Review: The Courage Map by Franziska Iseli
by H. Murray. May 26th, 2020.
corpSonore received an advance copy of Franziska Iseli’s new book, The Courage Map: 13 Principles to Living Boldly, but due to the chaos of shipping during the coronavirus, it arrived on the day of the official release, so it is a little late. Apologies!
Iseli is an adventurer and entrepreneur and came up with the idea for this book while on a long-distance motorcycle trip from Switzerland, along the Silk Road and into Asia. A pretty daunting feat! She explains how she wanted to follow the steps of Marco Polo, an Italian merchant and writer famous for his travels in the thirteenth century. That sounded very cool, and I had to pull out a map to see where precisely this trip took her.
She organizes her writing into thirteen chapters, one for each of the principles she names in the beginning. Each section includes a few mantras (called travel tunes here), and a few journal topics to pique your self-investigation and discovery. You can also download a complimentary Courage Map Journal directly from her website to track your thoughts and ideas along the way. This book is short, only 138 pages long, and includes a Foreword by Sir Richard Branson.
The premise of this book intrigued me. It takes courage to get on stage and live the life of a musician. I thought much like the books we have received in the past that are not written explicitly for musicians that this one would might also easily relate to our audience. Unfortunately, I found many of Iseli’s points fell flat. I believe in and agree with her principles, trust, intuition, love, kindness, etc. Incorporating them into your daily life can lead to unexpected wonders. Plus, her natural zeal as a person is charming, and her thirst for adventure is infectious. Still, her arguments are weak and she uses overplayed tropes to exemplify her points. Her prose reads like a series of statements and I often felt like they were missing citations. Maybe it’s my background in academia, but bold points without context are confusing if not adequately defended. There are countless books written on each of the topics she addresses. She should have corroborated her ideas with the input of others to make her argument stronger. Listen to me getting all college professor-like on this book. Sorry (not sorry).
I found this book underwhelming until the final chapter, Principle 13: Commitment, which barely redeemed the rest of the book. Iseli waited until the end of this book to give clear and applicable advice and make the most persuasive case for courage.
This is the first not-stellar review I have written for one of the advance copies we have received from a publishing company. I feel bad about it, but the author’s rep should have done more diligent research about what exactly corpSonore does, and what audience we serve.
Read this book if:
You like to journal and need some useful prompts.
You Feel stuck and need some positive mantras to get stuck in your head (a la travel tunes).
You want to know why this isn’t my favorite book of 2020
More about the author can be found at: https://www.franziskaiseli.com