Book of the day - The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
Gosh was this awful. I’ve never returned a book before, but this one I simply had to return it. I found this book referenced in the Mr. Money Mustache forum by another users book list and damn, I couldn’t get over the depressing nature of hearing alcoholics, people’s terrible upbringings, how difficult people had it growing up, so on and so forth. I didn’t have an easy life growing up and I really don’t like listening to other people use a poor childhood as a reasoning for being in debt, having a shit career, or not being someone in life. I also had no idea who the author was and it sounds like she’s a blogger with some social media following that makes care even less about. It was like reading a biography of an alcoholics anonymous attendee that tried over and over to break the cycle and is currently probably out of the cycle.
It’s just not interesting to me and in fact it’s depressing reading books like this. I didn’t learn anything. There was nothing to learn set forth in the book. There were no challenges given to the readers, it was some lines on a piece of paper talking exclusively about the author who had little to contribute to business, minimalism, or financial independence.
This book felt like it was capitalizing on the “anyone can be an author”, “everyone should write a book for money”, etc.. craze that seems to be proliferating the interwebs advice columns. I wanted this book to challenge readers to not spend money for some time frame. To spend less next year. I wanted some challenge and leadership figure to emerge and tell readers to live a life of less. That’s not what happened.
My takeaway? NEVER read a book from a random forums book list that doesn’t provide a review.
