Donna Cameron explores the power of kindness in her book, A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You. She starts by explaining that kindness is more than being nice. Kind means connecting, being aware and intentional about the effect of our words and actions, expending energy and effort, and caring about the outcome.

The book grew out of her year intentionally trying to live kindly, researching kindness, and blogging about her experience and observations on her Year of Living Kindly blog. She has it organized to read through in 52 weeks, ruminating on each chapter a week at a time for your own year of living kindly. But reading it straight through, or dipping in here and there, is also a pleasure. Each chapter is a reminder of how and why it is best to be kind. ( )

Within the first few sentences of this book, I felt off.

Perhaps this is my bias rearing it's ugly head - I'll get to that in a moment - or maybe it's that I read WAY too many self-help books. (I do. Several hundred a year). Either way, I bristle when a book starts with a premise that I can't ascribe to being True. With a capital T.

What do I mean?

First sentence of the book: "Kindness is in short supply these days".

Is it really? Is that true, 100% of the time, always, for everyone?

It sure isn't in my life.

Can I be more kind? Definitely, that's why I wanted to read this book. Yet when I read a first paragraph that purpots to have me on board that kindness is hidden, elusive and difficult... well you've already lost me.

Chapter One starts with a variation of, "Kindness is everywhere, if you look for it". Well, that's a bit better, I would have preferred that the book start there. Again.... I'm biased.... :)

Each chapter, all 52 of them, reflects on a certain frame of kindness, and then has a "kindness in action" section at the end. Some chapters resonate way more than others, but for the most part, I felt disjointed and without purpose as I read. I didn't feel the author truly embodied kindess in action, other than perhaps a lot of paying for things (nice vs kind, which she covers at the start).

Again, my perception and bias. Perhaps I'm kinder than I realize, or maybe this isn't the book for me. It felt a bit like this was a blog turned into a book - and then I read, it was.

So if you like that sort of thing, perfect! ( )