Customer Reviews

Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Very refreshing book on the simple life, proving to our society that we all can get by with less and to review our daily lives with more simplicity. This book was a culmination of personal stories very real and to the heart
warming soul of many people who are on a treadmill, with bigger homes,racing to get ahead.My compliments
to the author for coming up with this journal of real life stories and to those who took time out to contribute.

A quick read to get a measurement of where you are on the satisfaction scale compared to the 20 examples from real folks around the country.

Particularly pertinent in this economic crisis. Much of what we all own is frivolous, simply to fulfill the want, not the need. A very satisfying read.

I recently reread part of this book which I had first read almost five years ago and I again found it to be stimulating and thoughtprovoking - and fun to read. No, there aren't any specific answers given because there are no cookie-cutter rules that apply to everybody. Different individuals with different personal core values and different challenges find very different solutions in this book, as they all look for the satisfaction of enough. A fascinating chorus of twenty authentic and engaging voices!

I felt like this was a generally useful and enjoyable read. It's more a collection of stories than a set of steps that you would need to go to if you wanted to simplify your life. Although I read it almost all in one sitting, the chapters/stories felt a little bit disjointed. It's still a good book though and is nice to hear actual stories of other people's issues and how they solved them.

Get Satisfied is a very satisfying read! I plan to share this book with friends and family. It's enlightening to know the life changes people have been able to make!

Please take this review with a grain of salt because I don't think I'm the "average" American at whom the book was obviously aimed (seems like that was what the "like you" in the subtitle meant). However, I bought the book expecting that it would be about people who "found the satisfaction of enough," as in the subtitle. I would say that most of the essays did describe people who have scaled back, so in that respect, if you consider that "finding the satisfaction of enough," it lived up to its claims. However, most of the authors also did not get down to simplicity to much of an extent, so the organization, "Simple Living America," becomes suspect to me. The last author was quite repulsive to me. It was an evangelical Christian ("God" and "prayers" every paragraph, please gag me) who mourned for 1 paragraph over having to get rid of his airplane and expects that the reader will share his pain over having to do so. It was really disgusting that he never once realized that 99% of his readers will not understand this or relate at all. Then in the next few paragraphs he goes into how poor he was (after having sold the plane? What happened to the proceeds?), so that he had to put items back @ the grocery store. Blech. The fact that they chose to place this essay last just colors my recollection of the entire book. Gag me.

The story of a woman who relocated from LA to Kentucky to buy 5 acres and build a 3600 square foot house with a 2400 square ft basement (she describes it as "nearly twice the space" of their previous home) for just her, her husband and 3 pets seems quite out of place in a book about "the satisfaction of enough." The first story of the woman whose house burned down didn't reflect an account of scaling back and simplifying - the family rebuilt the same house.

How were these stories chosen?!

If you want truly amazing stories of simplication and scaling back, listen to the stories of the long-term unemployed. They're the ones who should have been featured in this book, rather than the story of the IT guy voluntarily quitting his lucrative job to go live on a houseboat in San Francisco and jog all day. Really??!!