Viva Editions

The Fatigue Prescription: Four Steps to Renewing Your Energy, Health, and Life

beth — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

In the style of many self-help books, Linda Hawes Clever, MD, is a product of and a subscriber to the program of renewal that she presents in her book. In the span of eighteen months, the physician endured the death of her parents, a home burglary, the loss of two jobs, and her husband’s cancer diagnosis. In the process of dealing with the impact of these traumatic events, Clever reached out to others who were interested in revamping their own lifestyles and ended up founding RENEW, a not-for-profit that “aims to help busy, devoted people sustain or regain enthusiasm, effectiveness, meaning and, yes, joy.” The Fatigue Prescription: Four Steps to Renewing Your Energy, Health, and Life brings together Clever's experience from her ten years of heading up the company and laying out a four pronged plan to recapture energy and motivation. Whether stress and fatigue stem from life-altering events or just daily life itself, Clever’s thorough, warm-hearted guide is intended to give readers the tools to ditch their ruts and find their groove.

Clever's writing is persistently optimistic and quippy. The book is brimming with quotables from both the author and other sources as diverse as Langston Hughes, South Pacific, Rumi, and Wendell Berry. The requisite checklists and brainstorming questions are laced with good humor. Clever's voice is a strong selling point for her The Fatigue Prescription. It makes you feel taken care of—you can tell Clever is a doctor with a warm and friendly bedside manner.

In fact, Clever's profession shapes her recommendations in many ways, bringing a unique and holistic focus to her prescription for better living. She includes extensive sections about taking care of your body and brain and backs up her advice by referencing, in plain English, various medical studies including a fascinating study about possible links between longevity and positive attitudes.

However, the book is still plagued by some of the familiar demons of the self-help genre. While Clever tries to keep things simple by outlining four steps to a fatigue remedy, the book wanders from this premise and spins new jargon that can get confusing: there are renew-o-meters, buff-o-meters, and three kinds of “buckets” for your self-esteem, worthiness, and energy. Also, the prescription metaphor, while catchy, doesn’t quite work to describe Clever's approach accurately and has to undergo some complex contortions to try to encompass all of the recommendations put forth by the author.

The Fatigue Prescription does offer inroads to making a change and plenty of positive affirmations. Clever writes a prescription for combating fatigue but she acknowledges that it’s not a magic pill you can pop and forget about. Her approach engages the reader in intense reflection and reevaluation of fundamental values and priorities in order to begin the journey towards rediscovering lost energy.

Written by: Jo Ristow, October 13th 2010

It’s Never too Late to Be What You Might Have Been

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By BJ Gallagher

Viva Editions

The title of this book is drawn from an adage that is sometimes lost on the young. Youth is often painted as an open road with endless paths leading to infinite dreams. The challenge that we face as we get older is maintaining the attitude that life still holds an abundance of opportunities and that we are up to the task of conquering them. Contrary to what society tells us, BJ Gallagher's It's Never too Late to Be What You Might Have Been proclaims that reinvention is not just for those without lines on their faces or traces of gray sprouting from their scalps.

In this volume, Gallagher offers a collection of inspirational anecdotes that touch on a variety of arenas where we might dream of starting over: careers, education, health, finances and love. The author maintains that in all of these areas, we are never too old to either fulfill old dreams or pursue new interests, and she provides a series of interviews as proof. Among her subjects are Elgene Doinidis, a woman who decided to learn how to fly in her middle age; Arnold and Raine Chanin, who became avid hikers in their sixties; and Gary Gwilliams, who ended a marriage after twenty years and then stumbled upon his soul mate.

In these stories about starting over and second chances, Gallagher does not dig deep. She does not offer a step-by-step guide or any kind of action plan for following one's heart. It seems that her sole point is to say that no matter who you are or where you are in life, you can still take risks and pursue your goals. While It's Never too Late to Be What You Might Have Been is an ultra-light, fluffy read bordering on advertorial by including the URLs for its interviewees' commercial web sites, it serves the purpose of patting the reader on the back and whispering in their ear, "Yes, you can do this, too!"

