Review by rvenkat -- Achieve Your Dreams

[rvenkat]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Achieve Your Dreams" by Scott Hughes and A. Lynn Powers and Adam Buongiovanni.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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This is an official review for the book ‘Achieve Your Dreams: Why you don’t and how you can’ by Scott Hughes, which is available in Amazon (ASIN: B019VG34XI).

This is a non-fiction book, targeted as self-help aid or as a motivator. The target audience is anyone who is thinking on their dreams, and to whether push forward on them or not. The author uses ‘becoming an author’ as an example to quote that 80% of the people have a novel in them, but 95% of those people give up the dream of becoming an author. The author advocates that people should not give up on their dreams and should not settle for mediocrity. An introduction by Adam Buongiovanni quotes his own example of giving up on his basketball career just because he was rejected in the high school team.

The author provides two major reasons for people giving up on their dreams. I like the way strong cases are being made for both the reasons by elaborating on social pressures nudging to give up on one's dreams. I also like the mention about clinical depression because of quiet desperation because of not following up on one’s dreams. The quote “I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.” by George Burns, the US actor & comedian, is quite good. I also like the two-fold advice to the parents (1) to not crush their child’s dreams, and (2) to be a role model in pursuing one’s own dreams. The elaboration on statistics of failure that makes 99% of the people give up is also quite good. Inspirational quotes from well-known personalities like Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey and J.K. Rowling add value to the narration.

The mention about people not taking even those small steps towards their dreams (“how am I going to sell hundreds of copies of my book, when I cannot sell even five?”) resonates well with the reader. Also, spending a few pages to highlight on what the author thinks as the commandments to follow to not give-up is a good effort to help readers who are looking for tips/steps to implement the book’s advice, though it could be have been as a single chapter with multiple sections rather than multiple chapters.

This is the second book of Scott Hughes that I am reviewing, and I think I am getting used to his writing style of free flow of small sentences of thoughts. I don’t have a strong opinion on this style, except that at times the narration feel like sales pitch, and may not be liked by some. Author’s objective of asking the readers not to give up on their dreams is quite forthcoming, and easily understood by the reader.

To summarize, it is a good book for starters for those who are looking for motivation to follow through their dreams, and for those who want to understand why most of the people just give up. I would recommend this book to someone who is willing to explore their dreams, but do not have the mental courage to pursue. The book is a good starter, but after reading this, the reader should further look at other books on the subject like “The magic of thinking big” by David Schwartz, “Who moved my cheese” by Dr. Spencer Johnson, “7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey. Since I recommend this as a good starter book and since some may like the free flow style of advice, and also since I cannot really rate this book as ‘Bad’, I am giving this book a rating of 2 out of 4.

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Achieve Your Dreams
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[Guppy]

A good review. I also reviewed this one, and also noticed the sales pitch. I think Scott should have used himself as an inspirational example since he has written several books.

[Insightsintobooks]

This sounds like a good book for those new to the self-help genre, but not for me. Thank you for the review.