Pun Salad

I put this book on my get-at-library list last April thanks to Kat Rosenfield's review at the Free Press: "Mel Robbins Has Two Words for America’s Control Freaks". Kat made the book sound more interesting than it actually turned out to be (at least for me). Note the book's official subtitle: "A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About". I found myself adding "… Even If You Wish They Would."

Mel Robbins' answer to that wish would be, of course: "Let Them talk about my book."

Mel's Theory is kind of a big deal. Even though her book seems to have dropped off the NYT best-seller list (it was published last December), I noticed that it was prominently featured in a endcap display at my local Barnes & Noble earlier this week.

Anyway: "Let Them" is pretty much (as Mel briefly acknowledges) repackaged-for-today Stoicism. (Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is among the hundreds of entries in the book's bibliography.)

Paired with "Let Them" is "Let Me": which is "taking responsibility for what you do next."

Or more precisely quoting: "Take responsibility for what YOU do next." Mel is a heavy user of the caps lock key.

Mel's style is peppy and personal. Much of it sounds like direct transcriptions of (variously) motivational-speaker arm-waving presentations, one-on-one therapy sessions, and self-help podcasts. She tells (sometimes embarrassing) anecdotes about herself, friends, and family.

To be honest, the book has good advice aplenty. Unfortunately, the good advice is repeated over and over. Much of which I adopted on my own, years ago. The book is padded, roughly the entire last half, with specific advice about dealing with "relationship" problems. Ones, for better or worse, I don't have and don't plan on ever having.

And, probably unfairly, my mind went more than once to that old Monty Python sketch where John Cleese played Anne Elk: "Well, this theory, that I have, that is to say, which is mine,... is mine."

So: I wish I'd left this on the shelves of Portsmouth Public Library for someone who might have found it more useful.