Review: Friending

Title: Friending: Creating Meaningful, Lasting Adult Friendships

Author: Gina Handley Schmitt

Genre: Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Abuse (mentions), toxic friendships (mentions)

Back Cover:

Friendships are like any other relationships–when they work, they make our lives better. When they aren’t working, or are hard to find, they make our lives more difficult.

Gina Handley Schmitt saw her therapy clients struggling to make and keep close friends, and wrote this book to help solve what is becoming a full-blown friendship crisis in the age of social media. In this book, you’ll learn:

• How to identify and reach out to potential new friends
• How to maintain long term friendships through busy times and life transitions
• When and how to state your needs and set boundaries with your friends
• Skills for strengthening your friendships by resolving conflicts
• The difficult art of ending a friendship

You’ll do all this using the five core skills of being available, authentic, affirming, assertive, and accepting. Life is so much sweeter with good friends by your side

Review:

I picked up this book because the subtitle promised advice about adult friendships, which is something I really struggle with. I am also a fan of the publisher, Microcosm Publishing, which is a small independent press publishing a fantastic array of useful nonfiction. So I had high hopes.

However, this book didn’t really deliver. There were some tidbits of useful advice, but most of it was well-trod tropes (like the sandwich method for discussing problems) and surface-level discussions. Each of the five core skills in friendships (being available, authentic, affirming, assertive, and accepting) is one section, and each chapter in that section is 2-5 pages long – not nearly long enough to cover anything in depth.

Gina discusses ending friendships when the relationship is toxic, but advises working to keep the friendship in all other cases. She talks about accepting different opinions, but offers no advice on whether it’s worth trying to keep a longstanding friendship with someone who doesn’t think you deserve rights (e.g. you’re gay and your high school bestie is outspokenly homophobic). She seems to be operating under the assumption that every friendship should be a close and intimate friendship and says nothing about how relationships with “my best friend who I tell everything” and “we’re not super close but we play D&D together every other Thursday” should differ.

I guess I just wanted more from this book. It’s a good overview, but that’s all it is. Personally, I think it would have been better as a long-form article than a full book. The five core skills framework was definitely interesting, but most of the content was stuff I’d already heard by googling “how to friendship.” If you really have no idea where to start, this is a good place to do so, but if you’ve done even a modicum of research, look elsewhere.

For more in-depth books about friendships and relationships in general, I highly recommend Set Boundaries, Find Peace (about how to set and maintain boundaries in all relationships) and The Art of Gathering (about how to host fantastic gatherings with friends that deepen your relationships).

Review: The Art of Gathering

Title: The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters

Author: Priya Parker

Genre: Psychology/Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), sexism (mentions), colonization (mentions)

Back Cover:

From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together–at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive–which they don’t have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.

Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn’t, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings–conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp–and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.

The result is a book that’s both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue–and how you host and attend them.

Review:

If you’ve ever read any of my nonfiction reviews, you know that I am all about my nonfiction having practical action steps. I’ve been known to stop reading books that might have been perfectly interesting but weren’t giving me practical knowledge. So you will be pleased to know that this book is relentlessly practical.

I put this on hold at the library, and when it finally got around to me about two months after placing the hold, I was skeptical. “Alright, past me,” I was thinking. “This looks like it might be about business meetings and will go into the ‘I only pick up business books on accident’ category, but I’ll give it a shot.”

And then I gave it a shot. And I am so very glad I did, because I am very very bad at people and this book is step-by-step how to have a gathering of people that goes well.

It does discuss business meetings, but it also discusses social gatherings and provides principles that can apply to anything from a conference to having friends over for dinner. Have you considered the power dynamics between guests and host? I didn’t even consider that there was such a thing, but Priya explains (with examples) that there is such a thing, it’s an integral part of the social gathering, there isn’t a way to get rid of it without making your gathering worse, and here’s how to take charge of it to make it a good experience for everyone. Does your gathering have a purpose? No, “hanging out with friends” is not a purpose, but Priya will help you find a good purpose to guide every other decision that goes into planning the meeting. Did you realize that the event starts the moment guests become aware of the gathering and the host having a “pregame” strategy will make the actual event run smoother? Don’t worry, Priya has you covered on that front, too.

Whether you’re hosting a game night with old friends, a dinner party to introduce new friends to a group, a work meeting to discuss departmental conflicts, or a sit-down with Mom and Dad to discuss their end-of-life plans, this book will explain what to consider, provide steps for making it as successful as possible, illustrate with examples from Priya’s work as a professional gathering facilitator, and set you up for a great interpersonal experience.

