Monday, April 11, 2016

Year of Yes

Title: Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person
Author and Narrator: Shonda Rhimes
Published: November 10th 2015 by Simon & Schuster / Simon & Schuster Audio
Format: Hardcover, 311 pages / Audio
Genre: Memoir

By the time that I finished this book, I was not sure whom Shonda Rhimes wrote this book for. Was it her 20’ish year old self just graduating from college with the whole wide world opening up for her or her 40’ish year old self looking back and realizing that the track she was laying was ideal for her or to her audience that could look over a life and say – wow.

Shonda Rhimes is a force to be reckoned with. It might have taken her sister’s off handed comment of “you never say yes to anything” to motivate her, but motivate her into a year of saying yes and confronting her fears is what resulted.

Granted, an average person is not going to have the same opportunities to say yes to that was asked of Shonda, but we each have those things that scare us and we make excuses for. We each have to find our inner strength, and in so doing, a completely new world could open. Saying yes is difficult for an introvert, but saying yes is what we need to do. With humor and insight, Shonda Rhimes was able to take the reader through that door and show us what is possible with just enough courage and good friends to cheer us along.

To be honest, I started this as a written book and just could not make it through. Knowing that is might have been the voice in my head not getting the tone or timbre right, I switched over to the audio and enjoyed it so much more. The inflections and humor were much more resounding. The fear and the laughter were more vibrant. I was able to get a much better feel for the stories that were being told. Granted, there were a couple of times that I thought the same narrative was being told over and over and on a couple accounts, I thought the self-praise and initialisms were overdone, but other than that, I really enjoyed this memoir and the life story that is being voiced.

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