Words to Live BY

Gulp! The 7
Day Crash Course to Master Fear and Break Through Any Challenge (Bantam
Dell Publishing, New York City; 303 pages; $14/softcover), by Gabriella
Goddard. Touting itself as “the groundbreaking guide that can change
your life … in one week!”, this book was written by an executive coach
and motivational expert. In keeping with its theme, each chapter covers
a day, and its overall motivation is the latest rage: pushing yourself
outside your comfort zone to enable change. With illustrations,
worksheets and real-life examples to guide you, Gulp! may be just the
tool to help achieve your New Year’s resolution. (You haven’t forgotten
it already, have you?)

Body Signs: From
Warning Signs to False Alarms. How to be Your Own Diagnostic Detective
(Bantam Dell Publishing, New York City; 322 pages; $25/hardcover), by
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph.D, and Jacqueline Nardi Egan. You gotta love an
in-your-face health book that poses these body signs that may, or may
not, spell trouble: striped hair, fish breath, triple nipples, tingling
tush, frequent flatulence, moonless nails and floating stools. The
authors, both veteran medical journalists, do not mean for this
informative book to be a substitute for medical advice, but rather
provide a nudge for readers to consult their doctors a little more
educated, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Energize
Your Heart in 4 Dimensions (Living Heart Media, Tucson, Ariz.; 286
pages; $18.95/softcover), by Puran and Susanna Bair. This isn’t a guide
to strengthening the heart-as-blood-pumping-organ but rather a method
to give your ticker the energy to heals its wounds, recognize the
greatness within yourself and others, and be who you truly are. Using
what the authors describe as the heart’s three general aspects—the
physical heart, the energetic-emotional heart and the spiritual
heart—the book carries on to teach the reader how to strengthen each of
those qualities. As for the four dimensions, a confusing chart about
halfway in actually describes five dimensions of the heart. No matter;
this new-age book with its unconventional advice is clearly not for
everyone.

Good Calories, Bad Calories:
Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York City; 601 pages; $27.95/hardcover), by Gary
Taubes. Award-winning science writer Taubes makes the case that the
American obesity and diabetes epidemics are the result of eating
refined carbohydrates, and that the key to good health is the kind of
calories, not the number, we consume. Based on evidence he presents, we
conclude that the only healthy way to lose weight and remain lean is to
eat fewer carbohydrates, to change the type of carbs we do eat, or
perhaps to eat virtually none. But with 24 chapters spread among 460
pages (the remaining 241 pages are notes, bibliography and index), it’s
a bit daunting to peruse.

Life on Purpose: Six
Passages to an Inspired Life (Elite Books, Santa Rosa, Calif.; 231
pages; $24.95/hardcover), by Dr. Brad Swift. Don’t let that “Dr.” fool
you; the author is a former veterinarian, not a psychiatrist, internist
or Ph.D. Swift has written yet another book that purports to get you
where you want to be without all the time and fuss of hard work! Will
wonders never cease? The author, now a life and business coach, lays
out his plan in six chapters, called Passages. All contain
hard-to-resist quizzes, charts, fill-in-the-blank forms, known by
magazine editors everywhere to pull in readers. If life experience
matters, rare is the person who will complete this book and then
transform their lives with their newfound self-discovery. If you are
that person, more power to you, and good luck. ●