Review: just not for me
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 10 21, 2012
I honestly feel like I should write two reviews for this book, one a critical analysis on the book itself and the second a personal examination of my own response to it. The two are quite different. Just as the title suggests it is a collection of short stories, each containing an important lesson to help the reader lead a more fulfilled and meaningful life. Who can argue with the idea that it is important to value your friends and family above money, or to stop and appreciate small moments of bliss? I have no qualms with what the book set out to do and, honestly, even accomplishes. I didn't even have any real qualms with the writing, though it was painfully straightforward and repetitive at times. What it was that made my skin crawl was simply that I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate being preached at and that is exactly what each one of these stories felt like to me. Something like having my mother trying to tell me, a 35 year old woman, how best to live my life. While acknowledging the message, I'm inclined to reject the messenger based the emotional aversion it engenders and it's hard to rationalise myself past that.This makes rating the book a little difficult. Should I treat that star rating above as a simple representation of my own personal opinion of the book or as a more impartial indication of the books worth to readers as a whole? Because, certainly, if you are the type of reader who enjoys sitting in Sunday School pondering the moral lessons implicit in the Book of Paul (or any other religious text) you would really like this book. I am not that person. I didn't enjoy it, but I'm not ready to say it isn't a good book.I know it sounds like I am startling the fence on this one, but I am rather trying to impart two messages in one review. I didn't like it, but please don't take that as a general denunciation of the book. It and I were simply a poor match.