I cannot express how helpful this knowledge is to me. I am very, very horrible at people (I blame the autism, but limited social interaction as a child didn’t help either), and this book basically said to me, “It’s okay, honey, here’s how people gather, what they expect when they get together, and how use this knowledge to plan a good gathering yourself.” As someone who both does not understand people at all and who married a Dungeon Master and so ends up regularly hosting game nights, I wish I’d found this book years ago.

If you are a human being who spends time with other human beings, this book is guaranteed to be helpful. (Unless you are that magical human being who knows everything in this book instinctively, in which case, I would like to purchase said instincts.) This book is definitely going on the Required Reading page, and I unreservedly recommend it to everyone.

Review: Set Boundaries, Find Peace

Title: Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

Author: Nedra Glover Tawwab

Genre: Self-Help/Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and childhood neglect; some phrasing is not intended as victim blaming but could be interpreted as such

Back Cover:

End the struggle, speak up for what you need, and experience the freedom of being truly yourself.

Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them–in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do healthy boundaries really mean–and how can we successfully express our needs, say no, and be assertive without offending others?

Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today’s world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life. Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology–and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.

Review:

I’ve been looking for a good book on boundaries since I heard the term in college. Cloud and Townsend’s famous book was too aggressively religious for me, and Anne Katherine’s was … bad. I didn’t have high hopes for this one because I couldn’t even find anything on the internet that could define boundaries for me, let alone tell me how to set one.

Well, friends, this is the book I was looking for.

Reading this book is a wild experience, because it keeps having moments of, “let me recontextualize your entire life in one sentence. Moving on…” I paused countless times to just stop and think and wrote down no less than seven verbatim quotes while reading because this book insists on dropping explosions of wisdom like they’re obvious and continuing on while I’m still reeling. Reading this book redefined my childhood, explained how several relationship implosions in my past were at least partially caused by me not setting boundaries, and made setting boundaries make sense and feel doable.

I’m still not entirely sure I can give you a definition of what a boundary is, but I at least feel like I understand the idea in a vague, nebulous way. What this book did give me was an understanding of what happens when you don’t set boundaries, different areas where boundaries can and should be set (did you know you can have boundaries around your possessions? I didn’t!), the psychology around boundaries, common ways people react to you setting boundaries, suggestions of possible boundaries to set if you have no idea where to start, and most importantly, how to set and reinforce your boundaries with others.

This book is so inspiring and hopeful and explains so much about so many things. I’ve known a few boundaries I need to set, but this book makes it feel actually doable. It doesn’t promise that setting boundaries is going to be easy or comfortable but it does promise it’s both healthy and possible. It’s both an instruction manual for setting boundaries and a permission slip from a real actual therapist that you’re allowed to set boundaries and say no. I feel like so much understanding that I didn’t even know I was missing has just been granted to me. Read this book.

Review: All About Love

Title: All About Love: New Visions

Author: bell hooks

Genre: Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Abuse (mention), moralizing about food (mention)

Back Cover:

All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.

For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks’s life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.

Review:

I avoided reading bell hooks for the longest time. I knew that she was a great black feminist theorist, and I was afraid that her works would be dense, heavy, hard to read, and likely to go over my head. This book was my first experience with bell hooks, and I think one of the reasons she’s so great is because she’s none of those things.

This book is profound. It’s about love, specifically the way love can and should be: hopeful, respectful, nurturing, redeeming, hard and taking effort but so profoundly worth it. She contrasts the modern idea of love being mainly romantic and something that happens to you (“falling in love”) with a vision of what love could be – a choice that takes work and intention but that lasts, that is for everyone, that makes communities and makes us feel whole.

Love radiates off of these pages. I felt so hopeful while reading this, I love this vision of what love can be. I can’t wait until everyone figures out these principles and we create a loving world. bell just makes it feel so possible – maybe the world won’t immediately change how it works, but I can change how I love.

