Review: Keep Moving
Title: Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and ChangeAuthor: Maggie Smith
Genre(s): Non-Fiction, Memoir
Pages: 224
Source: Library
For: Book Club
Rating:
Sexual Content:
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Goodreads Synopsis
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem Good Bones, started writing daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, KEEP MOVING celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
My Thoughts
KEEP MOVING is my IRL book club’s pick for January. I picked it up from the library yesterday and I read it really quickly, in a few hours, as it’s mostly pages of affirmations.
Don’t wait for your life to magically come together–it’s your work to do. Every day, every moment, you are making your life from scratch. Today, take one step, however small, toward creating a life you can be proud of.
I liked a lot of the affirmations, like the one above, but my favorite parts of the book were the parts where Smith went into more detail, where she talked about her losses from losing her grandmother, two miscarriages, and divorce. Those were the times I felt a kinship toward her. Even if I hadn’t experienced loss quite the same way she had, I could still empathize with her and think of ways to apply her advice to my own life.
I really liked her perspective on things, especially when she talked about serotinous pine cones and how they only open and spread their seeds in the midst of fire. Or, how she likened trauma and loss to kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with gold. The ceramic piece is beautiful because of its brokenness instead of in spite of it.
I wasn’t sure I’d like KEEP MOVING, but I’m glad I read it. I gave KEEP MOVING 3 stars because the ratio between affirmations to the parts I actually wanted to read was too high. Otherwise, I would’ve given it 4 stars.
Have you read KEEP MOVING? If so, what did you think about it?
I thought Maggie Smith was the actress who is in Harry Potter movies. Now I’m questioning if that is even her name. Ha! Just curious. What does IRL stand for? My book cluth is SOTH Ladies. SOTH stands for Shepherd of the Hill, the name of our church.
Dame Maggie Smith is the actress in Harry Potter. This Maggie Smith is an American author in her 40s from Ohio. 😀 I thought the same when I found out we were going to read KEEP MOVING. IRL stands for In Real Life. I specify that this in my In Real Life book club because I’ve been a part of online book clubs before.
Hopefully my hold comes in before book club.
I hope it does!
I hadn’t heard of this one. I usually have a love/hate relationship with self help, affirmation type books but have found several good ones recently and I really like the sound of this one.
Karen @For What It’s Worth
You should check it out. It’s a really quick read. 🙂