What a Difference a Year Makes: How Life's Unexpected Setbacks Can Lead to Unexpected Joy

Guiney, a.k.a.""Bachelor Bob"" from the ABC reality television show The Bachelorette, divulges how in one calendar year he experienced both the highest of highs and lowest of lows in this sentimental month by month account. The""pseudo-celebrity"" hopes to inspire readers with his rebound from the personal setbacks (his divorce, which his then-wife announced with a Dear John post-it note, and his battle with his weight) that dogged him only a few months before he was chosen as one of 15 bachelors for The Bachelorette, and later as the star of ABC's latest season of The Bachelor. However, as he makes pains to emphasize (in lackluster, straightforward prose), his success would never have been possible without the hard knocks (and paradoxical liberation) of divorce. In his sketch of this turbulent year, he shares his precious memories of family and friends, and their over-simple axioms for life, like Grandpa Guiney's advice that""doing anything at all is better than doing nothing,"" and his mother's mantra that""the brightest star shines even brighter when it takes other stars along with it."" Fans who first appreciated his self-deprecating humor on The Bachelorette and those interested in the behind-the-scenes dirt on the Animal House bonhomie at the eligible bachelors' pad (although either out of tact or media shrewdness, Guiney trashes no one) will enjoy this hastily drawn self-portrait.