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"Mrs. Y, you said you weren't reading advice books anymore" I could almost hear you telling me this as I listened to this book. Well, dear reader, I know that. I remember saying that many times. The one I had read before this was infuriating, and I tossed it and never even spoke about it to any of you, my readers because it was that upsetting. But it did prompt me to say, "No more advice books."
Then Audible suggested this to me, and after reading the synopsis and a blurb off of Goodreads, I decided to take a try. So today, my reading buddies, I am doing a review of "The Courage to be Disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi.
Now, this review will not be on the validity of the advice, nor am I going to get on here and become some kind of zealot for the advice. This review is on the book, its listenability, the way it's structured, and its overall presentation. I'm doing that for every other book anyway, so let's keep up with it. The only thing I will say that is personal, this book gave me ideas on ways to feel more comfortable in my skin. If you are looking for something like that or a result like that, it'd be worth listening to and evaluating any advice in the book on your own.
That said, if you are a strong advocate of psychology by Carl Jung, or Sigmund Freud, or even Nietzsche, this may not be a book for you unless you have a very open mind because I think it might break the fourth wall of the narrative. This is the only spoiler I'm giving.
Onto the review of "The Courage to be Disliked."
Let me start with critiques.
My main critique comes from the category I have for "Lost In Translation." Allow me to preface this a bit. The book was easy to understand, but the concepts and validating them for myself would require research. It's the nature of the book. So, I will critique that aspect a bit, but I do so under the guise that I am a total novice. I know nothing of this stuff, so if I were going to validate it, I'd have to get into research mode. Spoiler, I didn't do that. If I do it later, that's on my time, but I have not as of writing the review for this book.
Now let me go into what I liked about "The Courage to be Disliked." The outline and the way the book's structure is set up changes this from a dry textbook that it could have been to something far more entertaining and easy to understand. I do not like psychology, I never have, but with this book, I can understand complicated terms in a realistic sense. So for that, this book is great.
Let me go into what I truly enjoyed, and it was the three narrators. Noah Galvin, Graeme Malcolm, and January LaVoy, worked in harmony to tell this story. There is one who is the omnipotent third-party narrator who does the setting. Then there is the young man, and then there is the older man. They play their parts well, and I felt like I was listening to a great conversation, which I feel is the group's purpose. It was wonderful.
Overall, this book is exciting and good food for thought. I don't know how sound any of this is for advice, and I'm not sure what would happen if a person took all of this to heart or not. I'm not here to grade it on that level. But if you listen to this book as a book and have it tucked into your mind as something to consider, it's rather enjoyable.
"The Courage to Be Disliked" on my scoring has earned an 81 out of 100, and that's a 4-star review on Audible, Goodreads, my blog, and the Reading Desk. If you are a psychology nerd and like enjoyable books, this is the book for you, in my opinion. If you would like to have an exciting counter to how you live, this may also be for you. As for me, I just enjoyed the conversation; it was pleasant and gave me things to think about.
Let me know what you think on Twitter! Find me @mrsy_writer and leave me some comments.
Until next time have a great rest of your week.
