The Subtle art of not Giving a F by Mark Manson

The Subtle art of not Giving a F by Mark Manson

Book Review

Non fiction apparent self help book!

Rating 5/5 for the start 2/5 for the end!

Spoilers- None! The title gives it away where the author is going!

Mark is a well known blogger with a shady past and not so clean teenage years. He was into meth by his own confession and never serious about life! This all changed when he had some eye opening incidents in his life which he describes in different chapters in the book.

Before his revelation he was a big cheat, a druggie and basically a big pain for everyone!

Two major events changed his life apparently, one was the loss of his friend Josh and the other when his girlfriend dumped him! Both changed his perspective of life and he got his life together!

So apparently his life was all F@@upped before so he got his life set and became a blogger and wrote about not giving a F!

The initial chapters are all about not giving a F! And since I was listening to audible, it was just a rant of F and F all over the room! It was like a teenager screaming the expletive over and over again till the time that it gets your attention at first and then the repetitive expletive loses its steam!

Apart from the two apparent major life story of the author like the losing of his friend and girlfriend and him getting caught with marijuana and his parents getting divorced; he also narrates some vague examples of other losers at first who then went on to become great!

One example was of the member of Metallica who was thrown out of the band to make megadeth but still was not happy in contrast to another original member of Beetles who was happy having a family and no fame!

His book starts with an example of a success which he goes to say is rare and real life is in fact, you guessed it F@@ed!
His obsession with the word F is so strong that he might as well have written F all over and it would have still made the same impact!

Any self help book is usually of two major type; one is positive reinforcement and the other is this! You tell that everyone is F@@ed so that you do not have to worry about your life and you can just appreciate it the way you are! It’s like when you are nervous on stage you can imagine the audience being naked and you will get confidence which is an old trick!

In second chapter called Happiness is a problem he tries to give an account of Gautam Buddha (getting the pronunciation and story wrong in the process!). He gives his take on what he understood of the story and gives his F@@ed up version!

In fact after the introduction you can get to know that the whole book loses steam and what could have been a mountain turns out to be a F@@ed up mole hill!

The best parts apart from the F word are the heading of chapters such as ‘you are not special’ or ‘you are wrong about everything’ or ‘failure is the way forward’ or finally ‘and then you die’.

The whole premise is to invite you for a seven course meal and then offer you F@@ed up sugar free lemonade!

This whole book could have been made into a blog which was how it started and it would have made more difference but then the word is a gold mine so it did make the best seller list and tons of money for the author! So in a way the book is way of saying F@@k you by making you spend for listening to it! Then again luckily I got the audible version via an offer by paying absolutely nothing so the jokes on you!

Read it just for fun! The whole book reminds me of an episode in Seinfeld where George adopts a new F@@k all attitude and then the whole world takes him seriously and he gets a good job and girlfriend! That was one episode since it had juice only for that much! It is also similar how in The Shawshank Redemption, Ellis is always rejected in parole board when he appears as a meek and changed individual while in the end in the interview he literally says F@@k you and gets the parole! It may not work all the time so don’t stretch it like this book!

Reduce your expectations and you might even enjoy this one! The audio moves very fast and this was over in just three days of driving to and from the office!

Enjoying audio books!