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India Today
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
If Trump wins, we lose: Ivanka promotes book by her father's vocal critic
Ivanka Trump, daughter of US President Donald Trump, has once again drawn attention, but this time not for political commentary, but for her reading choices. The 43-year-old recently took to Instagram to share a photo of Untamed, the best-selling memoir by Glennon Doyle, a self-help author and outspoken critic of her a post captioned 'This week in Miami,' Ivanka offered glimpses into her daily life, which now centers around wellness, family, and quiet reflection rather than the political carousel of images included scenes of workouts, family outings, and leisure activities like golfing and fishing. But it was the snapshot of Untamed, a memoir steeped in themes of self-liberation and empowerment that raised eyebrows. Doyle, who actively campaigned against Trump during the 2020 election and supported Kamala Harris, hasn't been shy about her views. In a widely shared post leading up to the election, she warned: 'If Trump wins, we lose,' citing concerns over women's rights under his memoir, which chronicles her journey through divorce, motherhood, and coming out as a lesbian, is lauded as a testament to living subtle endorsement of the book stands out against the backdrop of her withdrawal from public political life. Once a senior adviser in the Trump White House and a key figure during her father's first term, she has taken a different path in recent relocating to Miami with her husband Jared Kushner and their three children: Arabella, 13, Joseph, 10, and Theodore, 8, IIvanka has chosen a life away from Washington's high-stakes on The Skinny Confidential podcast, Ivanka opened up about the emotional toll of her time in the White House. 'It's a very dark, negative world,' she said, referring to politics.'Unfortunately, there is a darkness to that world that I don't really want to welcome into mine.' She reflected on how the experience made her 'a little bit calloused,' and emphasized her desire to be present for her also described her new role in her father's life not as a political advisor, but simply as a daughter. 'I'm most looking forward to just being able to show up for him to take his mind off things, and like watch a movie or a sports game,' she said. 'It's the world's loneliest position.'This is not the first time Ivanka has shared her reading habits. Her Instagram has previously featured titles such as Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and The Women by Kristin Hannah. According to her, books often come recommended by podcast hosts and influencers—including Untamed, which was suggested by Lauryn Bosstick of The Skinny Reel
Sydney Morning Herald
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The book that changed me: Hannah Kent, Sarah Wilson, Hilde Hinton and more
Holly Wainwright 'I read Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh when I was eight years old. It changed my life. It's about a nosy little girl who lives in New York City – a place I had never been; I grew up in Manchester, England. She lived in an apartment with a doorman and had a nanny. Her parents went to glamorous events, but what I related to was that she was a writer and obsessed with nosing about in other people's lives. I read it 10 times. Harriet spies on her neighbours, writes about them in her notebook and observes her friends. They find out and are furious about it. It speaks about friend groups; one of the lessons it taught me was the difference between what you should say out loud and what you shouldn't. I was a magazine journalist for years and then an online one. In those early years of online writing, you were rewarded for being raw and brutal, but it also made me think about Harriet. The book made me realise I wasn't the only kid who kept notebooks; I remember writing in my own journal, and the way I pictured the world was the way I write about it. Harriet's nanny encouraged her to be adventurous, and I wanted that for myself, too.' Holly Wainwright is the author of He Would Never (Pan Macmillan Australia). Sarah Wilson 'Viktor Frankl had been a prisoner in Auschwitz and afterwards wrote Man's Search for Meaning in nine days. I found it at a bus station in Malaga, Spain, before I went on a hike in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I was hiking with a library bag, cucumber, orange, water and this book. I would sit under a tree each day in the 40-degree heat to read it. The book had a profound effect on me in my late 30s. It instilled in me a sense that life is meant to be hard, and that's when we rise to become our best selves. Frankl was a psychologist who spent four years in the camps, where he observed which characteristics enabled some men to survive while others died. He watched the big, tough men perish; those who survived had a deeper purpose, something bigger than themselves – it was generally God or family. I have been on a spiritual search for years and have endured tough times, and that notion of living for something bigger than yourself really struck me. The pendulum has swung to