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A review by ellemaddy
The Art of Solitude: What I Think About When I'm on My Own by Desi Anwar
1.0
This is my subjective opinion about the book, so if you do find comfort from this I am not here to invalidate you.
Getting into this book I had my own set of expectations. I expected it to be a self help / inspirational book that could help you to deal with your own solitude. But I quickly found that that’s not the case. What you can find here instead are a collection of short essays about several different topics, from the aforementioned solitude, about dreams, and weirdly enough about AI. The topics felt sporadic and they felt way too simple and generic for me. They read like writings you can find on an english test (I did read the english version) like when the test is asking you to describe an idea in 5000 words or something. It felt kind of clinical and impersonal and I just had a hard time of relating to any of the topics because there seems to be no personality going on behind these essays.
“The advices” that i expected and had found here like "Improve a skill" or "imagine yourselves in your memory palace" are such basic advice that you can find on google or probably you have had thought / done yourselves. It just feels like empty and shallow words that mean nothing and they felt very impersonal so I find it hard for me to care. The thoughts and ideas that are being shared here are also thoughts and ideas I already have myself. Maybe this book would fit a younger audience better.
In my opinion I just think that this book doesn’t know what it wants to do. Is it supposed to be a self help? Is it supposed to be a collection of essays where the author takes an idea and expand on it? Because it seems to me that it just doesn’t hit any of those goal and as the reader I just felt like i can take nothing from this book. No new ideas is being offered here, no good advice, no inspiring anecdotes etc.
Getting into this book I had my own set of expectations. I expected it to be a self help / inspirational book that could help you to deal with your own solitude. But I quickly found that that’s not the case. What you can find here instead are a collection of short essays about several different topics, from the aforementioned solitude, about dreams, and weirdly enough about AI. The topics felt sporadic and they felt way too simple and generic for me. They read like writings you can find on an english test (I did read the english version) like when the test is asking you to describe an idea in 5000 words or something. It felt kind of clinical and impersonal and I just had a hard time of relating to any of the topics because there seems to be no personality going on behind these essays.
“The advices” that i expected and had found here like "Improve a skill" or "imagine yourselves in your memory palace" are such basic advice that you can find on google or probably you have had thought / done yourselves. It just feels like empty and shallow words that mean nothing and they felt very impersonal so I find it hard for me to care. The thoughts and ideas that are being shared here are also thoughts and ideas I already have myself. Maybe this book would fit a younger audience better.
In my opinion I just think that this book doesn’t know what it wants to do. Is it supposed to be a self help? Is it supposed to be a collection of essays where the author takes an idea and expand on it? Because it seems to me that it just doesn’t hit any of those goal and as the reader I just felt like i can take nothing from this book. No new ideas is being offered here, no good advice, no inspiring anecdotes etc.