I have grave reservations about Mark Boyle's philosophy being in any way generalizable to the rest of us, but I am totally down with freeganism as a fulfilling alternative lifestyle. This book was a fun read, and the author wasn't an insufferable, pretentious douche as these guys sometimes are (or if he was, he was too charming and Irish to come off that way on the page). ( )

3.5 stars

Boyle isn't the most gifted writer, but he's surprisingly not terrible, either. I really enjoyed this look into his year without using money at all, and was encouraged/inspired to double down on my efforts to live a more simple life, which ultimately was the point, right?

I didn't love the layout, as paragraphs were interrupted by boxes of unrelated text. Also, there was a weird mix of UK and U.S. units of measurement. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.

The author isn't a Christian, so he's convinced the world can be saved by humanity. (It can't.) There's a brief reference to evolutionary theory as fact. (It isn't.) Boyle swears a few times. But overall, worth a read for the inspiration. ( )

Overall I enjoyed this book as it certainly made me stop and think about my impact on the world and the environment. While I don’t plan on going moneyless, I think it’s a great compliment to minimalism living and that would be a more likely adaptation into the mainstream. ( )

I am a left-leaning, mainly vegan, socialist simplicity seeker who loves reading books about environmental issues, 'downsizing' and philosophy around the way the current materialistic and capitalist system is shaping everything from the built environment to human happiness. So surely this is the book for me, right?
Um no.
I have the audiobook, and my heart started to sink as I heard the author start with his little simplified explanation of how in the past everyone happily bartered, and then someone came along and invented money, and debt, and then things went pear shaped. Sorry, but this is just totally inaccurate, especially the whole 'everyone used to barter' idea. Perhaps the author should have read a book such as 'Debt: The First 5,000 Years' by David Graeber, which explains why this is just simply untrue (and is a much better book about the effects of debt and money).
There are also some other philosophical and historical ideas that really rubbed me the wrong way - Boyle falls in to the 'noble savage' fallacy idea at times that primitive tribes that weren't as materialistic didn't have theft or crime or whatever - and he can be very, very judgemental of other people's choices, alternating his 'my way or the highway' standpoint with some really naive viewpoints such as that you don't notice the changing of the seasons if you live in a city (speak for yourself), or that everyone except those that live in isolated country can connect with nature.
I really wanted to like this book. And I think his experiment, and many of the ideas behind it, are valuable. But his philosophy, writing style and frank naivety were off-putting for me. ( )

Boyle's stance may be extreme, but there's a great deal of high-quality vegan protein in this book. His motivations are pure, his goals lofty, his ideals still pretty shiny, and if he did occasionally cause me to grind my teeth at his stubbornness, well, chalk that up to me being a thousand years older than he.

A fascinating look at another way to live. I live on way less money than lots of people I know, and I'm a forager, a dumpster-diver and a rescuer of other people's trash- but compared to Boyle I live in luxury and indolence, spoiled as a princess- and consuming like a princess, burning the earth's resources so I can have a warm bath. Reading about his mid-winter outdoor unheated showers gave me the heebie-jeebies, I admit. But I came away from this book admiring of his stance and eager to adopt some of his less punishingly Spartan ideas. ( )