A good reminder to give yourself a break.

The subtitle of this book is "Cut the crap and live your life," or, in other words, stop caring about what other people think of how you're living and just live it already. Midal goes through eight principles to live by, or to some, rules: stop obeying, stop rationalizing, stop comparing, stop being ashamed, etc. I had several thoughts as I was reading this. One, there wasn't really anything groundbreaking here. Every major point in this book is something I've read in articles both online and in magazines for years. I didn't read anything that made me have an a-ha moment. Second, and this is merely an observation, but what is everyone's fascination with the French? I've been seeing more and more content online with titles like "What the French eat in a day," "How to stay fit like a French woman," and "Why the French don't stress as much." I literally pulled all three of these from the email newsletters of big online publications in the last two weeks. Do the French have a leg up that I don't know about? Someone, please clue me in.
*ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

DNF - 1/2

A quick read about meditation and Buddhist beliefs that tries to present itself as new ideas, but in all honesty is the same as so many of its contemporaries. Midal packages each idea nicely with an "I'm about to tell you something new and life-changing" and instead, simply, re-words and repackages old ideas. I won't say I didn't get anything from the book, but it did not live up to the expectations I had going into the reading. Overall, Midal is right-freedom is attained when you just stop pressuring yourself to live up to societies expectations, your own expectations and just live life. This book just claimed this was something most people don't already know.


Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced e-book copy of this work in exchange for an honest review.

TBH - I could not finish this. I'm not sure if this was an issue of a wonky translation or if it was just me. But it was hard to follow & it felt like it bounced all over the place.

I didn’t like it much. I am not sure what I was hoping for, but this wasn’t it.

It was helpful to grasp Buddhist philosophy from a Western point of view, but I feel uncomfortable that the title implies the French invented these principles.

Pretty good. A little bit of mindfulness. A little bit of meditation. A lot about being kinder to yourself.

This is absolutely no help at all in terms of a self help book; instead it functions a lot better as a series of ranty essays on modern life by a French philosopher.