises or other checkpoints so that a person could test their progress in improving themselves after reading the book.As a cutesy 101 things book in a bookstore, I think the book hits the target. But as a serious relationship book, it seems to me that it is pretty much useless. Surely a reader will say "Right!" when they finally find a random idea that they can relate to or agree with. But that's ignoring the other 95 ideas in the book, right?I imagine the best way for a woman to use this book is to use it in a checklist fashion. Collect 101 ideas from your own mind, or from your friends, or use the ones in the book. Then for each idea, read it to the guy or have him read it, and then ask him if the idea represents his thinking well. Discuss. At the end, the woman can understand her guy through TALKING to him about what he thinks and how he thinks. (I guess you can see that you don't need the book for doing this, although its prepackaged 101 random ideas might be more convenient.)I would recommend it as a cutesy stocking stuffer book for a few quick laughs and to generate some story telling. But I would not recommend it as a serious relationship book on its own.