Customer Reviews

Personal Village, How to Have People in Your Life by Choice, Not Chance

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"To achieve intimacy with another, we have to begin by listening." ~Marvin Thomas

Marvin Thomas has written a fascinating book on friendship in the modern world. He is a Seattle author who earned his Master's in Social Work at the University of Washington. Through his life he has experienced the beauty of friendship and observed patterns that feed our genetically encoded desires to find relationships. He has also seen the damage of isolation and explains how we can use the "Principal of Seven" to fill our world with friends.

While we continue to be enamored with technology, we have become more and more isolated and yet the desire for friendship is still a force that drives us to seek companionship in our environments. While Marvin Thomas agrees that computers amplify the mind, he believes we cannot thrive when isolated. He also explains:

The basic universal needs
The essential ingredients of a healthy community
Why relationships need to be tended to on a regular basis
How you can find friends with similar interests
What to ask someone new when you first meet
How to keep a friendship for life

Most of us seem to keep connected with friends and family through e-mails. Marvin explores this idea and explains how e-mail can be like a journal that talks back to you. While e-mail may encourage deeper contemplation because you have time to consider what you want to say, Marvin Thomas encourages real-life relationships where you can nourish your soul through face-to-face intimate relationships.

Throughout "Personal Village" I had quite a few good laughs and many moments of enlightenment. The reading resources and movie suggestions looked tantalizing. Each chapter ends with a summary and a resource section. I loved the mention of the "Mostly Martha" movie, one of my all-time favorite chef movies.

Since I have just moved to a new community, this book was a comfort to me in a time when I felt everything was new and I didn't know a soul. After reading this book, I found myself venturing out more into my community and unlike other times in the past, I actually ventured out early and with a sense of determination. The girls at Pier 1 were discussing Josh Groban (so we talked about the concert I reviewed), the lady at the post office gave me directions on how to get back home and everyone seemed most helpful. I met a neighbor after going out for a walk and the community I'm living in seems to be much more geared towards common areas where people can meet or walk.

The advice in this book works and will encourage you to participate more fully in your community. I learned so much about basic human interaction that I'd never considered before. Marvin Thomas has filled "Personal Village" with a lifetime of wisdom and a collection of interesting and inspirational ideas to enable you to live a fuller, more enjoyable life no matter where you live. After reading his book, you may even want to start a cozy coterie or salon. My heart is dreaming of a Mystic Beach mentioned in this book. Our hearts want to find a place where we are loved, needed and appreciated.

~The Rebecca Review

Personal Village is a terrific guide for anyone who has relocated, divorced, changed jobs, left a community of any kind and is now trying to reestablish themselves. I retired a few years ago and have found the ideas here to be what I was looking for.
Personal Village is a marvelous resource for anyone looking for help in gathering friends. The book is well organized, the ideas worthwhile. Chapter layout is clear, good summary and the list of materials is helpful.

Personal Village: How To Have People In Your Life By Choice, Not Chance by expert relationship therapist Marvin Thomas is a do-it-yourself style "self-help" guide to resisting the dehumanizing and impersonal forces of the 21st century while establishing closer bonds with the people around us. Personal Village is especially recommended for offering a wealth of accessible, practical advice concerning avoiding destructive individuals; reinforcing and celebrating lasting friendships; and keeping our circle of friends diversified so that when change and loss occur we are not left alone.

Most books about networking, dating, and making friends start at the point of contact: They assume that the user knows where to go to make friends. Thomas starts with the basics, from roaming your neighborhood to meet folks to the handy rule of thumb that it takes 7 visits to a new group for others to feel that you're one of the crowd.

I teach interpersonal communication, and this book has the best pointers I've yet read on how and how much to personally disclose to a new acquaintance, as one tests the waters and works toward building stronger ties and friendship.

Thomas avoids jargon and writes fluently in a down-to-earth, easy to read style. The book is well-organized. The chapter summaries and resources are a plus. Marvin Thomas has performed a much-needed service in offering this book to as a how-to manual for meeting and making friends in our fragmented society.

This book is so amazing. I have never written a review of a book. However, this is one that anyone that might be in the midst of "reinventing" their life as I am should read. I will soon be relocating to a new state and city and at the age of 59 that can be a little overwhelming. I am really looking forward to this new start and more than ever since reading this book and using the workbook. I have plans to start a study group after I am settled.

This is the kind of book I want to share with everyone I know. A "where have you been all my life?" book. It speaks to my heart in countless ways.

Two weeks ago I was struggling with the winter blues/cabin fever. It was bitter cold out, and I felt housebound and lonely. I told my partner "I have to get out." He's said "Let's go walk around Green Lake." We bundled up and drove all the way from Kirkland and began to walk. Within 5 minutes we ran into some dear friends, who had also been feeling housebound (she said she'd woken up crying that morning, and her husband had said "Let's walk around Green Lake!"). Three miles flew by, and before we knew it we were hugging goodbye. I drove home feeling a warm sense of contentment.

When we got home, I opened up Personal Village to my bookmark and began to read. It was the chapter that discusses limbic resonance. It was as if it had been written just for me on that day, as it spoke to exactly how I was feeling: I had needed a people fix!