individualism and selfishness again; people are made to believe it's what we need to survive.' Sarah Wilson is the author of This One Wild and Precious Life (Harper Collins). Hilde Hinton 'The Deptford Trilogy by Canadian author Robertson Davies is a very obscure series I discovered as a 22-year-old with a new baby. I was a wayward youth, going from one dead-end job to another. I arrived in Perth from Melbourne with a suitcase, found a place to live and walked past a second-hand bookshop. The bookseller literally threw one of Davies' books at me. I threw it back. Then he threw it again. I thought bugger it, I'll keep it. The book shaped the rest of my life because after I read it, I told my dad we should start a second-hand bookshop. I did that for 20 years. I'd read six books a week then – that background inspired me to write. I was 50 when my first book came out; it was autobiographical. I am now on book four and still have imposter syndrome. There were periods when I felt isolated in Perth. I was regrouping, resetting and didn't have many friends there. Dad's way of bringing us up was very character building. It gave us the ability to think you can do anything. He told me to move away [from Melbourne] because my life wasn't going anywhere. It was a healing year for me, too. I never dealt with Mum's death [she died by suicide when Hinton was 12], and it was a good idea to reset. I came back to Melbourne with the love of the world and some direction again.' Hilde Hinton is the author of The Opposite of Lonely (Hachette Australia). Geraldine Brooks 'I discovered Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard when I was in my early 20s. It's a beautiful meditation by a woman who was in her early 20s and goes off to live in a rural place in the hills of Virginia, USA. She notices things for a year – the animals, the seasons, the way the light hits the mountains, and writes about it with grace and meaning. It's a book someone gave to my mother, and I was visiting her once and took it off the shelf. At the time I was working as a young journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald and had the chance to write about environmental issues. I would write about wilderness campaigners, go bushwalking, and do more demanding trips to write about proposed developments. I got to go camping in the snow and went rafting on Tasmania's Franklin River. The book gave me a sense of being out in nature and taught me what that means to humans. The book helped me to notice things on a deeper level. I am not a religious person, but there is something 'religious adjacent' that comes with being in nature.' Geraldine Brooks is the author of Memorial Days (Hachette Australia). Victoria Elizabeth Schwab ' Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein infected my mind with rhythm and cadence. I am someone who started writing poetry before I wrote my first novel many years later. I wanted to see if I could infect prose with poetic metre and use that as a way to make my voice stand out on the page. I am an only child and my parents read me poems every night before bed. Shel Silverstein was the first voice in my head. The combination of dark material conveyed with a childlike metre intrigued me. By the time I was nine, I would think in metre and rhyming couplets. I would have to smooth out my writing so it sounded normal to everyone else. To this day, when I am writing, I am very aware of the rise and fall of a sentence and syllabic rhythm of a sentence. Each one of my novels has a central sentence that exists for me, and me alone. For my upcoming work, there is a poem at the beginning. The sentence is, 'Bury my bones in the midnight soil.' Growing up with poetry, I always think about the musicality of a sentence, and I owe that to Shel. His work also had a profound depth; it wasn't just playful, it was also dark. The sinister appeal has shown up in all my books. I read all his poetry collections until they almost turned to dust.'
The Age
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The book that changed me: Hannah Kent, Sarah Wilson, Hilde Hinton and more
Holly Wainwright 'I read Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh when I was eight years old. It changed my life. It's about a nosy little girl who lives in New York City – a place I had never been; I grew up in Manchester, England. She lived in an apartment with a doorman and had a nanny. Her parents went to glamorous events, but what I related to was that she was a writer and obsessed with nosing about in other people's lives. I read it 10 times. Harriet spies on her neighbours, writes about them in her notebook and observes her friends. They find out and are furious about it. It speaks about friend groups; one of the lessons it taught me was the difference between what you should say out loud and what you shouldn't. I was a magazine journalist for years and then an online one. In those early years of online writing, you were rewarded for being raw and brutal, but it also made me think about Harriet. The book made me realise I wasn't the only kid who kept notebooks; I remember writing in my own journal, and the way I pictured the world was