🙅

Slight. Not much more illuminating than Xi’s wikipedia article. 

An incredibly thin book with little useful or applicable advice or ideas. If you’ve read any pop-psych or self-improvement type books you’ve come across 90% of this book before. It’s the same tired mix of personal anecdotes, the same handful of studies (the marshmallow test! skinner box! etc) and the same attempt to stretch out quite a thin premise over a few hundred pages. A real shame that it comes across as vacuous as a ted talk.

These ponderous, meandering, often intentionally obtuse essays remind me of some of my own writing: far too long, far too pretentious and ultimately quite enervating for the reader. My fear is that I am Lauren Oyler, or perhaps Lauren Oyler is all of us. 

Some interesting ideas but on the whole disjointed and meandering. 

I’ve long been suspicious of Abdaal’s role in promoting hustle culture, and so I went into this book with great scepticism. Happily he preaches a somewhat different message in the book from the stuff in his youtube content. Unhappily, it’s shallow and largely unoriginal messages. I cannot help but feel the same book from an author without his fan base would not have been published. 

A book with a sense of humour that somehow makes Family Guy seem witty and profound. I’ve never experienced a book as painfully unfunny as this—it was truly mystifying and appalling. Almost as disappointing was the substantive content which was repetitive, shallow and largely uninteresting. The authors set up the universe as something with anthropomorphic intent, which might be a fine premise if they ever took the time to actually explain, no the universe doesn’t actually want to kill you. I hated this and read in a state of disbelief tinged with horror. 

A well-intentioned and lovingly designed book, albeit one that felt puddle deep. I support the author’s message and cause very much but found this book middling.

If you’ve never read a book in this genre, or had no therapy, this book might be a good start. For me though, this book was just reheated insights I’ve read quite a lot of already. There’s not much new or compelling about this one. If this genre interests you, start with Dr Guha’s book instead.

Dense – the central argument is a powerful one, but the presentation is not favourable to engaging with the ideas. I applaud his conclusion that people with autism deserve better support and opportunities to participate in the workforce—I just think it unlikely that this book would convince anyone who wasn’t already receptive to his message. 

The first half of this book was repetitive and in search of a thesis. I found the second half better: clearer and with less repetition, but it wasn’t enough to salvage the book. I am still interested in the topic of how it came to be that patriarchal systems became dominant when there is nothing certain or inevitable about that fate.

I found this dense and the format—a conversation between the two authors—did not work for me. Not that I think it couldn’t have worked, it just didn’t work in this book. I am torn because some ideas in the exchange are deeply information and thought provoking, and I like the obvious respect and admiration between the authors. Yet I cannot possibly recommend this in its current form. 

I read this in a state of disbelief; it was exactly every Boomer trope you’ve ever heard, one right after the other. The definition of failing upwards is this book.