Life Love Books: Advice You Wish Your Parents Had Given You

by Mark Manson

A selection of blogs of the #1 international bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

"Just because everything appears to be a mess doesn't mean you have to be one. Mark Manson's book is a call to arms for a better life and better world and could not be more needed right now."
- Ryan Holiday, New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy

MARK MANSON is the New York Times and international bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. His blog, MarkManson.net , attracts more than two million readers per month. Manson lives in New York City.

Special edition for the "Week van het Engelse boek"
(the week in which English language books are celebrated/highlighted in the Netherlands)

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Personal Development, Philosophy, Psychology

85 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2019

About the author

Mark Manson (born 1984) is a professional blogger, entrepreneur, and former dating coach. Since 2007, he's been helping people with their emotional and relationship problems. He has worked with thousands of people from over 30 different countries.

He regularly writes and updates his blog at: www.markmanson.net

Reviews

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick and fast, quite refreshing in how big themes are tackled without sugarcoating
Perfection does not need to be a result. Perfection can be a process. Perfection can be the act of improvement, not the act of getting it right every time.

So this is a gift book (because we appear to live in a period of having weeks for all kind of books here in the Netherlands, last week it was cookbooks if I’m correct) for the week of English books.
And I surprisingly liked it.

Manson takes on life and how you’d could go about finding a purpose. Basically it’s about breaking the task into phases (without falling into the trap of perfectionism) to make it more manageable:
So when people say, “What should I do with my life?” Or “Whats my life purpose?” what they are actually asking is: “What can I do with my time that is important?”
This is an infinitely better question to ask. It’s far more manageable and it doesn’t have all of the ridiculous baggage that the “life purpose” question does.

The love part starts with some dating advice that feels entitled and oversimplified. But the relationship part is actually quite nice. Manson doesn’t sugarcoat, and writes down things that should take a place somewhere in our education, but most of the time is only in an implicit manner:
... while love may make you feel better about you relationship problems, it doesn’t actually solve any of your relationship problems.
And:
Why do we tolerate behavior in our romantic relationships that we would never ever, ever tolerate in our friendships?

Also the whole framework on conditional relations struck a chord with me:
When our relationships are conditional, we don’t really have relationships at all.
People with conditional relationships never learned to see people around them in terms of anything other than the benefits they provide. That’s because they likely grew up in an environment where they were only appreciated for the benefits they provided.

The books part finally was a bit unimpressive in comparative depth, but as a books person I couldn’t help to add three of the non-fiction recommendations on my list.

Made me curious for more from Mark Manson!

[Britt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ach ja, 't is wel weer een extra boekje bij m'n reading challenge

[Ruta Lēmane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick read and reminder of how to improve your life and love. Moreover, how to understand at what life stage you are right now and how to move onto next one. Short recap on how to notice are you loving someone conditionally or unconditionally, and not to be afraid of saying "no" for your own good or even "yes".
And a nice book recommendation at the end for further self-development. I just add some of the mentioned books to my want-to-read book list. Can't wait to read them.

[Jildou · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me it really was an eye opener. It lets you think about things you never thought about. It also was a challenging book for me, since I almost don't read English. The chapter 'books' was a bit disappointing for me, because they where hard books. For example: Nietzsche and Sir Freud :)

[The Artisan Geek · Rating 3 out of 5]

2/1/20
This was 'okay' for me. There were some points made that I agreed with and felt were insightful (especially the section on love), but the delivery of this content wasn't for me. A lot of the text (that what I believed was trying to be funny) came off as gaudy and flat.

2/3/19
My local bookstore kindly gifted me a copy of this booklet :)

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[Janneke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was definitely an interesting read. I don't think I agree with everything Manson wrote, but he definitely had some great points in this. There were quite a few truths I did recognise

[Tosca · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I read the other two books from Mark Manson and I always really enjoy his perspective on life and everything it contains. It also gives me motivation for a few days to try and improve myself or something and stop overthinking. This was a really small book (and I honestly didn't even know it existed until I saw a copy at my grandparents' house) so it was a nice quick read. Really enjoyed it again and I agree with the general message. The only comment I have: the chapter where he talks about books you should read (or rather: books that give Manson a 'woah' moment) was very white male dominated. In fact, no single book he mentioned is written by a woman and I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure all authors are also white. These books might still be mindblowing, but in this day and age, I think we can find at least one book written by a female/POC author that is at least as impressive.

