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peacockk 's review for:
Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties
by Alexandra Robbins, Abby Wilner
DID NOT FINISH
The thing is, this book isn't what I was looking for. This isn't self-helpy or memoiry like so many books with titles like this one. I should have taken one look at the cover and known better. Better yet, I should have read the back cover or the author bios-- this isn't a romp in your twenties, tell all, confessional, advice columnist type book. This is a sociological look into what it was like to be in your twenties in 2001. The book was published in 2001 after doing interviews of 20 somethings so two things are very obvious: this is dated information and this is a summary/collection of those thoughts 20 somethings have.
The problem with dated information on this topic is that reading it now is jarring. The piece hasn't aged well. For one it must have been published pre-9/11 because at one point the authors note that it is hard for 20 somethings to feel connected as a group because no major event has banded them together (they give examples of WW2 or Cold War). I couldn't help to think well no that's not really the case anymore because we have 9/11 and the events that followed it. We also have social media banding us together more and more.
And the problem with reading a bunch of summarized interviews to depict what the person in their twenties is going through isn't super useful because I am in my 20's and thus know what I'm going through. Hearing that "Jessica" and "Henry" and "Alex" are feeling the same way is only minorly comforting in that at least I'm not alone.
TL/DR: This is descriptive, not prescriptive. No guidance, no advice, no zany escapades that make you feel like you have your shit together in comparison. But it's not a bad book. The bad reviews come from people like me who didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they opened the book.
The problem with dated information on this topic is that reading it now is jarring. The piece hasn't aged well. For one it must have been published pre-9/11 because at one point the authors note that it is hard for 20 somethings to feel connected as a group because no major event has banded them together (they give examples of WW2 or Cold War). I couldn't help to think well no that's not really the case anymore because we have 9/11 and the events that followed it. We also have social media banding us together more and more.
And the problem with reading a bunch of summarized interviews to depict what the person in their twenties is going through isn't super useful because I am in my 20's and thus know what I'm going through. Hearing that "Jessica" and "Henry" and "Alex" are feeling the same way is only minorly comforting in that at least I'm not alone.
TL/DR: This is descriptive, not prescriptive. No guidance, no advice, no zany escapades that make you feel like you have your shit together in comparison. But it's not a bad book. The bad reviews come from people like me who didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they opened the book.