Are you a POLLYANNA?

OK, so I started reading this book The Pollyanna Plan by some woman (see the picture).  Of course I was intrigued because, well, come one, it's POLLYANNA!!!  But the book STINKS.  I can't stand it.

1.  Emma is a very straight-laced, by the book, by the numbers, work-a-holic, realistic type of woman.  There is NO way she'd take on a whole new attitude and outlook on life in less than 24 hours.  She's have to do some research first to study up on the whole POLLYANNA concept--she'd research the "show," find out it's really a movie, but before that it was a book, and she'd read the book and watch the movie to get a real feel for the whole idea.  And her "transformation" would NEVER be that quick.  She's too set in her ways.  It would take TIME for her to get the hang of thinking positively on a consistent basis.

2.  Alice is NOT the person the tell Emma about Pollyanna.  Alice is portrayed already as a female player who isn't smart enough or positive enough herself to help change Emma's outlook on life.  She doesn't even know or understand the whole Pollyanna concept anyway!  She refers to Pollyanna based on a SHOW she saw when she was younger!!!

First of all, Pollyanna is a MOVIE based on a wonderful of the same name by Eleanor H. Porter!  

And Secondly, it's a BOOK, not a SHOW!!!

3.  Emma's dad would be the one who would know about attitude change, especially in terms of thinking positively, but the author has him dead already.

4.  Seriously....Emma would go to a bar after being fired and losing her fiance, have several drinks, talk to her slutty best friend about having a POLLYANNA PLAN, and wake up the next morning determined to DO it--and she DOES it?!  Just like THAT?!  Uh-uh.  No way.  Not plausible.  Even as a true PollyAnna, I struggle with finding the good in everything--something to be GLAD about.  For someone like Emma, she'd have to mourn her job loss by spending MORE time on the CV and job hunting than just one morning.  She'd hit the streets and she'd put in applications.  She'd go to several job interviews.  She'd fail at more thing after another before the whole POLLYANNA PLAN would TRULY hit home and take effect in her spirit.

And, she'd find all her dad's stuff that her mom packed up and [she thought] threw away.  She'd remember her dad's positivity and how happy it made her feel.  More than the brief few minutes she remembers, that is.  She'd be holding a picture of her dad in one his HAPPY t-shirts or the t-shirt itself when she would realize that her life isn't what she'd dreamed and that she CAN be happy if she just CHOOSES to DO what makes her happy.

It would NOT HAPPEN THIS FAST!!!!

Granted, I'm only about 18% through the book, but so far, it is making me angry and if I had the actual book rather than reading it digitally, I would have thrown the book across the room several times already.  I'm going to give it a chance; I'll finish the book, but I don't have high hopes for the rest of the book considering the fact that the first quarter of the book stinks so bad.

It does, however, give me hope that if drivel like this can get published (and read, God forbid), then there certainly is hope for me to have something I've written published--and read!!!!!

So I finished it and I have to retract my statement about "drivel," but I do still feel that Alice would not be the one who would tell Emma about Pollyanna, nor do I agree that Emma would take to following through with looking at life through rose-colored glasses so quickly after being such a hard-core realist for so long.  I do think that life-changes such as what Emma go through in this book are realistic to the story and that anyone in Emma's situation would do anything to try to make things better--in light of what has happened to her, obviously.

I do love that the book emphasizes that we can change our lives, especially the circumstances of our lives, if we change our perspective--the way we see things.  So often we see things only from our own point-of-view which gives us only half-truth or a part of the whole.  When we take a step back and look at the whole, truth is revealed and we find that what we thought was true--real--is only true (or real) in our own minds and hearts.  For such lessons, THE POLLYANNA PLAN is worth reading.

Besides, it's a book with POLLYANNA in the title!!!!!!!