This was actually not bad. I thought it was easy to read and all of the author’s experiences and anecdotes are pretty applicable in my own life. Does seem like the kind of thing possibly more suited for a podcast than a book. I thought it was a little weird to treat friends as a something like a business council. As in treating relationship as what you get from other people rather than something more giving. But the author places a lot of focus on gratitude so it doesn’t feel overly self involved. But I will say that I thought it was focused on a specific audience. I rarely ever read self help books so I don’t know a lot about the genre. But I thought this was actually pretty good and I felt like there was some concrete advice on friendships. Just tips and ways of being more grateful and giving as a friend. The book breaks down ten categories or types of friends that a person should keep in their life. I’ve never considered having different types of friends who each have different purposes and I normally would consider it strange to categorize people like that. But I thought it was well handled in this book and made sense. But as I get older and realize that it gets harder to make and keep friends amidst our busy lives, I appreciate the reminders and the lessons about the importance of these people in our lives. I would recommend it to anyone already interested in this kind of thing ( )

Nice Idea

I enjoyed the idea of this self-help book and the conversational style in which it was written. The personal stories and connections to each type of friend as well as the life lessons presented as part two were my favorite parts of the book.

However, maybe I'm not the right audience for this book--first of all, finding ten friends to fill each of these roles is more than I can achieve with a work-from-home job, marriage, kids, house and yard work, as well as self care routine. And as a big disappointment, only female friends were considered to fill these roles. I've always had good friends who are male and sometimes it's easier to talk to men for me as we share lots of the same goals and hobbies in life.

The advice for finding these Life Council friends did not seem like something achievable for me and actually made me feel saddened by the fact I am so introverted and only have a few good friends. ( )