If Talent Were Pizza, You’d Be a Supreme: Talks to Youth
Weyland, Jack. 1989. If Talent Were Pizza, You’d Be a Supreme: Talks to Youth. Deseret Book.
Rating:
1
Review:
My wife received this book while she was a teenager. She never read it and it was sitting in our library. I thought, “why not.” Well… I can see why Amazon and even Deseret Book no longer carry this book.
Jack Weyland is probably a very talented fiction writer. I’ve never read any of his fiction books, but this book is littered with excerpts from his fiction and the excerpts were pretty good. However, he should stick to fiction. He never really lays out who it is he is supposed to be talking to, though from the way the book is written, I would think that the book could be for pretty much anyway between 7 and 16. Anyone over 16 would probably find the book demeaning. Mr. Weyland is definitely talking down to people in the sense that he ‘has been there’ and ‘has done that’ and he ‘knows best’.
To be fair to Mr. Weyland some of his advice isn’t horrible. He talks a lot about goals and I think goals are good to have.
However, he also talks about how women are to submit themselves to men. He does admit that times are changing and that men shouldn’t dictate, but he seems to be very much a traditionalist. He also offers interpretations of Mormon theology that definitely are not official doctrines of the religion but he doesn’t stipulate that.
I’m not quite sure where he is going with this. The book’s organization seems somewhat scattered and he does seem to push individuals to strive for perfection. Well, perfection, in my book, is unhealthy.
I wish I could recommend a self-help book for young Mormons instead of this one, but I am unfamiliar with the literature. Perhaps, if anything, I would suggest to young people not to stay within the realm of Mormon literature and branch out into other self-help/pop psychology books if you’re going to read anything. Anyway, this is definitely one to avoid.