Grade:  C

[Please make sure to check out my Book Review Guidelines for what I look for in a book and how I evaluate same.]

Saying Yes To Life — Even the Hard Parts, a new book by Ezra Bayda with Josh Bartok, is just one of those books that you want to like.  It has a forward and an endorsement from Thomas Moore (love him to pieces), author of Care of the Soul, and that Zen approach to all things gentle and kind.

But, I just don’t find a whole lot to inspire, calm, or motivate me.  Sure, the book is filled with eternal, yet vague, wisdom such as “opening fully to the unwanted is the key to living with appreciation” or “living from perceived boundaries creates imaginary prisons,” but I just don’t find a lot of substance or anything to take away and think about.

In addition to the randomness of the thoughts contained within, the organization of the book is rather bewildering as well.  It seems as if the authors have merely written down some what seem-to-be clever observations on file cards, tossed them into the air, then listed them out in book form.

Often, when I don’t at first like or book or find that it draws me in, I’ll set it aside for a few days or weeks and return.  Sometimes I’ll feel better about the book.  Unfortunately, I can’t say that’s the case with Saying Yes To Life; in fact, each time I picked it up, I was saddened that I couldn’t feel any better about it.

Okay, really, I’ve tried the Zen thing, and I do find comfort and thought-provoking elements in some of the literature; this book, though, isn’t one of the resources I’ll return to.

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