From Goodreads: After decades of failed relationships and painful drama, Donald Miller decided he’d had enough. Impressing people wasn’t helping him connect with anyone. He’d built a life of public isolation, yet he dreamed of meaningful relationships. So at forty years old he made a scary decision: to be himself no matter what it cost.
I picked up Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy, not for the title, but for the structure, as it was recommended for its structure by a memoir / non-fiction writing teacher.
The structure was good and made for an extremely easy read.
I note others have criticized this book for its name-dropping. In some respects I’d have to agree. The author tells us about a whole lot of other people’s advice. And he does attribute the advice accordingly. So, there is a bit of namedropping. It didn’t bother me too much, as the names weren’t familiar to me. I enjoyed the snippets.
“Remarkably, the most common regret of the dying was this: they wish they’d had the courage to live a life true to themselves and not the life others expected of them.”
Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy
Overall, there are many tidbits and takeaways that I gathered from this book. It was nice, as I was not expecting anything but an idea of how to structure an eminently readable teaching memoir. And I did find that, plus some relationship wisdom along the way.
I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
The Bear View 
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