In several Peanuts comic strips, little Lucy sets up a booth. For a nickel she'll solve a problem bothering you. Her advice is quite good, indicating insight unlikely in the young. The thing about advice is that virtually everyone offers it, asked for or not, free and costly.
Media agony aunts solve the problem straight away. A psychologist takes longer, if you can afford one. Of course there's mom and your best friend. Perhaps a stranger on a bus. Or no one if it's embarrassing.
Yank author Timothy Ferriss knows the feeling of keeping more than one feeling bottled up. What to do? What he did was research and interview famous people re how they solved problems in their lives. Going further, he asked them to name books that have helped them and recommend how to be happy.
All of which has been put into Tribe Of Mentors, nearly 600 pages of advice from a plethora of professionals, from ancient to modern. Though the advice differs, certain parts remain the same -- troubles seem worse than they are; when you fail, don't give up, keep trying.
You know the solution; no need to ask. Personal practices vary. Meditation is in. Yoga is another (breathe out the bad air, breathe in the good air; give up bad habits like smoking; turn vegetarian; jog daily; lose weight; don't hold a grudge; don't side with the majority if you think them wrong).
Admittedly, I'd never heard of many of the successful people Ferriss talks to. Many are CEOs of multimillion-dollar businesses. The advice to ambitious college graduates is to study a broad spectrum to find a niche for themselves.
President John F. Kennedy noted that we are judged by obsolete standards, while new ones are called for. Machiavelli's 16th-century advice to princes is still valid, however. You won't care for every quote in the book, but more than a few are unforgettable.
One such is G.K. Chesterton's: "The true soldier fights not because he hates what's in front of him, but because he loves what's behind him." "Do nothing, be nothing" can't be faulted. To be sure, this isn't the only book of quotes. But others merely list; Tribe Of Mentors categorises.
Opposites attract
When a couple falls in love and wedding bells are in the offing, what can possibly stand in their way? Quite a lot, actually. Are they of the same race, beliefs, health, intelligence, work ethic? Not least, are they on the same side in a national conflict?
Can love conquer one or more such differences? Novelists occasionally focus on a negative. Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet deliberately ignored that they came from opposing families, and lost their lives because of it. In War Cry, Wilbur Smith and David Churchill leave it in the air.
African-born Smith moves the plot from Kenya and Egypt to Britain and Germany. And further afield, as it gives us a capsule history of the invasion of Russia in 1941.
Smith tends to block his more than 30 historical novels into series. War Cry belongs to the Courtney series. The heroine, Saffron Courtney, is from Kenya, described as a virtual Garden of Eden. Growing up, she learned a number of African languages. The family trading business is widespread; she has her choice of relations to stay with, not to mention schoolmates' homes. Her impression of the majority of Germans is that they are much like the English, good-natured and peace-loving.
Saffron's boyfriend/lover is that and more. His name is Gerhard von Meerbach, from an industrial family. He feels that Hitler can't be faulted for raising the fatherland from its humiliating defeat in World War I. It's his brother who is a diehard Nazi. In the event, World War II separates them.
Saffron becomes an intelligence agent, Gerhard a Luftwaffe pilot on the Eastern front. Appalled by the holocaust he witnesses in Russia, he turns against the Fuhrer. If Smith pens a sequel, you can bet they'll meet again.
The extensive research reveals that the Duchess of Windsor was a "Serial Adulteress", Third Reich Ambassador Von Ribbentrop a bedmate. Pages are devoted to the haughtiness of the aristocracy. The heroine is beautiful and brilliant -- "an Oxford girl", not above laying out military strategy for the generals.
The ancient Kenyan woman fortune-teller seems a bit much, but what do I know?