[Zico Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple book explaining the concepts of love in different variations, how you can reflect on life and see where you currently stand in his metric. You even get some book suggestions in a well formulated template explaining why you should read it.

[Nastja Hendriks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the two first chapters! The last one with the book recommendations was not really necessary in my opinion

[Cindel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some clever insights and news ways to look at something. It actually sparked an idea in me. A way to expand on my legacy. I did not expect that.

[Killian De Geest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was zijn 2 euro zeker waard, heel snel en simpel.

[Liv Bloemhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, life changing and simple. I love this book. It gave words to thoughts in my mind.
I will definitely read more books from Mark Manson.

[Joy Beltman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eerste twee onderwerpen waren leuk. Het deel over de boeken was voor mij overbodig dus heb ik die ook geskipt. Verder was het wel een interessant kort boekje.

[Rianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

15/55 books read in 2020.
5/20 bookshelf reads in 2020.

Rating stays at 4, but now a full 4 stars.

I actually decided to skip the third part of the book, which is all about books that are supposed to change your life when you read them because that was the part that annoyed me and slowed my wish to finish the book last time.

Parts 1 and 2, life and love, are great essays. I recommend them to everyone.

4/55 books read in 2020.
1/20 bookshelf reads in 2020.

Actual rating: 3,5 stars + rounding up for the GR system.

So this was a gift in Dutch bookstores for the "Week van het Engelse Book" (Translation: English Books Week).
It is super short, quite pleasant. I remember quite liking it, but it clearly wasn't super shocking or outlandish because I don't remember that much about this after my tumultuous January.
I actually want to read it again, after this tumultuous month, because I remember thinking 'this is helpful and insightful' in November & it is super short.
So maybe more thoughts in the future. :)

[Luna Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

What bothers me immensely about this book is that it makes some very good points about life, love and books, but does so in a style that would probably make me feel more content eating the pages raw than reading them. The language Manson uses seems, ironically enough, very want-to-be-funny or even want-to-be-relatable: the book is full of swearing and jokes about sex. I haven’t heard the word “shit” this frequently in procession since I heavily bruised my toe on a couch a year ago.
When I read it, I really enjoyed Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Giving A Fuck. That said, I read it when I was freshly 18 and still thought his ideas were mind-boggling. Now, I find myself - though agreeing with what he puts forward - who he actually is to be telling us these things. Manson has a way of putting universal ideas into simple, but extremely cliche and largely unfunny words. Frankly, the book could use a bit more editing, as well.
A good example of the incongruous nature of the book is the fact that the entire thing is written in a straight-forward tone (if you ignore the attempts at jokes that consist largely of cultural references non-typical westerners would likely not understand), with big but recognizable ideas put into simple words, but then the books recommended at the end are by authors such as Nietzsche or Freud. If there is anything I could not imagine the general intended audience for this 83-page self-help book about life and love being excited to read, it is the dense prose written by Friedrich Nietzsche. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate Manson’s taste and his sharing of it - and I truly hope anyone could enjoy a good Freudian analysis - but to me it just feels as though the man needs to take another look at his target audience, edit a few small things, and drop a few shits.

[Chantal Lenting · Rating 4 out of 5]

✰ 3,7 - A small book to start the year with. I got this book as a gift while I was looking for some gems at the sale section at my local bookstore. The employee told me that this book meant a lot to him and changed his perspective upon a few things. His advice: "don't judge to quality of content based upon how many pages a book has." with that advice I left the bookstore. I didn't jump upon the hype yet and surely did miss out upon the other books of Mark Manson. After reading a few pages of Life Love Books I could understand the hype. The way he writes is so engaging and also feels so personal; as if I am given advice from a friend. The amount of quotes I underlined in the first two chapters are unbelievable; situations I could relate to, things that I should be aware about and also I could connect it to the people around me. (Might have recommended this book to five friends already.) Nevertheless, the last chapter; books, was an overkill for me. That is why this book get an ✰ 3,7.

