How to Hug a Porcupine: Easy Ways to Love the Difficult People in Your Life
- Feb 15, 2024
- 1 min read
Updated: Jun 15
★★☆☆☆
Megan learned about this book via social media (online anyway) and wanted to read it so I requested it from the library. She read it and was disappointed. Naturally, despite her poor assessment, I decided I’d read it, too, mostly because it was short but also because I was slightly curious. How to Hug a Porcupine strikes me as the kind of book that gets given as a gift rather than anyone buying it for themselves (congrats newbie HR representative, licensed counselor, or resident assistant!). It just has that vibe. As for content, it’s ostensibly a book full of strategies for dealing with the porcupines in one’s life. That’s fine, I suppose, but with tips like Learn Your Porcupine’s Warning Signs, Keep Your Quills In, Respect Your Porcupine’s Boundaries, Consider Your Porcupine’s Real Needs and Fears—and that’s just the first four!—it largely comes across as a bunch of ways to accommodate and/or enable prickly behavior. There are dozens more that trade in the same vein. By contrast, the last section, which is about dealing with the porcupine within us all, offers just four suggestions for self-improvement. The lesson here appears to be that porcupines are pricks, and the only way to deal with them is to change yourself because they sure as hell aren’t going to.
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