Book Review | Rating – 3/5 | Genre – Non Fiction / Self-Help
When it comes to self-help books I’ve normally stayed away, having not held much faith in the help they offer. Which is why its taken me a while to read this book, despite the fact I was given it by my two friends as a present a couple of years back. With lockdown in place and my pile of unread books very close to finished, I thought it was a good time to turn to a book to provide some sort of comfort during this weird time.
This brilliant, hilarious, and practical parody of Marie Kondo’s bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up explains how to rid yourself of unwanted obligations, shame, and guilt–and give your f*cks instead to people and things that make you happy.
The easy-to-use, two-step NotSorry Method for mental decluttering will help you unleash the power of not giving a f*ck about. It will free you to spend your time, energy, and money on the things that really matter. So what are you waiting for? Stop giving a f*ck and start living your best life today! (synopsis from Goodreads)
Initial reaction…
When I first started reading I found this book to be both insightful and hilarious. It offered pretty sound advice on not taking too much time thinking about what you can’t change while making witty observations on real-life events. The first chapter also pretty much summed up how I feel towards life and spoke to me on a level as someone with anxiety issues.
However, it wasn’t long before I started to see flaws in this otherwise funny book. The first chapter talks about not giving a f**k without being an awful human being, an ethos that is repeated throughoutt he book. Yet, the author talks about how to get out of events that are dear to family memebers or friends, looking at telling close friends you don’t care about something they enjoy. She even goes so far to say that if they take offense its their problem not yours. By the end of the book I was starting think that the author has insulted most of her friends on her journey towards not giving a f**k.
Favourite moments…
- Gave me a chuckle: at the end of the day, although this book was rather frustrating to read, there were many moments where I couldn’t help but laugh. Whether it was a relatable example or the way in which she words an issue with life. Then again, it was even the title of the book that made me laugh and actually want to read it.
- Some helpful tips: a lot of the tips were rather ridiculous, and would end up actually just insulting the people we should be caring about. Yet, by the time I got to the end of the book I felt like I understood more about what caused me the most stress in my everyday life. I still struggled with stress, yet with some of the elarnings from this book I’m able to move certain stresses to priorities others.
- Easy read: despite the thickness of the book and the occasional heaviness of the subject matter, it was still a fairly easy book to read. I managed to spend a good day in the sun reading through the whole book. Although, thinking about it now, I don’t think a self-help book should be considered easy to read and reputable.
At the end of the day…
Eh, I’m glad I read this book in the sense that I’m able to tick it off my “to read” list. However, this is the only real positive I have from the book, I don’t think I’ll ever be inspired to pick the book up again.
There were moments where I could take inspiration and understand how to work through my probelms using this book. It was more how she steers towards certain topics that she no longer gives a f**k about, yet it would be something that people close to her (friends and family) would care about. Hurting the people you care about just so you don’t have to care anymore is pretty harsh and an ethos I don’t want to follow.
The Next Big Opinion 