the way I write about it. Harriet's nanny encouraged her to be adventurous, and I wanted that for myself, too.' Holly Wainwright is the author of He Would Never (Pan Macmillan Australia). Sarah Wilson 'Viktor Frankl had been a prisoner in Auschwitz and afterwards wrote Man's Search for Meaning in nine days. I found it at a bus station in Malaga, Spain, before I went on a hike in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I was hiking with a library bag, cucumber, orange, water and this book. I would sit under a tree each day in the 40-degree heat to read it. The book had a profound effect on me in my late 30s. It instilled in me a sense that life is meant to be hard, and that's when we rise to become our best selves. Frankl was a psychologist who spent four years in the camps, where he observed which characteristics enabled some men to survive while others died. He watched the big, tough men perish; those who survived had a deeper purpose, something bigger than themselves – it was generally God or family. I have been on a spiritual search for years and have endured tough times, and that notion of living for something bigger than yourself really struck me. The pendulum has swung to individualism and selfishness again; people are made to believe it's what we need to survive.' Sarah Wilson is the author of This One Wild and Precious Life (Harper Collins). Hilde Hinton 'The Deptford Trilogy by Canadian author Robertson Davies is a very obscure series I discovered as a 22-year-old with a new baby. I was a wayward youth, going from one dead-end job to another. I arrived in Perth from Melbourne with a suitcase, found a place to live and walked past a second-hand bookshop. The bookseller literally threw one of Davies' books at me. I threw it back. Then he threw it again. I thought bugger it, I'll keep it. The book shaped the rest of my life because after I read it, I told my dad we should start a second-hand bookshop. I did that for 20 years. I'd read six books a week then – that background inspired me to write. I was 50 when my first book came out; it was autobiographical. I am now on book four and still have imposter syndrome. There were periods when I felt isolated in Perth. I was regrouping, resetting and didn't have many friends there. Dad's way of bringing us up was very character building. It gave us the ability to think you can do anything. He told me to move away [from Melbourne] because my life wasn't going anywhere. It was a healing year for me, too. I never dealt with Mum's death [she died by suicide when Hinton was 12], and it was a good idea to reset. I came back to Melbourne with the love of the world and some direction again.' Hilde Hinton is the author of The Opposite of Lonely (Hachette Australia). Geraldine Brooks 'I discovered Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard when I was in my early 20s. It's a beautiful meditation by a woman who was in her early 20s and goes off to live in a rural place in the hills of Virginia, USA. She notices things for a year – the animals, the seasons, the way the light hits the mountains, and writes about it with grace and meaning. It's a book someone gave to my mother, and I was visiting her once and took it off the shelf. At the time I was working as a young journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald and had the chance to write about environmental issues. I would write about wilderness campaigners, go bushwalking, and do more demanding trips to write about proposed developments. I got to go camping in the snow and went rafting on Tasmania's Franklin River. The book gave me a sense of being out in nature and taught me what that means to humans. The book helped me to notice things on a deeper level. I am not a religious person, but there is something 'religious adjacent' that comes with being in nature.' Geraldine Brooks is the author of Memorial Days (Hachette Australia). Victoria Elizabeth Schwab ' Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein infected my mind with rhythm and cadence. I am someone who started writing poetry before I wrote my first novel many years later. I wanted to see if I could infect prose with poetic metre and use that as a way to make my voice stand out on the page. I am an only child and my parents read me poems every night before bed. Shel Silverstein was the first voice in my head. The combination of dark material conveyed with a childlike metre intrigued me. By the time I was nine, I would think in metre and rhyming couplets. I would have to smooth out my writing so it sounded normal to everyone else. To this day, when I am writing, I am very aware of the rise and fall of a sentence and syllabic rhythm of a sentence. Each one of my novels has a central sentence that exists for me, and me alone. For my upcoming work, there is a poem at the beginning. The sentence is, 'Bury my bones in the midnight soil.' Growing up with poetry, I always think about the musicality of a sentence, and I owe that to Shel. His work also had a profound depth; it wasn't just playful, it was also dark. The sinister appeal has shown up in all my books. I read all his poetry collections until they almost turned to dust.'
