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toddtyrtle's reviews
910 reviews
My Mercedes Is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...an Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara by Jeroen van Bergeijk
4.0
Sometimes I want to read an introspective travel book where the author explores their own psyche as much as they explore the outside world. Other times, it's fun to just read about someone having interesting adventures in far away places. This book's a fine example of the latter category. A very light, quick read but also quite enjoyable.
Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende
2.0
Overall a good book but the author comes across to be a bit of an evangelical fundamentalist with his anti-technology views. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to that, though, having had similar feelings and broadcast them on my blog back when we lived in a yurt with no electricity or running water for 2 years. Ten years after that, living then in a highrise in Canada's biggest city I realized that it was pretty narrow-minded of me to be so sure that living that simply was not only right for me but the way everyone should be living. It was right for our family then, and a different way of life is right for us now.
The author seems to fall into the same trap I did - feeling that the fact that the life change he made then and that worked so well for him then was the life change that everyone else needs to make, and that many of society's ills are caused by the failure of everyone to do so.
The author seems to fall into the same trap I did - feeling that the fact that the life change he made then and that worked so well for him then was the life change that everyone else needs to make, and that many of society's ills are caused by the failure of everyone to do so.