Emily Karp

Extra Amazing if You've Read Marie Kondo First!!

Revisado: 10-25-21

This book was everything i never knew i needed and the BEST accidental discovery i made immediately after finishing listening to Marie Kondo's famous book. it was so helpful in sussing out what parts of Marie Kondo's book to really take to heart and new ways of looking at what taking them to heart can mean in a very humorous and fun book that's hard to stop listening to. the narrator and author alike speak my language and have such a perfect balance of humor and actual advice that is likely to work. I adored this book and can't recommend it highly enough!

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not really that great

Revisado: 06-18-21

the premise is ableist and at times the book is offensive, especially to anyone who doesn't have a religion that believes in an "eternity" in the afterlife AND a religion that believes everything that happens in life is what was meant to be. the idea that taking the stairs instead of an escalator is doable and taken for granted while judging everyone who takes an escalator as a joke throughout. he implies multiple people's deaths were worth it in the end. etc. he has some good points of you combine it with more sympathetic ADHD advice.

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Really inspiring and mind-blowing but some caveats

Revisado: 05-06-21

This book was amazing and compelling and i really went to implement a 12 week year after listening to it! it's really great. But the number of weight loss examples were annoying if you have views on diet that are at all critical of fatphobia and on the most mainstream diet culture. There was egregious inspiration porn using a disabled individual's life story and general ableism throughout where there was no acknowledgement of the complexities of how mental health might affect people's productivity.

There was worshipping of working harder and harder with very little attention to the idea that not all of us think the crunch to get better numbers by the end of a fiscal year or whatever is amazing and we wish we had that intense stress all the time - no thank you.

There weren't enough varied examples of personal life or varied work environments for how the 12 week year gets implemented, in my opinion.

Overall, though, the book was more helpful and thought provoking than the reverse. I'm looking forward to trying to implement my own 12 week year.

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Slightly too much Christianity for my taste, etc

Revisado: 04-07-21

I would highly recommend this book overall, and in audiobook form it's great as long as you can rewind and pause frequently to make sure you're taking it all in. However I'd probably add some caveats to my recommendation.

He takes too long to get to explaining how no it's not actually just one thing in life that's important and everyone does have other obligations, he takes too long to get to and downplays the importance of sleep, and he acts like not all millionaires are wealthy people and like increasing one's salary by a ton should be everyone's goal. he gives great insights but through a very Christian lens of people having a church and wanting to improve their spiritual life as something likely, implying God gives us our one and only life at the beginning and then making an analogy to Jesus needing 12 apostles for why at a job you need to hire workers?

A lot of the book can apply to pretty much anything you want to apply it to in life though, if you're willing to let most of that stuff go. I really enjoyed the intensity of inflection in the performance and the insights the book spells out though and it was worth it to read the whole thing. i just now signed up for the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability Groups as an adult woman diagnosed with ADHD less than a year ago when I was 30, and this was required reading for prior to the coaching groups, and I can see why it is helpful to have a book like this in my mind going forward and approaching trying to develop new better habits for my entire life. i even took notes on the Willpower chapter of the book because it was so good.

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Aroaces relate strongly, Wonderful grief depiction

Revisado: 02-10-21

This book was a little slow in the first third, but picked up the pace after that and was just so fantastic with many loveable and rich characters and such an honest take on what grief is like as well as what being aro & ace is like for a teenage girl.

As a 31 year old woman who's experienced traumatic and intense loss multiple times in my life and is on the aromantic spectrum and is also asexual, the book spoke deeply to my on multiple levels. I would say that there is one part of the book that disappointed me by not making it clear enough that it's not a personal choice or moral failing to become suicidal and that people shouldn't have to apologize for feeling that way. But everything else in the book is so well done. I cried at multiple moments throughout the latter two thirds.

There are many intense parts and I'd consider looking up trigger warnings in other reviews before reading. there are also many times the protagonist is thinking to herself where it might be unclear for a moment in audiobook form whether it's dialogue or thoughts, but it became clear in context to me every single time and wasn't a problem. The performance was wonderful. There are times a song is sung in the book and the audiobook only reads it like a poem, but it works and you know what you are a reader are supposed to be imagining.

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This book was so great, so real and true to life!

