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informative fast-paced

Quite obvious things, so I did not learn anything new but the book is fairly old at this point.
informative reflective medium-paced
challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing fast-paced

This isn't yourself typical everybody's special kind of self-help book. It's hard to read an unapologetic, yet somehow it still manages to be funny.

Yeah I read this. I liked some of it. I thought some of it was interesting. Is this groundbreaking? No. Did it give me something to think about? Of course.
But that’s just my general reaction to most self-help books. You can’t take up the whole book or else you’re doing it wrong. You take what you need from them and then the rest can be saved for later.
informative reflective medium-paced

"If we follow the 'do something' principle, failure feels unimportant. When the standard of success becomes merely acting—when any result is regarded as progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite—we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves us forward." (162)

This book came for me at the right time. If I read more self-help books, it might not have been as useful, but I don't and it was. That being said, this book is not written for me. Mark Manson is a white dude talking to other white dudes (just look at the list of blurbs on the back). The logic he uses to help people figure out their values, that's universal. But his examples are far from it. Manson assumes that the epitome of your desires is, I kid you not, touching Jennifer Aniston's tits. I found myself frequently offended by the banality of his own conclusions.

This is not a compassionate book (in case the title didn't tip you off) and it acts like everyone's pain and struggles are equal. But ultimately, we are each in charge of hitting the gas in our own lives, no matter the unfairness of the circumstances we must fight against. So if you can read it with MANY grains of salt, I loosely recommend this book to you...
inspiring medium-paced

This book was more serious than I thought it would be.
reflective fast-paced

The premise of the book is quite helpful and has an overarching fair point that life isn’t just about pleasure but being responsible for the suffering you’re willing to endure, choose what you’re willing to give a fuck about (obviously in the context of normal life and not instances of abuse etc). I think it’s written with corporate Americans in mind because it sort of assumed your values would be certain things and slanted towards entrepreneurial and liberal ideals. That’s ok, because readers can still choose to take what they want, leave the rest, and consider the wider ideas as they apply to themselves.  

I found the writing style quite tedious, it was mostly example after example with ‘as [insert thinker] said: “[insert inspirational quote]”. ‘ There was also endless repetition to really drill in the point, but sometimes it was like 5 sentences in a row saying the same thing in a different way. Some of the points made I felt weren’t particularly research backed but said with quite a lot of authority (maybe if I read a physical copy I’d see the references and be proved wrong?). The narrator’s voice came across as a bit grating and full of it. 

2.75 because the writing style wasn’t for me but there’s definitely something useful in there for people. 

madgeorge's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH

Turns I dislike personal development books and I think they are garbage nonsense that scream fake