Falling While Sitting Down: Stories

by Joshua Fields Millburn

What does it mean to be human? How does a person find meaning in his or her life when everything's falling apart? Falling While Sitting Down is a short story collection about dealing with loneliness and discontent while balancing hope and despair. Ultimately, this book's stories deal with finding meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. The first four stories in this collection, written by Joshua Fields Millburn, discuss the struggles we face as we attempt to discover the meaning of our lives. "It's All So Quiet in Brooklyn," this collection's longest piece, follows a young but aging musician as he approaches thirty and finds himself coping with loneliness and depression in the aftermath of several life-changing events. He feels utterly alone, so he leaves Ohio to search for meaning in the most unlikely place: Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. "A Radically Attenuated History of Generation X" is, as the title suggests, an incredibly short story that attempts to summarize a particular ethos for an entire generation through the eyes of two characters on a dinner date. The title story, "Falling While Sitting Down," follows an unnamed boy through eighteen years of growing up in an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, showing the emotional muscles it takes to survive such circumstances. The collection's final story, "Loneliest Man," considers the loneliness and real-life costs of poor relationship decisions from the point of view of a particularly troubled man. As a bonus, three talented young writers-Colin Wright, Chase Night, and Mark D. Robertson-contributed to this collection, expanding the narrative beyond the scope of Joshua Fields Millburn's four stories. The seven stories in this collection vary drastically, but they all share one thing in common: each story is about what it's like to be a human being during incredibly complex times.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

124 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 2011

About the author

Joshua Fields Millburn is one half of the simple-living duo The Minimalists. As the bestselling author of five books, Millburn has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine and has spoken at Harvard, Apple, and Google. His podcast, The Minimalists Podcast, is often the #1 health show on Apple Podcasts, and his popular documentary, MINIMALISM, is available on Netflix. Raised in Dayton, Ohio, he currently lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Wonderkell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 3 stories in this book, those by Joshua Millburn are potentially terrific. I really enjoyed them. My only complaint is that he seems to love big complicated words when the more regularly used word would be just as good. It's like he does it out of a deliberate attempt to sound more academic & literary, like a university student who uses big words to try for bigger marks. And I'll be honest - I'm no slouch in the brains department (and a litetature student myself), but I am a regular person & I found myself constantly referring to the dictionary. If this author wants to continue to attract readers he is going to have to tone it down - really, most of the time it was totally unnecessary. If you want to write about real life, use real life, conversational words.

Now to move onto the guest authors. Here is where I got really disappointed. The stories COULD have been quite good but were time & time again let down by editing errors (particularly the final story) such as spelling mistakes, incomplete or missing words, or the wrong version of a word eg. 'they're' & 'their'. To me, that sort of stuff is just laziness. You don't have to hire an editor, you've just got to check your work & your Kindle formatting.
So, all in all, a collection that never quite meets its potential, & it's such a true pity.

[leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the stories by the three contributors because they had texture and made me laugh. The first three stories felt too heavily wrought. I cringed a lot, especially since I admire Joshua Fields Millburn's blogs. His courage and effort in writing this book are to be applauded.

[Sarah Vangheluwe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bwa. 't Is eigenlijk een tweeênhalf. Verhalenbundel waarvan sommige verhalen me konden boeien, andere minder. De reden waarom ik het uitgelezen heb, is dat het zo kort was (max. 100 p. ongeveer - e-book).

[Gregory Witek · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a nice piece of writing. I like Joshua's style, but sometimes there's just too many words about nothing. These short stories, although interesting, seem to be missing something.

[Nik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially loved the story featured at the end of the book. The author of that story was Chase Night.