Self-help books have always been a bit of a “hit and miss” for me,
which is why I’m very selective when it comes to choosing books from this genre
to read. Of course, first and foremost, the
subject matter needs to be interesting and also relevant to my current
situation – on this count, Ada Calhoun’s newest book Why We Can’t Sleep
did deliver, however in some ways, it also fell a bit short of expectations for
me.
As a member of Generation X (like the author herself), it’s refreshing
to read a book that was able to articulate so much of what I have experienced
and felt for most of my life up to this point.
Many of the insights that Calhoun presented were spot-on, to the point
that I found myself nodding my head a lot in understanding and agreement. In
addition to being extremely well-researched, with the material laid out in a
format that was organized and easy to read, one of the things I appreciated
most about this book was the author’s approach to the subject matter – through
interviews with hundreds of women, most of them from Generation X, all of whom candidly
shared their stories about their struggles and challenges, Calhoun was able to establish
a sense of resonance with readers that other books on the same subject mostly
lacked.
On a personal level, I’m the type of reader who tends to shy away
from books that I consider to be too “scientific” in nature, especially ones
that are overloaded with a lot of facts, figures, statistics, etc., as I usually
find these books boring and as a result, I lose focus really quickly. This book was different in that Calhoun didn’t
just regurgitate a bunch of facts and results from studies to support them –
rather, she incorporated her own personal experiences as well as those of many other women from
different walks of life to create a more anecdotal read, which I feel worked
well. With that said though, I think one
of the things this book lacked was, ironically, the “self-help” portion, in that
it didn’t really present solutions on how to overcome the challenges that Generation
X often faced overall. Yes, Calhoun does talk about what worked for her, and
with a few of the other women interviewed, she also covered how they ended up improving
their particular situations, but a lot of it was very specific to them and
their lives. Basically, this book was
insightful in terms of explaining the “why” portion, but it didn’t really go
into the “what to do about how we’re feeling” portion, at least not in a way
that was helpful in my circumstances.
Overall, I feel that this book is definitely worth a read, but I
think how much readers would be able to relate to it depends on their personal
situations (which I believe is why the reviews for this book are all over the
place). I certainly got some things out
of it (mostly knowledge in that I found out some stuff I didn’t know before),
but as I said earlier, I also found quite a few things lacking. I would still recommend this book, but with a
warning not to go into it with too many pre-established expectations – if it
works for you, then great, but if it doesn’t, that should be fine too.
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