A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
mp3 cd
Published Sept. 13, 2016 by Harpercollins, HarperCollins Publishers and Blackstone Audio.
I pretty much learned nothing from this book, sadly.
The first 2 chapters were promising, but then it just went down hill. It was very repititive and I can not hear the word โentitledโ again.
I canโt help but feel that this entire book could have been on one sheet of paper.
Incredibly insightful with lessons, thoughts and ideas across every page. Though the title is crass, it really speaks to about living life to your values and things you truly care about and how you go about doing it. It isn't trying to say don't care about things and tell people to screw off, but to find ways to live your life, while still owning up to your own failures and mistakes.
This is not a book in which to find any deep thought. There are some fine common-sense bits, but that common sense is packaged in much the same way L. Ron Hubbard packages his wisdom-isms in his own irony-quote, self-help books, irony-unquote. (The best news, I guess, is that Mark Manson never started a cult.)
There are a few items in this book I would have cherry-picked for myself as a confused twenty-year-old young man, but would that advice back then actually have helped? Doubtful. There are much better books than this I should have read. This just feels like something written by a recovering, secret, pick-up-artist/men's-rights-activist.
The author really wants you to know he's had sex with a lot of very beautiful women, all while telling you that really powerful people rarely brag.
If F*cks were stars, I would give this book none.
To the point.
This is an amazing book.
I watched a random video YouTube recommended about the "Do Something" principle, which led me to this book. It turned out I had already read Mark Manson's other book - Models. Thinking this would be a lame, feel-good, increase self-esteem piece of fluff, I still picked it up. To my utter surprise, this was a great book, it asked some really good questions and had some great ideas, which I won't spoil but summarizing here for you.
Overall, entertaining and useful, what more can a guy ask of a book?
As someone who often claims not to give a fuck, you mught think I don't have anything more to learn on the subject, but this book raises a lot of good points and gave me a lot to think about.
An okay read but a little too wishy washy for my liking. It's basically some Buddhism shredded up against a young person's life experience. I didn't gain much from it.
This book was really interesting and humorous, until I spotted this line:
As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later.
Although false reports of rape turn up about as often as lightning strikes humans, that line turned me right off this book. Right off. It's just like finding out there's feces in your food. The author should read
Still, I finished this book.
There are quite a few interesting bits in the book for the first fifth of it, but then it veers into quasi-science, with no references to claims made. "Research has been done on," et cetera.
This book was really interesting and humorous, until I spotted this line:
As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later.
This book was really interesting and humorous, until I spotted this line:
As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later.
Although false reports of rape turn up about as often as lightning strikes humans, that line turned me right off this book. Right off. It's just like finding out there's feces in your food. The author should read
Still, I finished this book.
There are quite a few interesting bits in the book for the first fifth of it, but then it veers into quasi-science, with no references to claims made. "Research has been done on," et cetera.
This book was really interesting and humorous, until I spotted this line:
As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later.
This book was really interesting and humorous, until I spotted this line:
As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later.
Although false reports of rape turn up about as often as lightning strikes humans, that line turned me right off this book. Right off. It's just like finding out there's feces in your food. The author should read
Still, I finished this book.
There are quite a few interesting bits in the book for the first fifth of it, but then it veers into quasi-science, with no references to claims made. "Research has been done on," et cetera.
This book was really interesting and humorous, until I spotted this line:
As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later.
He has this really annoying thread of "millennials are subject to entitlement culture," but the stoicism and targeted effort concepts are refreshing to hear from a person who speaks more of a younger person's language.
A must-read for anyone interested in finding their own issues and getting on from them.
Not much help to find for depressed people, however, but it is great nonetheless.
A rehash of other popular self improvement books from the last decade with some personal anecdotes and snark.
The key word is Subtle.
The title is a little misleading but it does pull you in. The subtleties described with profanities are where this book shines. Sometimes I found myself needing to use this book's lessons in order to listen to the message without pre-judging too much. There are some (non-profane) word choices I would often disagree with. However, word choice doesn't really take away from the overall message. I think this is a good book. A fun romp of a self-help book at the very least.
First, the title tells all: If you have issues with the F-bomb peppering every other sentence, along with lots of other coarse language, this book will be unreadable for you.
Okay, still here?
Well, it started out gangbusters. Really good, interesting, different.
By the end, however, I was pretty weary of the guy, and I kept thinking, "Gosh, he is SO young." Things he breathlessly reveals about Life seem pretty obvious to me (at over sixty years in).
And I think they also would be to anyone who has ever had even a passing flirtation with Buddhism, especially Zen.
Still, his anecdotes, when not grating with a weirdly self-deprecating egotism ("Let me tell you some MORE ways that I used to be an asshole..") are fresh, sometimes surprising, and often instructive.
It especially might be of interest to people in the counseling or other therapeutic professions, since he does a โฆ
First, the title tells all: If you have issues with the F-bomb peppering every other sentence, along with lots of other coarse language, this book will be unreadable for you.
Okay, still here?
Well, it started out gangbusters. Really good, interesting, different.
By the end, however, I was pretty weary of the guy, and I kept thinking, "Gosh, he is SO young." Things he breathlessly reveals about Life seem pretty obvious to me (at over sixty years in).
And I think they also would be to anyone who has ever had even a passing flirtation with Buddhism, especially Zen.
Still, his anecdotes, when not grating with a weirdly self-deprecating egotism ("Let me tell you some MORE ways that I used to be an asshole..") are fresh, sometimes surprising, and often instructive.
It especially might be of interest to people in the counseling or other therapeutic professions, since he does a wonderful job of shredding pop-culture self-help wisdom.
(Or you might want to secretly leave a copy on the doorstop of your favorite pity-party enthusiast).
Along those lines, I liked "If You Meet the Buddha On the Road, Kill Him," by Sheldon Kopp better. Or "Be Here Now," for that matter.
So, my take was that it's pretty good, but by the ending ("And Then You Die"), I rather felt the book had, too.