I am sure I’m going to read this book again. I read it as an ebook, but I want to buy a physical copy for me and everyone I know. I’m for sure going to load it on my phone and read it again, probably pretty soon. I just feel like there’s so much more I can get out of it, so much more I can learn about love and how to give (and receive) love better. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Review: Boundaries

Review: Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin: How to Recognize and Set Healthy Boundaries

Author: Anne Katherine

Genre: Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Incest, pedophilia, child abuse, child sexual abuse, spousal abuse, fatphobia

Back Cover:

Boundaries separate us from others physically and emotionally. In fact, they are essential for our mental and physical health as well as for developing healthy relationships. Yet every day, people’s boundaries are violated by friends, family, or coworkers. Despite the importance of personal boundaries many people are unaware of how or when these very important lines are crossed.

Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin, Anne Katherine explains what healthy boundaries are, how to recognize if your personal boundaries are being violated, and what you can do to protect yourself.

For anyone who has walked away from a conversation, a meeting, or a visit with others feeling violated and not understanding why, this is a book that can help.

Review:

This book is actually pretty terrible.

I picked it up because I was hoping for a good alternative to Cloud and Townsend’s famous book on boundaries, which was so aggressively Christian that I couldn’t get past the introduction. I had hoped it would do what it says it would: Explain what healthy boundaries are, how to recognize if your boundaries are being violated, and how to protect yourself.

I read this entire book and I’m still not sure how to set a boundary, let alone what a boundary actually is. But I can tell you when a boundary is being grossly violated, because 75% of this book is extended examples of boundary violations – which include many uncomfortable and unnecessarily-descriptive stories of incest and child sexual abuse. Anne constantly harps on the fact that boundary violations are bad, childhood trauma is bad, and you should probably go to therapy, but as for teaching me how to set or enforce one … I think there was a paragraph under that heading in the book? Maybe?

But in order to avoid boundary violations, here are some people Anne says you should not be friends with:

• Anyone who does anything for you (one example she gives is that you should never hire your lawyer friend to write your will because they are a friend and it will result in boundary violations)
• Leaders at your church – pastors, you should not be friends with any of your congregants
• Anyone you look up to
• People in authority over you, like bosses and landlords (although to be fair, I agree with this one – though more for relationship reasons than “boundary violation” reasons)

What boundaries that violates, though, I’m not sure, because she never actually explained what boundaries are in the first place, let alone what boundaries being friends with someone you look up to violates.

I think the general point Anne is trying to make is that everyone needs to go to therapy. Which, I think therapy can be a very good thing. But I wanted a book that explained boundaries – what they are, how to set them, how to enforce them, how to adjust them, how to notice when they are being violated – and not a 150-page description of various traumas and an ad for therapy.

Review: Why Does He Do That

Title: Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Author: Lundy Bancroft

Genre: Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Descriptions of abuse (physical, verbal, psychological, and sexual), cisgendered language

Back Cover:

He says he loves you. So…why does he do that?

You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men–and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about:

– The early warning signs of abuse
– The nature of abusive thinking
– Myths about abusers
– Ten abusive personality types
– The role of drugs and alcohol
– What you can fix, and what you can’t
– And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely

Review:

This book is written for women who think they may be in an abusive relationship but aren’t sure, or women who are in an abusive relationship and want to know more about how their abusive partner thinks and how to get out. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a lot from reading this if you’re not in that situation, because you definitely can.

Lundy Bancroft writes this book from experience – he works with abusers as his profession, running an abusers program that tries to help men unlearn the things that make them abusers. This book is absolutely packed with information about how abusers work, how they think, how they got that way, and what you can do about it. It is super informative.

I saw my past abusers in the pages quite a bit. I got angry (and I’ll admit, a little triggered) reading through some of the descriptions of abuse. (If you’re not currently in an abusive relationship and are trying to recover from one, I highly recommend you make sure you’re emotionally ready before reading this.) Mostly, though, I learned how abusive men think and operate.

There are some shortcomings, though. This book does touch briefly on issues of same-sex abuse, but most of what it does mention is about abusive relationships between women. There’s hardly anything about a man abusing his male partner, and barely any mentions of male victims of abuse, whether abused by a man or a woman. It’s also written by a white man, so it’s unsurprisingly but disappointingly lacking in discussions of intersectionality – situations where victims are even more limited by things like race or immigrant status – and views the police as a generally good recourse unless the abuser is or has friends on the force.

The information laid out here about how abusers think and operate and how to recognize them are excellent, and definitely worth reading. And there is a resources section that does list abuse resources specifically for women of color, as well as a lot of other information for different circumstances (for teens, for people who want to support someone in an abusive relationship, etc.). Although there’s not a lot of intersectionality to it, it is still a fantastically valuable book and absolutely worth reading.