I have spent my whole life looking for, and being a part of, communities, and feeling frustrated when I'm not involved in any that are currently working well for me. This book is inspiring me to put more effort into finding what I want. I have often wished I lived in Paris during the salons. This book is inspiring me to create one!

I am extremely involved in my neighborhood, and I love what Marv says about why there is value in picking up trash and caring about the people and place where we live.

His lists of books, films, and other resources are fantastic.

If you have longed for a greater sense of community in your life, or if you have felt that something is missing, read this book.

This is an excellent book. It woke me up to the importance of having people in your life. I am not a particularly outgoing person by nature, but after having read the book, I realized I already had a group of people around me that I can call my "personal village". The book made me realize how lucky I am to have these people in my life and to try harder to maintain these friendships, but also to be open to making connections with new people.

Revitalizing community is urgent business - Chapter 1 *****
This first chapter really drew me in. The author talked about how communities have been throughout history, their purposes for survival, and their source of support. He then goes on to point out changes that the world is going through, that even though we have more technology and more information that communities are becoming less intimate. He gracefully points out that we are overloaded with information and bombarded with aggressive advertising and that if we don't find a way to stabilize the community then the world is essentially going to end itself. There is no real criticism I can give to this chapter being that it was written in 2004, but it is interesting to note that present day (2010) a new form of communities are being formed through social networking. I'm not saying this is for better or worse, im saying it just is. The author touches on this in chapter three, but this is before the evolution of social networking. It is important to consider these communities because, while its not what is "traditionally" a community, it may provide several of the same functions of such. They have entire games dedicated to being nothing but a digitalized community and people who live in them in lieu of the "real" world. (sims, second life, even world of warcraft).
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Personal village the most valuable asset of your life - Chapter 2 **
This chapter continues to reify the importance of a nourishing community. It speaks about how people need "nourishing contact" and that communities can begin to form by being around people with similar interests. If you go to the same place every day try talking to people there. If your frequent a coffee shop, eventually faces will start to be familiar. There were two major concepts of this chapter that did not resonate will with me. The ideas that one needs to "be purposeful" and "think strategically" when forming communities. That is to say people need to intentionally choose others in their lives instead of living by "default". While the book does propose some good reasons for this, the view still feels polarized to me. Something can be said for living life without the complete intentionality of choosing people. I believe it quite important to emphasize that people change and therefore communities do. While the chapter does cater this idea, it fails to fully embrace the idea. It fails to touch upon the fact that by being part of an "established" community there are implicit norms that do not always leave room for personal change.

Human beings are expressive, I believe to be truly happy one needs to live life by default on some level. If one only strategically chooses people in their life, they may very well be missing out on personal growth. By choosing people intentionally, we are not engaging in the extent of new experiences that we are meant to as human beings; not experiencing as many new ideas, new traditions, new self-fulfillment. By making contact with a person who you have no similarities to, it is very much possible to learn more about oneself by contrast, or even form a new appreciation for notions that were previously distasteful.



Where is the intimacy - Chapter 3 **
This chapter begins talking about intimacy on a not so intimate level. Throughout the first half of the chapter continuously refers to science. Every time it did such, I felt more and more detached. Intimacy to me is such an... intimate word. I'm looking for more affect, more feelings, more gracefulness than "scientists discovered..." The chapter then goes on to talk about the importance of diversity. YES! It is important to have a wide range of diverse people, I was very glad to read this after reading chapter two. Though one of the reasons the author gives for diversity is if you have a conflict with one group, you can get an unbiased view for the other. While this is true, it fails to give room for internal decision making. This ties back into my point in chapter 2, if you allow people in your life by default, you will gain more insight and make choices best for you! Yes, this is a book on building a "personal village" but at the center of the village is the individual.

The author also gives an argument for diversity, that some Russians who fled to Alaska brought with them their attitudes of women being subservient. Those women are pressed into marriage and children early or risk being outcasts. While I feel this is a plausible example of why diversity is important, it seems a tad on the culturally insensitive side. The author is completely off the mark when he says, "in that village there is no diversity." There is no diversity because he does not want to see any! By comparing similarities there are no differences! Also, you cannot expect there to be difference when something is a cultural norm! The author also fails to point out the benefits (not saying the norm is "right" or "wrong") of such a norm; there are Russian woman who may feel subservient but there are also those who feel stable and secure. The author fails to acknowledge that within our culture, the American culture, we have just as many rigid implicit norms. American women ARE expected to have babies, stay at home, and be subservient to men or risk being ostracized; perhaps without as much security in a stable family structure!

The chapter does bring up some tangible points such as intimacy being on a continuum. Also, he acknowledges that some seek a form of intimacy electronically.

Here is an easy ro read well thought out book on the biggest social issue facing us today-- personal isolation, which breeds fear, suspicion and alienation. This is not a socialogical study but a nuts and bolts book about the problem and workable, inaginative solutions. There is a good annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter that adds to the book's value. Easy and to the point prose offers suggestions to put into practice today. Isolalation left to spread within your life or society is another form of anniliation.

John, author of Reading Thomas Merton.

This is a wonderful book. I am using it as a resource in leading an ILEAD class at Dartmouth.
Institute for Lifelong Education At Dartmouth