Editorial Review:

Beckoning readers toward a spiritual territory beyond even that of her revolutionary best-seller Codependent No More, Melody Beattie conducts us through teeming Casablanca, war-torn Algeria, and the caverns of Egypt's great pyramids as she embarks on a new kind of journey of the soul.

An enlightening blend of travel, adventure, and spiritual discovery, filled with new ideas for overcoming the pitfalls of guilt and self-doubt, Stop Being Mean to Yourself is a compassionate tour guide for the troubled and the heartsick, for those who seek a happier place in the world. A tale that is at once modern and timeless, rich with the promise of personal discovery, it is a book about learning the art of living and of loving others--and ourselves. As full of suspense and excitement as it is of hope and encouragement, it is as rewarding for its pure reading pleasure as for the wisdom it imparts.

Using the unlikely backdrop of Northern Africa, Melody Beattie (author of Co-Dependent No More) blends the genres of travel adventure and spiritual quest. Traveling mishaps such as being led unknowingly into the souk of Cairo (rumored to be a clandestine marketplace of no return), become metaphors for learning how to let go of fear while still honoring your instincts. Interrogations at border crossings symbolize the self-examination we must endure before crossing over to a new stage of enlightenment. Fortunately, this is not a U.S.-centric travelogue. In war-ravaged Algiers, Beattie diligently pursues the truth of its people rather than her own reactions to poverty and terrorism. Despite its pop-psychology title, this is a book of impressive depth, exploring the global challenge of loving thy neighbor as well as thy self.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0

To all of YOU who have written a review for this book:

I am writing to all of you who have written a review about this book, and especially to Melody Beattie. To the person who mocked about Melody's inner civil war, or you're already a god or you will never ever hope to KNOW what an inner civil war is. And to the rest of you, this book is not about traveling through Nothern Africa, it is about INNER travel, if you were trying to read an action-packed James Bond or Indiana Jones story, you guys picked the wrong book. This is not a fiction book, it is a book... more info

Not much insight in this book:

To her credit, the author suffered a bad childhood, alcoholism, and marriage to an alcoholic, and then turned her insight from these awful experiences into the wildly successful self-help book Codependent No More. But this book gives you nothing that you couldn't get in many other more perceptive travel memoirs. Here she is a successful self-help author and divorced woman who suddenly heeds a call to travel through the Middle East and find herself. She visits the poverty-stricken Moroccan port of... more info

Simple but enlightening:

The title of this enlightening read caught my eye, for the very fact that many of us, at some time, treat ourselves worse than do others. In Stop Being Mean to Yourself, Melody Beattie finds a unique way towards unraveling the reasons why this may be so. Beattie reaches the reader at the level of the solar plexus - an area of the body to which she refers several times as she recounts her 1996 journey through Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. While one may never see Giza's pyramids, Melody's "leap of faith" in... more info

Don't Waste Your Money:

I am seldom pushed to write a book review, especially a negative review, but this book has compelled me to write one.

I haven't read any other books by Ms. Beattie, but I doubt that I will. This book was empty, shallow, and very disappointing. Her trip to the Middle East was barely a trip, rather a few layovers, hardly enough to feel at one with the people or the land and cultures. She overnighted in Paris, spent a day in Casablanca, where she got scared at the marketplace, then bailed out in Algeria when... more info

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