Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had seen an excerpt of Brene Brown’s TED talk about empathy when a friend shared it on Facebook. I really didn’t know much about her or her work except from the TED talk which featured a cartoon about some creature falling down a hole thereby illustrating the difference between sympathy and empathy. It was kind of cute so I decided to order this book and find out more. Well, whatever I didn’t know I now do after reading this book. And, I now know a TED talk does not translate to a readable book. She is a professor and researcher in a Texas university where she works in “grounded theory” (which has no statistical outliers) in the School of Social Work. She starts her book talking about quantitative and qualitative theory. It is all very academic but I don’t think there is any legitimate argument related to social sciences (which I have a degree in) being a “hard” science. Social sciences borrow scientific methodologies and terminology along with quantitative data sets for largely qualitative results. Simply because of the nature of the subjects studied the data and results are not classical hard science research. I’m not sure what her grounded theory is all about but it sounds farfetched when you are studying emotions and human behavior to say that your data and results have no statistical outliers. I’m very, very concerned. Does Browns’ model fit the data or does the data fit the model? On to the book. This is a hot mess of psychobabble with a roadmap for becoming strong through cultivating vulnerability and resilience. I’m trying to forget it all as I write this review, but it starts out with a story of her and her husband having a fight while they are swimming on vacation…and goes on for six pages and is revisited later in case you didn’t “get it.” Lest you think that is enough, there is another story about her outrage of sharing a hotel room at a conference with a slob who greets her on the couch with cinnamon roll and frosting-covered fingers. Another 5 pages. And, another lightbulb moment came when she drove over a concrete planter and got stuck in a strip mall parking lot, hysterical over not finding the bookstore she was certain was there. First world problems, anyone? There is a large section about “doing your best,” which she seems to feel is the touchstone for a vulnerable and happy life with an ability to rise above setbacks. You must ask yourself if someone is doing their best. This will make you empathetic towards others and yourself. Seriously? Deluding yourself that a child molester was “doing his or her best” or the person who sideswiped you while going 40 mph was “doing their best,” or that infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele or serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer were “doing their best” is a patently ridiculous framework for life. Sorry to break it to you, but some people are not doing their best ON PURPOSE and they don’t care a whit about you. I am a huge fan of storytelling, but when the stories are this boring, forget it. There was a nice poem at the end of the book (written by someone else) but in my opinion it is not worth the misery of reading this banal blather. However, I’m sure millions will disagree with me.