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mirandahopeshea's review
informative
fast-paced
1.75
One or two pearls of wisdom buried among the sh*t. Reductive, sexist, heteronormative, and sometimes plain ol' dumb.
rachyc's review
4.0
I ended up really enjoying this book surprisingly. It’a a super short book with only 140 pages so I found myself reading it quicker too just to get to the end. The start was a little all over the place jumping from topic to topic but in a few pages in and I was very interested.
It’s a nice quick book to read, easy to read too very simple to understand.
It’s a nice quick book to read, easy to read too very simple to understand.
fayesparallelstories's review
1.0
A mix of infuriatingly tautological statements, stubbornly psychoanalytical explanations, a confusing definition of emotional health with a unnecessary closing statement which includes the author's favourite books and music- this one was not for me.
isheekagoswami's review
1.0
This book is not about how to develop emotional health. Rather, its entire thesis is that everything that happens to us in childhood affects our emotional health as adults, which seems to imply that we have little to no control over our emotional health. If we do, the author certainly didn’t trouble himself to give us any advice on it. He just rambled incessantly and, at times, incoherently, about how we all become our parents. Nothing useful there.
There were some parts of this book that made no sense at all. In one breath, James speaks of the importance of being authentic and, in another, says we need only seem to be sincere at work in order to enjoy our careers. James seems to think that not striving for academic or professional success is emotionally healthy, while being ambitious is unhealthy. At pages 108-110, he gives a couple of “triumphant” examples of successful wives and mothers: one, a woman who married and had children with a man she wasn’t in love with, and the other a woman whose husband was never around. All of these nonsensical anecdotes with no evidence or consistency add up to a frustrating and frankly useless book. It reads like a hastily written essay by a first year uni student and contains, I think, misleading and potentially damaging content about how to engage with our pasts and set up a better future for ourselves.
There were some parts of this book that made no sense at all. In one breath, James speaks of the importance of being authentic and, in another, says we need only seem to be sincere at work in order to enjoy our careers. James seems to think that not striving for academic or professional success is emotionally healthy, while being ambitious is unhealthy. At pages 108-110, he gives a couple of “triumphant” examples of successful wives and mothers: one, a woman who married and had children with a man she wasn’t in love with, and the other a woman whose husband was never around. All of these nonsensical anecdotes with no evidence or consistency add up to a frustrating and frankly useless book. It reads like a hastily written essay by a first year uni student and contains, I think, misleading and potentially damaging content about how to engage with our pasts and set up a better future for ourselves.
amberley's review
2.0
basically this book said if your mum and dad were a bit shit then don’t be like them when you have kids. i feel like any parent would feel immense guilt after reading this. i even felt quite guilty and i’m childless.
i did like the bit where it told you to lie on the ground and pretend you were dead though.
i did like the bit where it told you to lie on the ground and pretend you were dead though.
lushr's review
3.0
The introduction is still my favourite part, it can be read on the website or seen as presentation on youtube.
I think what fooled me was that it claimed it would be different from all the other self-help babble in giving me philosophy to guide me. but in fact the whole of the School of Life is just thinly veiled self-help.
The rest of the book surprisingly looks at how the nurturing of our parents (or lack of) determines how emotionally healthy we might be. But as I continued to read the book and talk to psychologists and read other materials, I see that it is a very valid and important point to make. And you can only get at the truth of yourself if you do look back. I learnt a lot about psychology, about humans and about myself. But it is still the inspiring first pages which I refer to the most.
While you may meet interesting people at a school of life and have some in depth conversations, their books and class programs are very much of the self-help-i-could-have-figured-this-out-by-reading-a-couple-of-websites variety. stick to the real philosophers and discussions with the very interesting people behind the ideas.
I think what fooled me was that it claimed it would be different from all the other self-help babble in giving me philosophy to guide me. but in fact the whole of the School of Life is just thinly veiled self-help.
The rest of the book surprisingly looks at how the nurturing of our parents (or lack of) determines how emotionally healthy we might be. But as I continued to read the book and talk to psychologists and read other materials, I see that it is a very valid and important point to make. And you can only get at the truth of yourself if you do look back. I learnt a lot about psychology, about humans and about myself. But it is still the inspiring first pages which I refer to the most.
While you may meet interesting people at a school of life and have some in depth conversations, their books and class programs are very much of the self-help-i-could-have-figured-this-out-by-reading-a-couple-of-websites variety. stick to the real philosophers and discussions with the very interesting people behind the ideas.
writing_inthemountains's review
2.0
Focused more on the childhood part but I guess that's where the problems began. It's a start but not the complete healing.
lenjamin's review
2.0
I found the first few chapters of this book really interesting, and it appealed to the part of my brain that is very big on statistics. But as I continued to read, I became increasingly aware of the lack of references for anything Oliver James was writing, which at points made it impossible to seperate acedemic studies from his own opinion.
I'm assuming the intended audience for this book is women, too, since the chapter dedicated to good parenting only focuses on motherhood and how not to pick a bad partner (which also includes perspectives that were maybe too informed by Freudian theory) what makes this concerning is the fact that it seems that James's opinions on how to be an emotionally healthy woman includes being "unassuming and friendly. That she has a slim figure and a captivatingly pretty face is made incidental by her manner. By being modestly beautiful, rather than overtly, provocatively sexual, she discourages men from relating to her purely as an object of desire, and does not arouse the envy of other women." (p79) connecting Geraldine's emotional health to her unassuming beauty is a weird point to stress.
There is value in this book, don't get me wrong, but it becomes a challenge to seperate these nuggets from the rest of the text: particularly because there is no bibliography, and the further reading section of this book becomes an opportunity to promote many of the writer's other books.
I'm assuming the intended audience for this book is women, too, since the chapter dedicated to good parenting only focuses on motherhood and how not to pick a bad partner (which also includes perspectives that were maybe too informed by Freudian theory) what makes this concerning is the fact that it seems that James's opinions on how to be an emotionally healthy woman includes being "unassuming and friendly. That she has a slim figure and a captivatingly pretty face is made incidental by her manner. By being modestly beautiful, rather than overtly, provocatively sexual, she discourages men from relating to her purely as an object of desire, and does not arouse the envy of other women." (p79) connecting Geraldine's emotional health to her unassuming beauty is a weird point to stress.
There is value in this book, don't get me wrong, but it becomes a challenge to seperate these nuggets from the rest of the text: particularly because there is no bibliography, and the further reading section of this book becomes an opportunity to promote many of the writer's other books.