A review by cavernism
The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store by Cait Flanders

reflective medium-paced

1.5

I read this expecting something totally different based on the book jacket description. I can't blame the author for writing more of a memoir, but I can blame the editor and publicist for marketing it as a self-help book when it really isn't. I was frustrated the with the lack of depth as to why it's hard to resist buying things and the cultural and environmental implications of this. I guess it's unfair for me to rate a book low based on what I wished the book was versus what it was trying to do, but I found it frustratingly surface-level on the issue of having lots of things in general, while also being unhelpful for the general person wanting to simplify their lives beyond very intuitive, basic things. Also, if it's going to be an effective memoir, the author should have a compelling story to tell. I got so bored hearing about her travel itineraries and disjointed details about her family, friends, and addictive habits. To paraphrase The Office, this book could on a list of memoirs titled 'People I Don't Care About.' That sounds really harsh - I think even the most "typical" lives can be made fascinating by a good writer. The writing is simply not compelling enough to make it a good memoir, nor is it insightful or informative enough to make it a good self-help book.

I also was not expecting the blithe fatphobia the author directs at herself (casually throwing in phrases like how much she weighed and how unattractive that made her at her lower points) or the pretty detailed descriptions of alcoholism. Overall, this book didn't have the content I was looking for, and even the resources section was laughably bare-bones.
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