Customer Reviews

Give It Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Mary Carlomagno's book seemed like a great idea - assessing the waste in our lives, learning to be happy with the simpler things, slowing down, living purposefully and not buying into the stampede for the latest style and technology.

This lightweight book did touch on some soulsearching, but when each month was over, she gleefully returned to each of her vices. I didn't expect her to give up her cell phone forever, but I don't really see the purpose of giving up alcohol or mega-shopping only for a month. The author had piles of clothes in her closet with the tags still on them, and fancy books she bought only because they look good on her bookshelf. She has bought into the commercialization of Christmas, with long lists of gifts to buy with a click of a mouse and frantic re-gifting...totally missing the point that Christmas isn't about gifts in the first place.

She and her friends meet for binge drinking on a regular basis, gossiping and getting sloshed in public. To avoid social ostracism, she feebly explains to these friends that her "one month only" ban on alcohol is just for research purposes.

Overall she comes across as a shallow and appearance-conscious young woman who flirts briefly with real lifestyle changes in order to write a book.

The only part of the book I really connected with was her month of not eating out. I liked the way she applied herself to learning to make wholesome homemade food, and honoring traditional family recipes. In a fast food nation, more of us need to do this very thing. As I read this chapter, I kept thinking, "instead of moaning over not being able to join friends at a restaurant, why not invite them over and cook a great meal for them?"

I'm continuing in my search for a book written by someone who gives up coffee or turns off the TV forever, and sees it as a positive move.

I pictured myself standing on the sidelines cheering for this woman's conscious choices, and being impressed by the self-knowledge that resulted from her thoughtful experiences.

Instead, I discovered a spoiled consumer who, try as I might, I could not like. She came across as arrogant and not the least bit introspective or serious. After reading this book, I believed she cooked the whole thing up as a flimsy excuse to write a book. I did not believe for a minute that she had made any long term changes in her life as a result of her experiences.

Through each of her months of self-delial, she takes her friends and family on a trip that I'm sure they'd just as soon skip. Cancelling dinner dates because she couldn't have a cocktail? And the inconvenience she put her friends through during the month she gave up her cell phone is not to be believed. It's a wonder she has any friends left. "Hey, c'mon, guys, I have a CHAPTER to write here -- just hang in there!"

I would have been more impressed if she'd thought out each item carefully, and done some true introspection: "What makes sense here? What am I truly trying to accomplish? How could my life change for the better as a result of my doing this?"

I could have forgiven even all of that if she had been a good writer. In the hands of a competent writer, each of her chapters could have been hilarious, even in their shallowness. But she denies us even that.

Skip this book. I'm sending mine back.

The author means well, but her definition of "sacrifice" is questionable. She's not giving up food or running water or her ability to flush the toilet after 8 PM...she's giving up chocolate and elevators and curse words. CURSE WORDS! Her intention is commendable, but to call these acts 'sacrifice" just reminds us how excessive our society really is.

But let me be clear: I'm not saying that suffering=sacrifice; her attempt to say no to things like excessive shopping and television is a good start. But like an actress rehearsing a role, she only skims the surface, only visits the new lifestyle without any real attempt to make a permanent change in her life. When she talks about her month without alcohol, for example, she goes on about what it felt like being LEFT OUT of her drinking circle and less about her new found self-awareness. It had the "whoa is me" tone that you'd expect from a rich girl on her 16th birthday when she expects a brand new BMW but gets a Toyota Camry instead. The idea is a good one, but it gets lost in the message of "this is how upper-middle class Americans define sacrifice". And that, if only accidentally, becomes the book's theme.

Or the other classic--when she gives up her cell phone for a month. Her CELL phone! She can use all other phones, the phone at home, phones at work. This becomes more about being inconvenienced and less about 'giving something up'. To add insult to injury, she even excuses herself enough to borrow her HUSBAND'S cell phone...an item that many of us didn't even HAVE ten years ago. And again, she writes a whole chapter where she feels great pride about her new found self-control. How did she DO it?

I go back to the actress analogy--she wants to visit change without really changing. I would have been impressed if she had discovered more, if her experiment had opened more doors of self-awareness than it did. By the end I thought she might give away half her things to the poor and find herself a lot happier, etc, etc. But it came off more like an essay of "what I did this summer". The book's title sounded like it brought more to the table than that.

It's like the guy sitting at a cafe in downtown Paris--he may feel like a traveler, but he's definitely a tourist.

