Chicken Soup For The Soul (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
The Goodreads blurb for this book describes the authors as, “Two of America's best-loved inspirational speakers.” Other famous inspirational speakers: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Dale Carnegie, Jim Jones, Tony Robbins, Richard Simmons, and Reverend Lovejoy from the Simpsons, to name only a few. Not very good company to keep. Let's just consider that word for a moment. Inspire: to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural. Do you really want to be guided or influenced by these two hucksters? Life doesn't come with instructions; so why do so many people look for them in this sort of childish pabulum? There are no easy answers. You just have to take bits and pieces of the wisdom handed down to us through the centuries and cobble some meaning together on your own. I have news for you: none of this wisdom is to be found in the self-help aisle at Barnes and Nobles, and there is certainly none to be found in this collection of fortune cookie aphorisms. Instead of wasting your time with this garbage, read something that will give you some true understanding of human existence. I'll bet that most people who rated this five stars don't believe in evolution. Evolution is one of the most illuminating ideas in all of human history, but these people would rather ignore science and take refuge in religion, superstition, and this sort of “uplifting” silliness. Stephen J. Gold was asked if he had learned anything or if his thinking was altered because he had been diagnosed with cancer. He told the interviewer that his intellectual foundation would have been pretty weak if something as minor as his own illness could have rocked him off of it. If this sort of trash is your intellectual foundation, you are making a house of (greeting) cards.Before you let me have it because I think this book is trash look at your own ratings. I'm sure that there are books that you hate that other people treasure. I don't care if you don't like a book I may think is excellent. The whole idea of this site is for readers to voice their opinions.
“Two seeds lay side by side in the fertile spring soil.The first seed said, “I want to grow! I want to send my roots deep into the soil beneath me, and thrust my sprouts through the earths crust above me…”And she grew.The second seed said, “I am afraid. If I send my roots into the ground below, I don’t know what I will encounter in the dark. If I push my way through the hard soil above me I may damage my delicate sprouts.”And so she waited.”MORAL OF THE STORY: Seeds can’t talk, jerkoff. And having wicked-passionate earth-shattering sex on a daily basis will certainly do a lot more for your soul than this collection of insipid quasi-life affirming claptrap.I found this book in the garage. I didn’t realize it was at the BOTTOM of a box of books for a reason. I thought, what the hell, I could use a few stories to open the heart and rekindle the spirit, so I put it next to the bed for a little dream inspiration. More like night-sweats and hideous thoughts of Mary Poppins on crack. If this is Americas ‘book of wisdom and solace for the ages,’ we are in deep doo-doo. I would line the cage these pages if I were inspired enough to have a bird. Instead, it’s back in the box. In the garage. Waiting to be taken to the next church flea market.
What do You think about Chicken Soup For The Soul (2001)?
I read this book when I was in high school. It was a very nice read, I loved the book immensely. It's not a novel or a single long story, instead it contains real life encounters of teens. There are short stories and some poems also. Though I didn't like each and every story but there were some moments in the book when I was totally lost in it. The poems were somewhat boring to me but still I could not deny the fact that they are inspirational and soul-touching. The thing, I loved most about this book is that--the book is a product of a really innovative and creative thinking of Canfield and Mark.There are so many common-life-experience stories, which are generic and soul-wrenching at the same time. The beauty of the book is that it shows you the world with the perspective of so many people. Though every story in this book is not really up to the mark, but some stories are really good. There is a story "A young man's odyssey", which I loved the most, the story was amazing. The book is not only for teens, any age-group can go for it, it's more like a inspirational book. Every story have something to motivate you and make you strong.
—Chhaya Verma
كتابى پر از شعارهايى مثل "مثبت فكر كن تا كيهان آرزويت را برآورده كند" و رازهاى موفقيت و...من فقط به عنوان يه متن انگليسى خوندمش، وگرنه از اين جور كتاب ها چندان خوشم نمياد. قبلاً توی ریویوی مردان مریخی زنان ونوسی راجع به راجع به کتاب های روانشناسی عامّه پسند نوشته بودم.هر چند بی انصافی نباید کرد. بعضی از داستاناش خوبن. ولی بیشترشون مبتنی بر عنصر اتفاق و تصادفن، یعنی نویسنده نمی تونه ادعا کنه که "حتماً برای شما اتفاق می افتد"، بلکه صرفاً می تونه بگه "شاید برای شما اتّفاق بیفتد"؛ در نتیجه خواننده میگه: "از کجا معلوم که این اتّفاق برای من هم بیفته؟" و این بزرگ ترین ضعف یه داستان اخلاقیه: این که نتونه پند اخلاقیش رو به طور همه گیر اثبات کنه.
—Mahdi
This book helped me make it through some of the darkest years of my life. Terry Eagleton says that realism is (or was, when it first emerged) a highbrow literary school. The upper classes had experienced the isolated beauty of life so often that they felt bored with it; they decided that they could use some real life tragedy and dirt. So they set out and established "realism". Laborers, on the other hand, actually lived what the upper classes were curious and wanted to read about every single day. They already had enough of it, so they preferred (and still prefer) fantasy (which nowadays has entered cinema too).This book was that fantasy, and I was, during those bitterly painful years, the laborer I just quoted about from Eagleton.
—Behzad
