2022 reads, #55. I complain here often about the 21st-century trend of releasing nonfiction books that contain only a blog article's worth of information, but has padded that article out to 300 pages so that greedy corporate publishers can charge us $28.99 for the "privilege" of reading that blog article. But Becca Levy's worthless Breaking the Age Code takes the cake when it comes to this, a 300-page book retailing for $28.99 that literally (and I'm not exaggerating here) presents us with exactly one line of useful information in the entire book, that information being, "If you think young, you'll feel young!" That already feels spurious to me, especially with her continual insistence that when anything bad physically happens to an old person, it's exclusively because they willed it with their mind to happen, and that all their problems would magically go away if they would simply envision themselves as young and healthy (not a single solitary word in this book about arthritis, glaucoma, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, or any other physical ailment common to the elderly, besides her dismissively waving her hand in the air and saying, "Yeah, well, everybody gets those!"), but then I became infuriated when I wasted four hours of my life to actually finish the book, thinking that surely this couldn't be the one and only piece of information she's conveying here, just to learn that the entire rest of this book's page count is devoted either to examples backing up her theory, or endless, endless pages informing me that, believe it or not, people actually discriminate against the elderly, and that's unfair!

I agree, ageism is bad, but that's not the book I bought; I bought a book that's supposed to be a practical how-to guide to "breaking the age code," as it LITERALLY STATES ON THE FRONT COVER, surrounded by a bunch of NUMBERS and LETTERS all SWIRLING AROUND, OOOOOH SCIIIIIIEEEENCE!!!!! This book is not that, and in fact is not a book at all, but rather a cutesy Instagram motivational poster surrounded by 300 pages of nonsense. A rare miss from my therapist, who was the one who originally recommended it to me (who, to be clear, is usually spot-on when it comes to books she thinks I'll like), it does not come recommended. As is the case with a growing number of these nonfiction padded-out listicle-books, I instead recommend reading the 99-cent summary and getting the book done and over with quickly.