Revisado: 08-10-20

I loved this book immensely and related to many parts of it - podcast related stuff as someone who has created a couple of podcasts myself, people ghosting others, the portrayal of an abusive mother, being worried someone you care for may be acting on suicidal thoughts, being good in school but having fandom interests in private, etc. I loved all the acceptance of various queer identities and the demisexuality was a big part of why I read it (I'm interested in reading a lot of things with a variety of ace and aro representation). The focus on friendship and insignificance of romance throughout the book was so refreshing, and the main friendship felt a lot like a queerplatonic partnership to me.

the book was wonderful and I'd highly recommend it :)

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Invaluable Resource For Grief After Murder-Suicide

Revisado: 09-18-19

Sue Klebold writes in this book, "Most suicide loss survivors struggle with grief, guilt, and humiliation, but when a family member commits murder in the last moments of his life, it changes him in your mind, and alters the way you grieve for him."

Also explained in these pages is the truth that "If suicide is difficult to think and talk about, then murder-suicide is unthinkable. I hadn't simply failed to protect Dylan from himself, but everyone he killed too."

My friend and colleague murdered his wife and them killed himself. I didn't know his wife although i did know he was extremely depressed in the wake of the news that she intended on divorcing him. I felt very isolated in my trauma and in my guilt toward not preventing a murder. When looking for resources or books on grieving the perpetrator of a murder-suicide, resources are very hard to find.

Thomas Joiner's research is cited in this book as well and his book on murder-suicide is another invaluable resource. These two books have proven so insightful and powerful in the wake of this type of loss. I strongly believe murder-suicide is indeed a subset of suicide and murders would've been prevented, including in this case of the Columbine High School massacre, if the suicidal feelings in the perpetrators had been addressed directly.

This book was well written, this audiobook perfectly performed to give direct voice to so much of what Sue Klebold thought and felt in the days and years after this tragedy struck her directly. It was amazing how much of it I could relate to, how similarly my thought process had been to hers on so many issues in the aftermath of a murder-suicide in my own life.

This book helped me feel so much less alone in my experience - an extremely isolating experience that the vast majority of people do not openly write or speak about.

I extend much gratitude to Sue for bravely writing such an important book and I believe it is helping many people in situations like mine.

I also listened to this book alongside Dave Cullen's more journalistic analysis of everything related to the Columbine tragedy. Each of the books informed my experience of the other and both had a lot of enlightening information for anyone at all curious to understand the truth and all the details and nuance. They do overlap a bit but both are very worth checking out.

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I'm in awe at how amazing this book was

Revisado: 05-08-19

The voice acting was perfect and full of emotion. and the book was just a pure work of carefully crafted art. It is as emotional as a fictional story and I teared up/cried at multiple parts as well as smiled hugely throughout. i was SO invested in what would happen next. So so powerful and good. I'd recommend it to pretty much everyone.

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Overall educational, however I have criticisms

Revisado: 04-05-19

I enjoyed the book overall. But as an atheist I didn't actually like the super Christian/Jesus-y parts and wished he at least acknowledged that not all readers would believe in the validity of the Bible. I'm asexual as my sexual orientation and while i can't fault a book originally from the 90s for not including asexuality, the book is really insistent that sex is important to all marriages in a few spots that bother me and preaches some stuff about sex that is not great, especially when he encourages a wife to be having sex she really doesn't want to have it feels like endorsing putting yourself into a traumatic sexual situation. It's very heteronormative but not explicitly homophobic..., very staunchly anti polyamory as if "open marriages" can never work in a way I don't believe, the book certainly seems to imply divorce is a horrible outcome, should never be an option in any cases without TRYING months of this love language test, and remarriage is a bad idea because it's even more likely to end in divorce. the book also completely ignores any possibility of abuse even in examples where it would be relevant. I honestly enjoyed the book despite all that and took away things that will stick with me. But the book is FAR from flawless. It takes a certain perspective on marriage as always wonderful, always worth preserving, always between a man and a woman, always Christian etc.

also. the narration is charismatic and charming with his laughter at key parts etc but if you're not used to this kind of accent i could see people having trouble getting used to listening to this audiobook or even having prejudices against the author because of it

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Even As An Atheist I Give It 5/5

Revisado: 09-27-18

Such a powerful listen. I feel like it's literally gonna change my life, if I make the effort to remember the lessons taught. I have new thoughts on how I handle sharing the huge things in my life like surviving my fiend perpetrating a murder-suicide, how to handle shame and vulnerability, how I'm already on my way to wholeheartedness in many regards but I could do more to strive toward calm etc.

As an atheist who believes there is nothing supernatural, that our personality and conciousness is all the brain, that anything connecting us is because we're social animals of the same species, etc, I bristled a bit at the use of faith and spirituality and even intuition, but the way Brené ultimately defined these things still left room for me as a person to be let in to the definition too. I wasn't barred from her thinking it was possible for me to be wholehearted and I appreciate that. I still wish she used different words but I think it mainly works.

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