Self-Help Book Reviews

Author and entrepreneur Viet Hung offers an engaging collection of astute observations, motivations, and encouragements aimed at promoting a calmer, more enlightened perspective in The Happiness Journal.

As Hung reminds us in his Foreword, throughout our lives, we generally “plan to get one thing done, but then usually something different happens.” To accept the ever-changing array of events requires inner preparedness. Hung believes this can often be achieved through the practice of self-examination and mindfulness. The helpful selections he has chosen were originally composed for himself – mostly short essays or commentaries – divided into three sections: “Sensing Happiness,” […]

A professional researcher has considered and compiled data from various fields to create a goal-oriented exploration of life’s meaning in the informative and impassioned The Meaning of Life: A Guide to Finding Your Life’s Purpose.

At the outset of the comprehensive tome, author Nathanael Garrett Novosel offers a “Pre-Book Assessment,” allowing the reader to rate his/her current “ability to derive meaning from life,” with a simple analysis of the resulting rating. He propounds that no important information about how to live can come from one of our most basic questions: How did life come to be? Instead, we should […]

Author Arthur F. Coombs III explicates his lifelong philosophy of behavior and personal choice in Hard-Easy: A Get-Real Guide for Getting the Life You Want, a helpfully straightforward manual for self-improvement.

The title of the book is also its philosophical structure:  the idea that there are two modes of behavior – Hard-Easy and Easy-Hard. The former basically means doing the hard work first, and easily reaping the rewards later, while the latter means making the easy choice, and leaving the hard part for later. While this may seem like a rather simple premise for an entire book, Coombs has […]