Quick Book Review: “Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope” by Mark Manson
Manson’s first book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, was a huge seller that everyone was talking about, so I jumped on the bandwagon and read it. The sentences in the book made great sense when I read them, and I do remember enjoying reading it, but I retained absolutely nothing afterward.
Earlier this year, I saw a pirated copy of this book, his follow-up, being hawked by a street vendor in Kenya for $3, so I grabbed it.
A weird, difficult reading experience. He starts out with an endless ramble about the “Thinking Brain” vs the “Feeling Brain”, filled with dozens of silly, tedious examples. It’s basically just an explanation of the id vs. the ego, and he could have easily shortened it to five pages and spared us the torture. He later delves into the minds of some great thinkers (Nietzsche, Einstein, Kant, Newton, Plato), throws in a little pop culture, and blasts you with a lot of negativity, peppered with many failed attempts at humor. It’s basically an unstructured, stream-of-consciousness collection of random thoughts. His tone is self-righteous and condescending; everything comes across like a self-evident proclamation that can never be questioned. Call it frat-boy philosophy if you want. I took away very little from this book and was kinda glad when it ended.