Hindustan Times
09-05-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Review: Embracing Hope by Viktor E Frankl
Embracing Hope claims to reveal 'how to turn tragedy into triumph and lead a fulfilled, purposeful life.' For a fraught time such as this, with pandemics, raging wild fires, full-blown wars and killings and the shenanigans of authoritarian regimes assailing us, offline and online, every day, it sounds like an enticing proposition. For me, having lived through two years of great unrest with no peace in sight, this book, a compilation of the writings and speeches of Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor E Frankl, spanning the period from 1946 to 1984, feels like exactly what the doctor ordered. The pieces in this volume include Collective Neuroses (first published in 1955), an interview of Frankl for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1977, the text of a lecture titled Existential Analysis and the Problems of Our Times given at the Franco-Austrian University in December 1946, and Conquering Transience, the text of another lecture delivered at Dornbirn, Austria, in October, 1984. Forewords by Edith Eger, a fellow holocaust survivor, and Tobias Esch, an eminent neuroscientist, further enrich the book by providing context. An Austrian Jew who survived Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps but lost his brother, wife and parents to the holocaust, Frankl was not beaten down by his experiences. Instead, they spurred him to a second life filled with meaning and success. A recipient of 29 honorary doctorates from universities across the world, he obtained his pilot's license at age 67 and lived a full life until he died aged 92 in 1997. He wrote 39 books including the acclaimed Man's Search for Meaning and pioneered the field of logotherapy, a sub-field within psychotherapy, which aims to help people find meaning in their lives. This book is anchored in a belief in human ingenuity and boundless resilience. Frankl agrees entirely with Dostoevsky's definition of man 'as a creature who can get used to anything' and celebrates the inalienable freedom and choice with which humankind is endowed. Perhaps you cannot help what happened to you, or what bad people or totalitarian regimes did to you. However, how you choose to respond is entirely up to you. No one can take that freedom away. As Frankl famously wrote in Man's Search for Meaning: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.' Frankl chose to respond to the deadened and insufferable conditions of the camp with mental images of his smiling wife. He talked to her and imagined what good times awaited them. He looked for and found humour amidst the dead and dying. These were his survival tools. For Edith Eger, freedom lay in choosing to live instead of just giving up and dying like others around her. She realized that she could still choose which blade of grass to eat as she lay in the mud, numbed with pain and unable to move. For both, Frankl and Eger, the concentration camp experience turned from being a curse to a well of treasure from which they gained perspective, meaning, strength and purpose. Their external pain did not dim their internal light, but rather strengthened it. Unlike Man's Search for Meaning, which was Frankl's account of his concentration camp experiences and the insights gained from it (he claims it was written in nine consecutive days), Embracing Hope is less personal and more about those who have been impacted by his story, and have benefited from logotherapy. It draws less from extreme examples of the holocaust and more from the mundane, daily challenges of people living in a 'leisure society'. The unifying theme is how to find meaning in everyday life and work. It speaks to the present moment where we, glued to the screen, feel harried and exhausted yet vacuous and unproductive all the time. Frankl's central message is that we are born with the urge to find meaning in our lives. A meaningful life is one endowed with love, forbearance and fulfilment; it is one lived in accord with the better angels of human nature. It has nothing to do with riches or material success and is not about chasing happiness either. Happiness will ensue if meaning is found. People can find it in all sorts of ways and at all stages of life. Frankl identified the three main avenues through which the individual can find meaning: work, love and suffering. Those who experience involuntary suffering, like a debilitating medical condition or the holocaust, often experience higher mental clarity and illumination. They find reasons to be grateful about things that ordinary folk take for granted. Many re-emerge having discovered faith, hope, compassion and common human decency rather than hatred and anger. As the writer Pico Iyer reported in The Value of Suffering: 'I once met a Zen-trained painter in Japan, in his 90s, who told me that suffering is a privilege, it moves us toward thinking about essential things and shakes us out of short sighted complacency; when he was a boy, he said, it was believed you should pay for suffering, it proves such a hidden blessing.' Secondly, to experience love, to have someone to love, or have someone love us, is, according to Frankl, one of the surest ways to find meaning. His own love for his wife and his fond memories of her equipped him with the will to live and sustained him through his camp life. As for work, Frankl approvingly quotes the American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing: 'The only way to endure life is always to have a task to complete.' Much of the book is about the need to engage in meaningful work. Work doesn't just earn us money, but also accords us dignity and a sense of fulfilment. It is well recognized that there is a close correlation between levels of unemployment and the degree of criminality in any given area or community. Frankl states that people love to be challenged. Indeed, it is more dangerous to make too few demands of them than to make too many. When a person's will to meaning is not fulfilled, he tries to take solace in his will to pleasure, which leads to a life of sexual depravity, criminality and substance abuse. In Frankl's reckoning, meaning represents higher instincts while unhindered pleasure represents man's baser ones. But Embracing Hope is more than your average motivational book. What lends it weight and depth is that it melds insights and lessons wrenched out of the author's extreme physical experience at concentration camps with his lifelong study of the human mind. Those receptive to its message will find enough resources here to answer the pressing questions of existence. I have no doubt that the lessons from this book can lead one to a more fulfilling and meaningful life, whatever one's circumstances. Thangkhanlal Ngaihte is assistant professor of Political Science at Churachandpur College, Manipur and PhD candidate at Mizoram University, Aizawl.
