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Deeply touching and heartfelt and moving and inspiring.
Hunger by Donna Jo Napoli. It’s about the potato blight in Ireland that led to crop failure and famine and disease and death. This story is dated from the Autumn of 1946 to the Spring of 1947 and is in the point-of-view of a twelve-year-old girl named Lorraine who lived in County Galway on a farm leased by an English lord. I recommend this story to anyone who doesn’t know this history and enjoys middle grade reads.
slow-paced
I enjoyed the episodes of their XP “show” Behind The scenes that we got to read, but the rest of the book was too slow for me. Nothing really happened for a book of this size. But I did find the world interesting with the technology advancements and the good and bad of a world that virtual.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I skimmed Part 2 and only read the one sentence summaries at the end of the chapters for Part 3.
Part 3 starts with a story about Calvin Coolidge saying to one of his secretaries, “That’s a pretty dress you are wearing this morning, and you are a very attractive young woman.” That quote gave me a full-body cringe. Then Dale Carnegie said this was “the most effusive praise” ever “bestowed upon a secretary” in Coolidge’s life. He said the young woman blushed in confusion. Then Coolidge said, “Now, don’t get stuck up. I just said that to make you feel good. From now on, I wish you would be a little bit more careful with your punctuation.”
Me: WTF?!
Carnegie: This is a superb example of how to praise someone’s good points before saying the unpleasant things they won’t want to hear.
Me: No. If I was that young woman, I would’ve wanted to slap Coolidge. I definitely would’ve been deeply uncomfortable, resulting in a blush. This example really shows the time when this book was written and first published. What Coolidge said to his young secretary was inappropriate and should never be used as a positive example.
As soon as I read that, my boredom with the book transformed into me being appalled. And then I finally was able to put my finger on why I didn’t connect with or enjoy this book up to that point; Carnegie’s tone and words were off-putting and egotistical to me. And the advice promotes people pleasing and manipulation.
When you get down to it, most (if not all) of his advice went like this: “do this for everyone else but never yourself,” which could lead to boundary issues, a lack of self-esteem and self-care and pretty much everything that begins with “self,”since his advice was all about other people and ignoring your own wants/needs/interests. If used in real life, in the long run, this could prove harmful to the people who follow the advice.
Not only that, but the advice could lead to fake friendships/relationships and ultimately you being a fake person, which is the opposite of what you should do to build honest, healthy, happy relationships.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone.
Part 3 starts with a story about Calvin Coolidge saying to one of his secretaries, “That’s a pretty dress you are wearing this morning, and you are a very attractive young woman.” That quote gave me a full-body cringe. Then Dale Carnegie said this was “the most effusive praise” ever “bestowed upon a secretary” in Coolidge’s life. He said the young woman blushed in confusion. Then Coolidge said, “Now, don’t get stuck up. I just said that to make you feel good. From now on, I wish you would be a little bit more careful with your punctuation.”
Me: WTF?!
Carnegie: This is a superb example of how to praise someone’s good points before saying the unpleasant things they won’t want to hear.
Me: No. If I was that young woman, I would’ve wanted to slap Coolidge. I definitely would’ve been deeply uncomfortable, resulting in a blush. This example really shows the time when this book was written and first published. What Coolidge said to his young secretary was inappropriate and should never be used as a positive example.
As soon as I read that, my boredom with the book transformed into me being appalled. And then I finally was able to put my finger on why I didn’t connect with or enjoy this book up to that point; Carnegie’s tone and words were off-putting and egotistical to me. And the advice promotes people pleasing and manipulation.
When you get down to it, most (if not all) of his advice went like this: “do this for everyone else but never yourself,” which could lead to boundary issues, a lack of self-esteem and self-care and pretty much everything that begins with “self,”since his advice was all about other people and ignoring your own wants/needs/interests. If used in real life, in the long run, this could prove harmful to the people who follow the advice.
Not only that, but the advice could lead to fake friendships/relationships and ultimately you being a fake person, which is the opposite of what you should do to build honest, healthy, happy relationships.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone.
DNF. I got to Chapter 6, but the writing style wasn’t for me. It didn’t captivate me, the chapters I’d read had been pretty boring, and because I know how the story ends, I wasn’t motivated to continue.
