Sam Horn

I was given this as a part of the GoodReads FirstReads program. Its an ARC (an uncorrected galley proof).

I'm not much for self help books, but I have been known to read a few from time to time (because lord knows I need about as much help as humanly and nonhumanly possible).

Sadly, I didn't care for this at all, much at all really. I felt much of the help was 'trope'-ish and cliched and at times nonsensical. "Pick up and leave".... "unless...." ...."you don't feel like it" .... "then stay".... Gee..................

There is also a very much affluent bent to the book that does come across far from subtly. Those with the ability to affect their own change, through money, job, options, contacts, etc, take heed, you can change your life! (Like those aren't already the people fully self-aware of this issue/idea).

And once again much of it also comes off as a "hey I did X, X, X, and Y, Z, and 1, 3, and 8 in my life, why don't you people 'AT LEAST' do X and Y?" The sheer amount of things and situations she does, ...well, its hard to say, but it either lends much MORE credibility to her cause, or devalues her cause because it showcases how she got 'lucky' enough for things to happen for her and her happenstance is a lot better and more well off than ours. (Hard to find difficulty in one's life who has a consistent source of money, got to spend years just 'teaching writing' on Hawaii no less, and 'miracle' event after 'miracle' event falls in her lap and she has hundreds of people helping her out.) None of this is realistic for 99.9999999% of people, and therefore it either strains the credibility of her idea (or the actualness behind it all) or it adds so much more credibility to her theories that it registers on a different level, especially the further in age the reader is.

I also think the 'life hack' idea as a backbone for the book doesn't work. Especially as it breaks everything down into 10 segments followed by a random number of chapters depending on the 'life hack' in question.

Her writing style is nice and pleasant, but at times a bit "well this worked for me, so it MUST work for you" and definitely is written for those with an income of say 70K or more per year. It is also written far more for a single lifestyle than for a married, family, or one with roots background.

And one last critique, and I understand this is an ARC and is unproofed and unedited.... but good god was there a ton of typos, misspellings, and erroneous word usage or (extra words like "to to" or "word word" and things like that). Perhaps it was because I was just taking a class on copyediting and editing in general, but this all really stuck out to me. Especially since it was pretty much one per paragraph (and a times much more than that, and even in headlines, chapter titles, and quotes). Like I said, I understood it was an unedited copy, but this still struck me as an incredulous amount of errors. And just took me out of the writing much of the time. But luckily this won't be an issue (I imagine/hope so) in the finished product.… (altro)