Entertaining, enlighteneing and essential.
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Within the one broad theme of 'Idleness', Hodgkinson manages to encompass so many neglegted yet important facets of life. Our need to work less and play more is justified in a very well written book using examples and quotes from some great thinkers through history.
The greatest strength of this book is that it gives you a warm feeling that things you enjoy - beer gardens, sleeping etc - are actually really good for you. The guilt associated with not working so many hours per week, or needing to get up early to do DIY, are actually relics from the industrial revolution. This era of mass production with time as a mere commodity can be changed if people take on board the ideas of this book and adjust their lives to suit their soul and not their bank balance.
The book is divided into neat sections, each with a well placed quote, this makes it easy to read when visiting the toilet or having a bath. Although the tone is whimsical and flippant I think you can take a serious message from How to be Idle.
Who would I recommend this book to? Well..., everyone really.
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Made me think
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This book made me think about life and how I'm living it (and for those who dislike it, at least read the last chapter, it has the most fuel for thought). Although I don't agree with him entirely I do think that we have become enslaved by the system and serve it rather than it serving us. Many of us live to work rather than work to live and we need to look at how we're living and decide if we really want to continue in misery or change things to suit us. We have moved, unthinking, into the 20th and 21st centuries, all the time moving faster, working harder, striving for something that might be within our grasp if we slowed down and thought about it.
Although I wouldn't be as idle as he espouses, I do think that I wouldn't mind down-shifting my life.
This book is a series of views on a variety of issues from smoking to napping, a book that encourages us to think about our lives rather than just put our lives in neutral and keep going. Agree with him or disagree with him, he made me think about how much of my life is spent rushing instead of enjoying.
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Great style, wit and creativity- bit short on the action
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But then again maybe that is the point. Tom is always funny, engaging and stimulating. While I may have problems with the basis of his anarchist philosophy- its all Puritanism fault apparently- many of his down shifting suggestions and his rejection of materialist values are spot on. However to prove the point about idleness Tom has actually implemented very few of his suggestions. As the old Rolls Royce driving gurus use to say "Look at the moon not the finger that points at it". But then again maybe not.
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My 100-word book review
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I found this book an enjoyable way to spend a few stray hours. Hodgkinson is an entertaining and quirky writer with a fine sense of mischief but whose underlying message is a serious one. Some of the things he advocates are not for me (I dislike cigarette smoking, and rioting and raves seem like appalling wastes of energy) but dreaming, daydreaming, getting up late and becoming lost in reveries are all activities I love. The regimented ways in which many of us work nowadays are tantamount to slavery, and this book is a subversive nudge in the direction of freedom.
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Don't take it too seriously - it's a great read
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I think some of the reviewers of this book are taking it far too seriously in saying that the premise is flawed and that society can't cope with everyone being idle.... come on, this book is meant as a light-hearted reflection of some people's natural desire for laziness!
If you are one of those people who just can't get out of bed in the morning, or who can't help procrastinating at work, this book will resonate with you and make you smile with agreement the whole way through! You are not alone!!
Full of anecdotes and references to famous idlers throughout history, this book really struck a chord with me - I recognised myself in so much of it! This doesn't mean that I have quit my job and am doing nothing for the rest of my life - but one can but dream of guilty pleasures and the occasional sick day!!
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