Learning to Say No: Establishing Healthy Boundaries Book

This series of books have the same tone as those cynical, anti-intellectual mega-church TV preachers who wear $30,000 wristwatches and claim to have all of the answers to your existence. If every story in this book isn't 100% fabrication, I'm certain that they have been generously embellished (sort of the same thing as fabricated).

Spoiler Alert! Your prayers are never answered; for every happy ending there are countless unhappy stories. Everyone dies, sooner or later. You can kid yourself about this with religion or hack bibles like this piece of trash, or you can just accept our fleeting existence on our humble planet and try to make the most of it. Just what it means to "make the most of it" is entirely up to you. For me, this means studying languages and piano and reading a ton of books and writing and seeing the world and experiencing new cultures, among other pursuits. Praying ain't one of them. To each his own.

The best part about trashing this stupid book is that there is no such thing as a soul and if you disagree with me, I suggest that you take flying lessons (don't bother with the bit about landings) and fly a plane into your computer right into my review of this book. That'll learn me!

The Goodreads blurb for this book describes the authors as, “Two of America's best-loved inspirational speakers.” Other famous inspirational speakers: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Dale Carnegie, Jim Jones, Tony Robbins, Richard Simmons, and Reverend Lovejoy from the Simpsons, to name only a few. Not very good company to keep. Let's just consider that word for a moment. Inspire: to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural. Do you really want to be guided or influenced by these two hucksters? Life doesn't come with instructions; so why do so many people look for them in this sort of childish pabulum? There are no easy answers. You just have to take bits and pieces of the wisdom handed down to us through the centuries and cobble some meaning together on your own. I have news for you: none of this wisdom is to be found in the self-help aisle at Barnes and Nobles, and there is certainly none to be found in this collection of fortune cookie aphorisms.

Instead of wasting your time with this garbage, read something that will give you some true understanding of human existence. I'll bet that most people who rated this five-stars don't believe in evolution. Evolution is one of the most illuminating ideas in all of human history, but these people would rather ignore science and take refuge in religion, superstition, and this sort of “uplifting” silliness.

What does evolution have to do with these stories? The title of the book mentions the soul, something I don't believe in. Consciousness, yes, the soul, no. Just when did mankind attain a soul? Did the Neanderthals have souls? Homo erectus? Australopithecus?

Stephen J. Gold was asked if he had learned anything or if his thinking was altered because he had been diagnosed with cancer. He told the interviewer that his intellectual foundation would have been pretty weak if something as minor as his own illness could have rocked him off of it. If this sort of trash is your intellectual foundation, you are making a house of (greeting) cards.

Before you let me have it because I think this book is trash, look at your own ratings. I'm sure that there are books that you hate that other people treasure. I don't care if you don't like a book that I may think is excellent. The whole idea of this site is for readers to voice their opinions. I give most books 5 stars so if you're looking for something that I have written with a positive slant, read a review of a book that I loved.