Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I could not resist the title, and the subject. Any book with the word Fck in the title deserves a bit of attention, especially if good manners is the subject of the book. It is a tantalising or perhaps shocking mix. Rudeness is utterly pathetic. The shop attendant at my grocery shop says, people who don't return your good morning are like animals. Right there lady, they are the new cockroaches.Thank Gosh is not just me:

DOWNSIDES
Despite the book being really likeable, there are a few things that rest power to it. Here a few:
> The book shows lack of focus at times, placing in the same bag things I consider way different, even if they are connected: manners, being a caring friend, etiquette, having tact, behaving ethically, writing reviews on Yelp, tipping, and how she loves the Internet and how she met Marlon Brando in a forum.
> Etiquette and manners are not universal. Culture and Language do matter, even if we share being Westerners. Even more when the culture is not Western. However, the essence of good manners does not change much. I think the book needed a bit of more reflection on that, or an approach that also includes that. Some of the behaviours Alkon advises might be seen as rude and manipulative in another parts of the world, and some etiquette "must" are not etiquette elsewhere. Despite living in a globalised world and having the world at our fingertip, literally, people tend to live in their own bubble and consider their own bubble the world. Wake up to the Matrix.
> There are too many references to her blogs, her newspaper column, her TV interviews, her radio shows, her famous friends and her boyfriend, and they are tiring and unnecessary. They are OK in a blog or column. In a book, not so much so.
> Her writing is likeable and enthusiastic but I expected a more polished text and a text that reads less like a blog.
> Alkon has a preachy tone that I dislike. I mean, you can do or believe whatever you want, but if you preach high morals, high manners or whatever and you don't show that with your actions, I will notice that, realise that it is just crappola. For example, her book has as a main aim to be a reminder of how we are all imperfect and make mistakes, that we should have empathy, we should connect with other human beings and treat them well. Right? What she does to face rude people? She takes any opportunity, I mean any, to humiliate and name them publicly or in her blog/column. That is not to say that pigs are birds of paradise, but some acts of rudeness are involuntary or just happened once, where is her empathy gone? Why does she need to destroy Mrs X's reputation just because Mrs X made a mistake that was not even life threatening or affected her directly? If you are rudder than the rude, who might have acted out of ignorance once or due o lack of proper upbringing, and put yourself at their level, who is worse? You never put yourself at the level of the sh+t a friend of mine used to say. If you preach empathy and show none when you have to, you have none.

> The excuses she gives for her being constantly unpunctual are that she is trying, that she is even reading books on it, doing "something". You just need to get your alarm working and get up or get moving when it sounds, sweetie. For what she says, she is still wasting other people's time consistently. That is utterly rude. Is she going to use her anal humiliation approach to combat her rude self?

> She might have manners but she swears too often in the book. I wonder how much more in real life.
> The formatting of the book on Kindle is generous in the margins, so that makes more pages than they should.
> The index in the Kindle edition does not refer to the Kindle edition but to the hard-copy, so it is worthless for Kindle readers.