Eric Brende

4.5 stars

Part memoir, part critique of modern living, and a few helpful tips about using less technology.

I really liked this book - it was informative and funny, and easy to read. I highly recommend it to anyone who is feeling tired with the "normal" mentalities of bigger is better and being busy means you matter.

Honestly, one of the only drawbacks I found related to his faith. He's Catholic, and yet at one point, when he mentions God's influence in the world, he tacks on "or substitute here your own word for the hidden impetus underlying and uniting visible phenomena" (p 45), which was a huge copout to me. For someone who doesn't believe in God, it would be easy enough for them to come to that workaround on their own, but for a Christian to hand it to them and essentially state that truth about God is relative is just not okay, as it contradicts the Bible, God's Word.

Other than that, a great read.… (meer)

Overall a good book but the author comes across to be a bit of an evangelical fundamentalist with his anti-technology views. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to that, though, having had similar feelings and broadcast them on my blog back when we lived in a yurt with no electricity or running water for 2 years. Ten years after that, living then in a highrise in Canada's biggest city I realized that it was pretty narrow-minded of me to be so sure that living that simply was not only right for me but the way everyone should be living. It was right for our family then, and a different way of life is right for us now.

The author seems to fall into the same trap I did - feeling that the fact that the life change he made then and that worked so well for him then was the life change that everyone else needs to make, and that many of society's ills are caused by the failure of everyone to do so.… (meer)