Written by: Beverly Jenkins-Crockett, November 25th 2009

Living Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:53:00 +0000

Edited by Nina Lesowitz, Mary Beth Sammons

Viva Editions

The most wonderful part about the idea of practicing daily gratitude is that any person can do it. Unlike many concepts, like faith or prayer, which tend to be examined via certain religions or spiritualities, thankfulness is pretty universal. Living Life as a Thank You illustrates extensively how incorporating gratitude into one's life can draw enormous benefits for everyone.

This book serves up ten chapters full of stories about how learning to be grateful has changed people from all walks of life. Each chapter carries a theme, ranging from "the power of gratitude to make a difference in the world" to "gratitude in times of transition." Each chapter begins with an introduction, musings on the particular theme, then follows with seven or eight snippets from real people telling the specifics about how they have come to have gratitude play a strong part in their lives—some from epiphanies, some from years of training.

Throughout the book there are exercises, suggestions, and tips on how to bring gratefulness into your life, including a "gratitude tool kit" with proposals for ways to say thank you every day, how to make a "gratitude dream board," and how to adjust your schedule to make time for focusing on thoughts about what you are grateful for. There are also inspirational quotations peppered throughout the book, which I, as a bit of a quote-aholic, found myself writing down to give to others.

I've tended, in the past, to get turned off by "inspirational" books that speak of concepts too abstractly, but one of the reasons I really appreciate this book is that it brought a broad concept down into concrete stories that I could relate to. One of the editors, Mary Beth Sammons, is a popular blogger, which was interesting to discover because the whole book reminded me of the short, focused, pondering style of blogs. Reading this book felt very much like sitting down with a bunch of people from a variety of backgrounds and having them simply speak about what they are thankful for and how they got to having gratitude so strongly in their life.

For many years I have kept a personal list titled "Things That Make Me Happy"; it consists of small things that make me smile or feel uplifted. During rough times, I pull it out and read these tiny reminders of how amazing life truly is. Living Life as a Thank You argues in favor of this idea and adds how practicing gratitude every single day has the immense power to give us greater personal happiness, make us more satisfied with the present, help us celebrate triumphs, and make us generally healthier in body and mind. I found myself marveling that something so simple can do so much to change the outlook of our life, and I am grateful I was reminded of this by reading this book!

Written by: Lesley Kartali, November 24th 2009

Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women

admin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:25:00 +0000

By Autumn Stephens

Viva Editions

If the front book cover of Jacqueline Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, and Nancy Reagan in silver one-pieces doing the cancan is the craziest thing you have ever seen, wait until you open the book. In Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women, Autumn Stephens reveals stories about the United States First Ladies that you never learned in history class. Besides the information on the First Ladies, Stephens also talks about some of the infamous White House women who spiced up the United States' history.

Stephens provides an in-depth look at all the women who have lived in the White House, and some of the mischief that ensued. Did you know that Dolly Madison, who famously saved the portrait of George Washington when the British army burned the White House during the War of 1812, also saved a portrait of herself? And that Alice Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, used to have a pet snake and raise hell in Washington, D.C.?

This is one of those books that you cannot put down until you are finished reading. Starting with Martha Washington and ending with Michelle Obama, Stephens covers every fact about these amazing women. Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women is definitely a feminist book. Stephens points out the feminist tendencies in some of these women, as well as advancements they made for other women. Even though President Obama was only in office for a few months when this book came out, Stephens included a rave review of Michelle Obama.

Of all of the profiles, Eleanor Roosevelt's stood out the most for me. I have always been a fan of hers, but this book pointed out even more what a strong woman she was. Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women is a book that I have lent to the strong women in my family, and they love it just as much as I do.

Written by: Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, October 24th 2009