Irish Examiner
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Actor Irene Kelleher: 'I felt a really strong presence of my dad before I went on stage'
In February 2016, my dad was told he had oesophageal cancer, terminal – the doctors said six months… He was the most positive person. He didn't let 'terminal' affect how he'd cope with the diagnosis. A favourite book of his was Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, about how he survived Auschwitz – there's a quote my dad kept looking to for inspiration and hope: 'he who has a 'why' to live can bear almost any how'. To Dad, it meant 'I've so many reasons to live – I'm going to find my way through this'. My mum, my brother, sister, me – we took this great positivity that Dad always believed in. My wedding was nine weeks after his diagnosis. He walked me down the aisle, sang 'Beautiful Dreamer' that evening, a moment to cherish. It's not that we forgot, but in summer 2016, he was doing so well that even the specialists thought maybe there was hope. He was good for the first half of 2017. Then he regressed. He had to get a stent so he could swallow and eat. I'd been working as an actor for 10 years, and I'd booked a tour to the Edinburgh Fringe, three-and-a-half weeks in August, with 'Mary and Me', the first play I wrote. It was a dream to bring it to Edinburgh. Dad went into hospital in late June. As time went on and he was still there I got worried – I'd almost decided to pull the tour, but my mum told me: 'If you don't go, you can't come into hospital for three-and-a-half weeks because you'll break your father's heart by not going'…. Dad was always my champion, cheering me. He'd drive me to the train for every audition. The day before leaving for Edinburgh, I asked was there anything he'd like me to buy him there. He mentioned oak bookends – then said no, he'd pick them up when he next went with my mother. That's how positive he was, he was so convincing… Halfway into the first week in Edinburgh, the play started to sell out. It was getting all four- and five-star reviews. That Thursday was the highlight of my career up to then – a four-star review from a leading theatre review journal, an email from a publisher to discuss publication. I was on an absolute high. Around 4pm, I had a video call with Dad, I wanted to share the news with him. He was delighted for me. He'd had his stent operation – he was just after his first bowl of soup. Irene Kelleher performs in two productions at Cork Midsummer Festival 2025, July 13 to 22. Here, she is pictured ahead of Cork City Library Culture Night Promo in 2024. Picture: Marcin Lewandowski. That evening, my brother, Tim, rang: 'You have to come home – Dad has taken a turn'. My first instinct was confusion – I said, 'No, Dad's fine, he's just had a bowl of soup'. I went straight into denial. Tim had to repeatedly say it before it sank in. The quickest flight home was the next morning. That whole night, I felt helpless. I had an hour's sleep, dreamt about Dad. He was asleep in a hospital bed, but in a forest. I walked up to him. He said 'let's go for a walk', and we went for a walk, and he looked healthy and we were really happy – there was no sense of goodbye. I messaged my sister – 'is Dad still here'. Yes, he was. Up to the 7 am flight, we messaged back-and-forth, she reassuring me 'you'll get here'… Outside Cork Airport, I saw her from a distance. We looked at each other. I knew straightaway, I saw it in her eyes: Dad was gone…. What I clung onto was guilt. The guilt of not being there – I was so close to him, I should have been there. I clung onto guilt because grief was too much. The day of the funeral passed. And I was at home. Mum mentioned going back to Edinburgh to finish the run, which I dismissed. But the pain of being home, with Dad not there, the house so quiet…Mum saying finishing it is definitely what Dad would have wanted. So I went back to Edinburgh to do the last week. Backstage, just about to start: 'What am I doing? My dad has just died, and here I am in another country, about to do a play?' I closed my eyes, said, 'Dad, I need you here with me'. I felt a really strong presence of my dad with me, saying the last thing he'd always say driving me to auditions: 'Give 'em holly'. I just felt his presence so close, I felt his strength, and – for the first time since the phone call – I felt his warmth. I felt connected with him again, and I went onstage and I'd say I gave the best performance I ever gave of that play. I wouldn't say I'm particularly spiritual, but it's the closest I've ever come to it. I've kept that. I visit his grave, but I never feel close there like I do side-stage, just about to go on, to perform – that's where I have my chats with my dad. I was 31 that day in August 2017. It's when I feel I have become an adult, able to carry on as an adult, because of feeling I have my dad minding me, so I'm never alone. Irene Kelleher performs in two productions at Cork Midsummer Festival 2025, July 13 to 22. Stitch, described as an Irish Horror Show, will be staged in site-specific venue J Nolan Stationery Shop, Shandon Street; and Footnote in the TCD at Triskel, both Cork City. Booking: Read More RTÉ radio host Joe Duffy retiring after 37 years
