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Anyone Read This Yet?

Brad Bowers

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,187
No but I read the Times review of it and decided the book held nothing that applied to my life, so I saw no point in reading it.

Brad
 

Paisley

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,439
Location
Indianapolis
I don't see how this is "groundbreaking." People have been complaining for years about how "busy" they are. How busy can someone be who has time to read this book?

A lot of folks--myself included--could free up several hours every week by shutting off the TV, computer, blackberry, and cell phone and cancelling some activities that don't add much to life. Our ancestors, on the other hand, couldn't simply stop feeding their livestock, mending their clothes or splitting the firewood. Ah, simpler times!
 

Lady Day

I'll Lock Up
Bartender
Messages
9,087
Location
Crummy town, USA
Considering how it was just published 13 days ago, I doubt people here are that on top of their current releases.

A bit more info in the OP would have been nice.
For people who dont really want to go clicking to other sites:

Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety

Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. How many of us now work from home, our wireless economy allowing and encouraging us to work 24/7? How many of us talk to our children while scrolling through e-mails on our BlackBerrys? How many of us feel overextended, as we are challenged to play multiple roles–worker, boss, parent, spouse, friend, and client–all in the same instant?
Dalton Conley, social scientist and writer provides us with an X-ray view of our new social reality. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., Conley connects our daily experience with occasionally overlooked sociological changes: women’s increasing participation in the labor force; rising economic inequality generating anxiety among successful professionals; the individualism of the modern era--the belief in self-actualization and expression--being replaced by the need to play different roles in the various realms of one’s existence. In this groundbreaking book, Conley offers an essential understanding of how the technological, social, and economic changes that have reshaped our world are also reshaping our individual lives.

LD
 

Foofoogal

Banned
Messages
4,884
Location
Vintage Land
I don't see how this is "groundbreaking."

I just happened to run across it on Amazon and thought I would ask. As I thought it fit in with some of our discussions around here it caught my eye and I thought I may want to read it.
Go back to your regular scheduled program.

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Less-Limiting-Yourself-Essential/dp/1401309704/ref=pd_sim_b_3
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Simplicity-Mary-Carlomagno/dp/0811863948/ref=pd_sim_b_4

These also look timely and related to the FL conversations lately.

So far still have power in our nasty ice storm. Yeah....
 

Paisley

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,439
Location
Indianapolis
I was referring to a review of the book that called it "groundbreaking." I didn't mean that you shouldn't have posted it. Actually, I find first world problems interesting (e.g., I have such a large house--where do I put my espresso machine?). I see it as the same rat race that people have been complaining about for generations.
 

Feraud

Bartender
Messages
17,190
Location
Hardlucksville, NY
The essay written from the Blackberry is a slick piece of marketing...

Amazon Exclusive Essay: Dalton Conley Writes in from His BlackBerry (Typos Intact)

I am writing this on my BlackBerry as I sit on the sidelines of my daughter's soccer game. ..

Maybe this guy ought to turn off the gadget and pay attention to his daughter. :rolleyes:
 

kampkatz

Practically Family
Messages
715
Location
Central Pennsylvania
Feraud, I'm with you.
For some reason people nowadays feel that if they are not doing more than one thing at a time they are not being as efficient as possible. Quality and quantity don't always go hand in hand.
 

Foofoogal

Banned
Messages
4,884
Location
Vintage Land
Maybe this guy ought to turn off the gadget and pay attention to his daughter.

isn't this the whole point of him writing the book? I was hoping it was him wanting a simpler life. Now I guess I will have to read it.
How many of us talk to our children while scrolling through e-mails on our BlackBerrys? How many of us feel overextended, as we are challenged to play multiple roles–worker, boss, parent, spouse, friend, and client–all in the same instant?
 

MrNewportCustom

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,265
Location
Outer Los Angeles
. . . And the pendulum swings in the other direction . . .

I'm old enough to remember the words of days gone by expressing a need to get more output, more production, more fun, more money, more time for everything in life. "YOU CAN DO IT ALLLLLL!!" Or, more specifically, "Computers will make our lives easier. They'll give us more free time, because they'll do the lion's share of the work." Uhm . . .

Now we're complaining (not necessarily us here in the Lounge, specifically . . . maybe) about having too much on the plate. It seems the computer turned out to be a double-edged sword: Yeah, it makes life easier . . . easier to do your banking, easier to shop, easier to write that report, easier to find things you shouldn't see, easier to work (or continue working) from home instead of spending time with the family, easier to work from the sidelines of your daughter's soccer game . . . Gee! Where did that come from?

So this book is about "doing more, spending less time with family, friends and self, having more money." Basically, it's about how we've shifted our lives to be exactly what we've been wanting it to be, but now everyone wants life to be easier, less stressful, provide more time to spend with the family, bring us more money. . . . Do you see the same odd irony that I see, here?

You can't have it all, folks! Choose the lifestyle you want and stick with it. I just hope the one you choose doesn't adversely affect the family, if you have one. There are people out there who do a lot, earn a lot and still spend plenty of time with their families. It's called "balance."

You know, I just thought of something. . . . Here this guy is texting a synopsis of his book from the sidelines of his daughter's soccer game. It makes me wonder: Has he not learned anything from his own book? [huh]


Lee
__________________

Hm!
 

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