Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016) was an airport reading. One of those books you pick up in the hopes that is fast-paced enough to make your wait fly by and entertaining enough to engage you.
The title hints at the truth: it is a self-help book, but an unusual one. As the book points out, "conventional life advice (...) is actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures already be, and then emphasizes them for you" (p.4). On the other hand, Manson's manual opens with Bukowski's story and the epitaph on his tombstone that could serve as a life motto: "Don't try" (p.3). It then goes on to flip widely accepted definitions of success, happiness, growth and truth in the aims of teaching us "to give fewer fucks. It will teach you not to try" (p.22).
The style is refreshingly honest and colloquial, and I found myself smiling and sometimes suppressing a laugh while reading. It's comforting to escape the tyranny of exceptionalism and finally discover that we are, after all, pretty average, with our blind spots and our faulty brains - failures in the making. But failure is also a relative concept, one of those counterintuitive values Manson goes on to dissect (p.89) in what constitutes a smart, enjoyable and fun punch in the face.
"The benefits of the Internet and social media are unquestionably fantastic (...) But perhaps these technologies are having some unintended social side effects. Perhaps these same technologies that have liberated and educated so many are simultaneously enabling people's sense of entitlement more than ever before" (p.57)"Death is the light by which the shadow of all of life's meaning is measured" (p.195)"Even Mark Twain (...) said, "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time" (p.204)
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