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Book Review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

You can't deny that title caught your attention.

I'm usually pretty leery about books that use seemingly gimmicky titles to grab attention, but there are definitely cases were those books turned out to be pretty good. The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi are great examples of this.

Fortunately, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life falls in that camp with Tim's and Ramit's books. It's excellent.

The title is a little deceiving because it implies that, by the time you're done reading this book, you'll be well on the road to becoming this badass that doesn't care who says what. Internet trolls, nay saying friends? No problem. Nothing will get in your way, you're too good for that now!

Well... not so much.

Actually, the subtitle of this book (Living a Good Life) is much more indicative of what this book is actually about. This book is really all about identity and honesty. It definitely feels like the kind of book I would write if I were to write on identity. Manson cuts through the baloney of "feeling good" and false optimism by cutting to hard hitting questions. Questions may haunt some of you lying in bed at night.

Let's step away from that just a second to talk about the composition of the book. Manson does a great job at captivating readers using relevant stories. The stories really help to tie his ideas together in a way that readers of any capacity can understand. Manson is a little more edgy toward the beginning of that book, but that drops off fairly quickly. Where the first part of the book is littered with the f-word, most of this book reads like a typical self-help book.

Except better.

Where books like The Secret or anything by Joel Osteen focus on "the power of positive thinking", Manson instead focuses on asking hard questions about identity. For example, he rightly notes that people have the tendency to avoid things that will rock their reality, even if its something positive.

Even though this isn't a book like The Secret, it's not a pessimistic book at all. Manson encourages his readers to think through those hard hitting questions with the purpose of getting readers to think how to basically embrace reality on reality's terms. Is life difficult? Yes, but it's not impossible to be happy. I really appreciated Manson's realistic yet optimistic approach.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anybody and everybody. It was an easy read (from a composition standpoint), and it stirred up a lot of thoughts within me. Granted, this might not be an easy read for you from an application standpoint. He asks some difficult questions. Questions that you may not want to answer. But with most good things in life, you have to pass through the fire to get to paradise. And it's worth. Check this book out.
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