[Vincie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Op zich staan er wel logische dingen over het leven en over liefde en (vriendschaps)relaties in, en wat uitstekende boekentips waar ik graag gehoor aan geef.

Ik heb het idee dat Manson graag een beetje 'populair' wil doen met z'n boekjes. De tekst leest als geschreven door een narcist. Ik heb nog nooit zo vaak 'fuck' zien staan in een boek, en dan is dit boek met 84 pagina's niet eens zo heel dik…

Het boekje stond al minstens 6 jaar in m'n kast, ik heb het altijd links laten liggen omdat het Engelstalig is, nu toch gelezen omdat ik voor m'n reis nog even een boek wilde lezen maar niet extra mee wilde zeulen. Het was wel oké, maar niet heel spectaculair.

[Galaxy Wings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes a book takes you ages to read (not because it’s boring, but because the book is 800 f*cking pages long) and sometimes you barrel through a book in one and a half hours. This book is the second one. It cost me exactly 2 euro’s, worth the investment I would say. Fun to read on the bus, with hard hitting questions which really make you think about why you do things the way you do. And then you nearly miss your bus stop and your life continues the way you have always lived it. Except with an extra book on your 2023 reading challenge.

[Jitske · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It does seem to me that Manson uses his edgy writing style to simplefy certain ideas and as a sort of unique sellingpoint, so just being edgy for marketingvalue. Most of what he says in this book seems rather obvious, but it good to be reminded of the obvious every now and again. He does make some poignant observations. All things considered, this was an entertaining and quick read.

[Simi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two sections on Life and Love really give you the advice you wish your parents had given you. However the third section, Books, does not feel in line with the previous sections and it resulted quite uninteresting and heavy in comparison, especially lacking Mark Manson's characteristic wittiness. Too bad it didn't make it to that 5th star...

[Athina (booknotes_athina) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this book isn't my cup of tea. It's kind of a self-help book and these aren't for me.
It consists of a selection of blog posts from the author on the topics of life and love and at the book section he recommends 7 non-fiction books.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting thoughts in it but I didn't like the writing style .

[Roelina Smedema · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved reading this book for my readathon. Really a great take on life and love. Especially the chapters about love really resonated with me and were a eye-opener. Love the humor in the book, because of this the book is funny and serious all at the same time and ensured that the message really came across.

[Danique · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this book for the English book week at one of my stores and honestly I didn't touch it until now. The writing style is hilarious but spot on. This books is amazing to look back on when I struggle with daily life problems.

[Esmée · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone who doesn't read (or likes) much non-fiction books, this was a great read. His writing style makes the book fun and it's still on point. There are some really good things to think about. Definitely going to read more of this author.

[jedidja · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate the book recommendations at the end a lot and I love some of the parts about love, but this style of writing really doesn't do it for me. Swearing every 3 sentences is not unique or funny - it's obnoxious and trying Very Hard to be relatable and quirky .

[Ellis]

DNF @54%
Meh.

Ik heb al m’n ongelezen boeken in mn boekenkast nagelopen en in Goodreads gezet. Toen ik er mee bezig was heb ik deze aan de kant gelegd omdat hij lekker kort is. Maar het is niks voor mij, dus ondanks dat ie zo kort is, kan ik niet de concentratie opbrengen om het uit te lezen.

[Heleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read if you need some affirmation of the things you already know deep down inside, but you can't yet accept as they are.

[Maike · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Juliette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this as a gift for the week of the English book and I was very surprised by it. Would love to read more by this author.

[Adel B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice short read. Really feels like a collection of blogposts though, so it can be superficial at times.