I'm sort of new to the whole "sensation" that is Jordan Peterson, initially discovering him not through his lectures on political correctness and C-16, or his Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman. Instead, I found him through his podcast via Quillette's Twitter feed, where he interviewed its founder Claire Lehmann and his later appearance on Russell Brand's Under the Skin podcast and saw him as more of a Zaphod Beeblebrox as in "He's just this guy, you know," than someone from the alt-right.

Still, this book could be so much better...

The Rules themselves have some practicality about them, but Peterson's approach to some of them leave a lot to be desired. Some Rules are more tightly written than others, especially "Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World". Other Rules, not so much. Peterson meanders elsewhere, wandering onto beaches into lobster hierarchies before going into an anecdote about building birdhouses in his childhood. Sometimes, it's stories from Genesis, Crime and Punishment, or The Gulag Archipelago that add additional, unnecessary weight to each "Rule", detracting from its morality. He does eventually make his connections; weak ones, but they're there. Mostly.

Rule #11, "Don't Bother Children While They're Skateboarding", suffers the most from Peterson's ramblings as it goes from the idea that people want to learn by experiencing danger first hand, whether cognitive or creative, to a rant about what feminism hath wrought according to him. Then, he decides that spending more time on the Communist regimes of the 20th Century shortly after is a good way of padding pages or an extra hour to an audiobook. The latter actually has this rule splayed out into two chapters. Which sucks, because the idea behind the Rule is brilliant, much like most of the others.

In his defense, Peterson's an academic and his prose does reflect that to a degree. However, much like Russell Brand in Recovery or ironically Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto, he tries to maintain a vernacular that an audience, unfamiliar with academia, can understand. It shows that Peterson does care about what he believes: "Life is suffering. It's full of malevolence.", "Clean up your room", "Clean up your damn life", etc.

Anyone else who reads 12 Rules for Life might not see this though, political biases notwithstanding. This album by Akira The Don condenses these Rules and ultimately strengthens them into something easily digestible if you're interested in what Peterson's talking about, but don't want to spend fifteen hours or more listening to (or reading) him go through biblical stories or wander through the Soviet Union for that matter. Then again, the success of Peterson and ultimately 12 Rules for Life allowed for that album to exist in the first place.

TLDR: Practical advice gets lost in prose to the point that Peterson undermines himself. Other options are available.