Accentuate the Positive

You Can’t Ruin My Day: 52 Wake-Up Calls to Turn Any Situation Around by Allen Klein (Viva Editions, $16.95, 340 pages)

“You Can’t Ruin My Day is designed to help you unload the burdens you may have been carrying around with you. It is therefore filled not only with wise words but also with inspiring stories and anecdotes, insightful and motivational quotations, and lighthearted and laugh-producing material. In other words, this book is designed to help you put healthier, happier habits in motion for your personal growth.”

I’ve got to keep breathing.
It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t. – Steve Martin, comedian

Allen Klein, a veteran keynote speaker and believer in the power of humor, presents the reader with an appealing, just-right sized volume brimming with his friendly, conversational approach to advising folks that they can change their mood from upset or angry because no one event can ruin your day.

It’s easy to imagine Klein addressing a group at a convention. His author picture at the back of the book features a prominent clown nose! Do you suppose he ever wears it in real life?

Right up front, the book, comprised of five distinct parts with energetic and positive titles (Wake-Up, Wise-Up, Grow-Up [Not!], Crack-Up and Wrap-Up) alerts readers that help is just ahead. Each of the sections includes several wake-up calls, anecdotes from Klein’s life or those of people he has known over his many years employing applied and therapeutic humor. Readers are encourage to select phrases or affirmations to post at home or at work.

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are. – Epictetus, Greek philosopher

This reviewer has encountered many of the quotes presented at the beginning and within the sections/chapters that comprise this cute orange book with a half-smiley face on the cover. Klein has chosen well. The breadth of his sources from the past to present day reinforces the timelessness of his message. Rather than setting himself up as one who has the answers, he aligns himself with indisputable wisdom gathered and presented in a way that is both kind and easy to digest. No tough love here!

Well recommended for everyone.

Ruta Arellano

A review copy was provided by the author.

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Almost Everything

Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe by Jenny Hollowell (Henry Holt and Company; June 2010)

“We got what we needed.”

This novel tells the story of one Birdie Baker, a young woman from a small eastern town and a deeply religious upbringing.   She marries young – a huge mistake – and decides to escape the life that others have planned for her.   So she “(comes) to Los Angeles, running from something.”

Birdie has a fantasy, that in the big western city recovered from the desert she will find everything lovely, effortless, safe.   She dreams of becoming an actress, being discovered, walking on red carpets and having young girls envy her.   But L.A. can be a tough town for those without money and fame.   Years pass as Birdie exists as a stand-in for a famous actress and a sometime body double.

Important men, men with power in the movie trade, find Birdie attractive but even they can see that she’s aging fast.   Now time has passed and “she was thirty, almost everything, almost nothing.”

Similar stories have been told in other novels about Hollywood, and this reader worried that the story was running out of gas before the halfway point.   Birdie seems less than totally interesting and often unlikable, and she spends too much time with older men.   Fortunately, Birdie eventually meets Lewis – a young male actor who believes in the same things that Birdie once did.

First-time author Hollowell comes up with some great lines detailing how Birdie sees Lewis as a younger version of herself; a fellow traveler haunted by his past but filled with hopes and optimism:  “How young he was, afraid of forgetting the tragedies that made him.   He did not yet know that he will never forget, that he will want to forget but will not be able to.”   With the character of Lewis, Hollowell finds a sweet spot.   Birdie will, of course, become romantically involved with Lewis but even she understands that this will end up like a brother and sister relationship.

Birdie is at first confused about life in L.A. and about why she is not getting what she wants and needs.   She goes on to become a woman who literally comes to believe that having a life – at least the life she wants – is impossible.   And yet she knows she has certain powers.   While producers and directors may not chase after her (pretty girls in Hollywood being a nickel a dozen), a lot of average men do want to be with her.   Why?   Well, because Birdie “did not talk about the future or ask them to be in it…  She did not seem to want them so they pursued her to discover the reason.”

The second half of the novel is strong as Hollowell discovers a way to give Birdie most of what she wants out of life, if not all of what she once dreamed.   And the conclusion – the final words – of Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe cannot be improved upon.   “This is how everything should end:  with the forgotten remembered, the wounded healed, and the sinners forgiven.”

This is a nice debut for Jenny Hollowell.   This reviewer hopes that her sophomore effort is built around a more engaging (and intelligent) protagonist, and that she finds a unique story line.   She’s a self-professed fan of Bob Dylan (“He is so good at summing things up…”) and perhaps she will find some inspiration there.

Recommended.

Take Away:   This story is not very original and it is not close to perfect, but there’s enough here to make it an engaging and satisfying read.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.