Your Life Calling: Reimagining The Rest Of Your Life (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
Interested in this book because I always liked Jane Pauley and because the book focused on people reinventing themselves after fifty. Although I liked the premise of the book and most of the stories, I was not very fond of the writing style. The book went back and forth from Jane Pauley's voice to someone's story. At times it seemed like an autobiography with these side stories thrown in. But it does make me think about the opportunity to create the next stage in my life. If I only knew what I want to do when I grow up! The concept of the book is good but it ends up being a safe packaged formula written in plain Jane style that will feel comforting to older readers but do little to get them off the couch. The idea here is to tell stories of people who changed their professions or became active in a new field later in life. Most seem to be taken directly from TV segments she has done for the Today Show, and the book feels ghost written and distant. Pauley has always seemed to have a giant egotistical elitist wall up but she tries to act like the average, everyday woman here by pointing out her insecurities and hesitations about life. The problem is that this is a rich woman married to a famous rich guy. She has known nothing but great fame for the past 40 years. So her words seem disingenuous and there's too much of herself in the book. She tries to force inspiration down your throat, claiming that her gift in life is "helping people see themselves in powerful and positive new ways." So her gift is using other people's stories to get rich and famous?She names drops way too many times (but gets a few subtle digs in at Tom Brokaw). She mentions her family throughout without really letting us get to know them (if I heard one more story about her brilliant sister I was going to scream!). She repeatedly talks about commencement speeches she has given, as if they were great words from above (she includes sections in the book and she's not that insightful). In the end you feel like this was a book to make Pauley feel good about herself and to justify some of the bad career decisions she made. While it did get me to think more about what to do later in life, the stories of everyday people seemed to be just games pieces used by the author to see herself as inspiring, when in truth it's those non-famous people that are inspirational.
What do You think about Your Life Calling: Reimagining The Rest Of Your Life (2014)?
It was a nice book. I liked she way she interwove the stories.
—bazz
Nyah. It was okay, but not at all what I expected.
—harry
