"Have You No Shame?": A Review (By Heather)

I came upon Rachel Shukert's book Have You No Shame? at a reading in which she read a section of her memoir entitled "A Nice Girl Like You." The section chronicles the difficulty of finding a job in New York City after not having had a job in the city before. Shukert gets a job in a vintage-esque thrift store but finds it much more difficult to secure a job she actually likes.

The first time I got to read the book from start to finish was on a spring break trip to Maine with my grandparents. I was reading it on my kindle with its text-to-speech feature on, headphones in, when I got to chapter six. In this chapter, Shukert recalls a time in which she is a rebellious teenager, away from her parent's watchful eyes at a Jewish youth group, dodging her chaperones and having a lot of oral sex. Up until that point, I was very much entertained and laughing often, but for one thing, it just didn't feel right reading this in the back seat of my grandparent's Buick. I suppose that the environment in which I read it somewhat colored my interpretation in that I am more conservative and therefore, a bit prudish around my grandparents. However, having read the book since then, that is still my least favorite chapter. There is a lot of entertainment to be had in Rachel Shukert's book in which she invites the reader into some very private moments through different stages of her life.

"I Was Told There'd Be Cake": A Review (By Heather)

Sloane Crosley is author of a collection of essays entitled I Was Told There'd Be Cake, a New York Times best seller. She writes with a certain wit and humor. I've read the book several times. Each time different things stick out to me but I allways come away having laughed and been quite entertained. Also, as a result of reading this book, I have promised myself never to be in the wedding of someone I went to high school with whom I have not spoken to in the last decade, for fear of an equally hideous version of a baby pink plaid bridesmaids dress. I can't wait to read Crosley's next collection of essays entitled How Did You Get This Number? due to be released in June of 2010.

Reading her essays made me remember some of my own lesser idiosyncrasies such as my own "pony problem," however at a much younger age. And how if I go back to volunteering, I would probably much rather work with troubled youth instead of in a museum with butterflies and one, very large moth. I have an irrational fear of moths in particular as well as other winged creatures. Perhaps I am jealous that I cannot fly? My own pony problem consisted of many variations of the plastic My Little Pony collection. However, instead of living in the kitchen, they would reside in my sister's antique nightstand which originally held a chamber pot. So I guess if one has a pony problem, you're bound to stash them in a weird place.

Book Review: The Secret

So I was searching through some quote sites looking for a fast route to the teachings of Buddha, and this is what I found:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. -Buddha

This is the exact same message as the bestselling book The Secret teaches.

The Secret is at the center of some controversy. Some people think it’s a hoax, and others treat it like the Bible. The book centers on the Law of Attraction, which is basically the belief that like attracts like: good thoughts will bring good to your life and bad will bring bad.

The author, Rhonda Byrne, went though some rough times before she learned this “secret”, turned her life around and decided to share it with the world via book and DVD. She claims it’s the most powerful law in the universe and the book is full of testimonials by people who claim the Secret turned their lives around, too: not just no-name crazies, but millionaires like Jack Canfield—who came up with the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Legit? Sure. Or maybe Jack Canfield is just a closet LSD freak. Who knows?

My sister gave me The Secret for my birthday this year. She told me (as nicely as she could)that she thought it would help me, no doubt because I’d been so upset with my own life for the preceding year that it was starting to become obvious to my family and friends that this was not a passing mood. I read it in a day and proceeded to go into obsessive-compulsive freak-out mode. I reeled back and forth between believing the book and thinking it was the biggest crock I’d ever come across.

Based on the Law of Attraction, though, I suppose that would be why it didn’t appear to work for me.

Still: if it was true, it would hold that I was headed for car wrecks, disease, and more freak accidents than I could imagine. And that scared the crap out of me. So I chose not to believe in the Secret. But now that might all change, given this new venture, so I thought it was worth a second look.

The book is not bad overall. Oprah likes it, so how bad can it be? My only problems come from out “out there” it gets at points. Ever the pessimist, I find it hard to imagine that the secret to life has been sitting in front of humanity since the dawn of time and no one has thought to expose it to the world until now. A little unrealistic, to say the least.

But that aside, the core of the message is good. The idea that good things bring more good things and bad bring bad holds up, even if for slightly different reasons than the book puts forth. As Charles Swindoll said in his poem, aptly titled Attitude, your mental state does affect your experience:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

And so it is with you; we are in charge of our attitudes.

So it stands to reason that the Secret has some roots in reality, at the very least. And it’s an interesting theory to test out—I’ve had a few happy results, even though I usually don’t have enough patience or faith to let it go to the “full extent of its power” (hopefully that will change with this "new attitude", as I pay more attention to such things as vibes and thought frequencies). But 4 million copies sold is a little bit intriguing, at least.

FINAL VERDICT: A worthwhile read, if just to expand your mind and give other ways of thinking a try. I give it 4 stars, and thanks to my sister for opening me up to it.