Warning....some possible small spoilers

I had such high expectations for this book and was overwhelmingly let down! The book started with a unique and interesting premise: give up things that are important to you, yet somehow negative in your life for one month at a time. Yet, it didn't really go anywhere. It seemed like half the time she said, "Oops, I forgot I wasn't supposed to be doing this," and didn't really take the project all that seriously. The drinking chapter was particularly difficult for me to read. I cannot believe that she would rather not see her friends than not be able to drink while with them. How selfish can one person be! She also managed to use everyone else's cell phone during her month of no cell phone use.

Also, I think there is a huge class difference between the writer and myself. I'm a second year graduate student in social work living in the Midwest. The idea of giving up $6 Frappachinos, shopping for Chloe mini-dresses, $12 salads and $300 cell phone bills is laughable to me. Not to mention that most of the things she gives up (coffee, taking elevators, cursing, and taxis) register a big so-what with me.

A New Jersey woman gives up coffee for a month (and instead switches to tea), walks instead of taking a taxi, and uses her boyfriends cell phone instead of her own. Someone put her up for sainthood. The author came across as shallow, arrogant, materialistic, spoiled and annoying. The book read as another rich person deciding to throw off the shackles of consumerism, but only until it actually hurts them and no longer becomes fun. I am very thankful I checked this one out at the library.

The idea is a great one - give up a vice a month for a year and see how all of this vice 'lent' changed your life. However, the execution left much to be desired. The author simply reports her findings in an almost clinical but certainly uninteresting way.

For instance. The writer gives up drinking for a month, starts to realize that she has MANY drinking buddies and MANY drinking dates spread over the month, and starts to wonder what her relationship with alcohold is. Instead of delving deep, wondering why she associates herself with people who need to get hammered to open up she rests her observations at the superficial. Peer pressure made me drink in college and if I just don't give in to peer pressure I will be a better person. What I, as a reader, was screaming for was deep introspection, witty insites, self depricating humor, anything but what seems like a laundry list of superficial obsevations.

The writer seemed like a nice person, I love the idea of her project, but I don't think this genre of writing is good for her. Thus, the book falls very flat.

Cell phone, cable TV, gourmet coffee, manicures, taxis...get real! Don't waste your time on this silly book.

The author (who apparently drinks tooooo much) seemed to be giving up things for fun, learning hardly nothing from the process. She chose special months to give up certain things to fit her schedule - that's not real strugle. Give up this book and save a tree.

She's giving things up that the majority of Americans don't even have the monies to buy and patting herself on the back. What I found more interesting were the number of 5-starred reviews HERE that all tend to read the same. Checking each of them, the majority of the 5-starred reviews are - guess what? - the ONLY review by that reader. It looks like the author has gone from cluttering her life to cluttering amazon with falsified reviews.

Carlomagno never really gets around to touching on how her life was bettered by giving things up. Sure, she mentions how she gets more done by not watching TV at night, or how she comes to appreciate poetry more by reading it instead of the morning paper. But most of her prose is spent complaining about how she craved what she gave up for the month and counting the days until it's over. She even calls November (the month she gave up chocolate) her "chocolate strife," and goes to bed November 30 dreaming of the next day when she can indulge again.

Even if you consider giving up chocolate, alcohol, taxis, and cell phones "living with less," I think Carlomagno misses the point of going without.

I gave her book two stars because she does have an enjoyable writing style, and a good sense of humor. However, if you're looking for inspiration and advice on living more with less, you definitely won't find it here. And if you already have a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity and know the joys of living simply, you won't find a kindred spirit in Carlomagno.

I normally love first-person accounts of social experiments and voluntary deprivation, but this has to be the worst one I've ever read. My distaste for this book was enough to spur me to write my first ever negative book review.

It's obvious from the beginning that the author, though older than I am, can only be described as a spoiled brat. Her deprivations were relatively minor, and the fact that she would slingshot back to her old ways (racing to indulge in chocolate, alcohol, etc. again the very moment her month was up) was a little disgusting. It feels like she didn't learn a damned thing during her meager 30 days. I think the experiment would have been a lot more interesting to read and meaningful for her if her deprivations were compounded and accumulated throughout the year, not just 'dabbling' in deprivation of things from month-to-month. And I can't believe she didn't even do a cumulative look back for the year at the end of the book. It further added to the sense that she didn't learn much during her little experiment; certainly not enough to warrant even a two page epilogue or summary, it seems.

Oh, and when I say she dabbles in the deprivation of things, I mean luxuries. Oh no, boo-hoo, no cabs for a month? No lattes? Big deal! I've lived in NYC all my life and rarely take a taxi; it's NOT such a big deal to go without as she makes it out to be. Reading about a timid Jersey Girl is neither informative nor entertaining. In general, I don't think she can imagine how many millions of people have to get by with much less for much, much longer. How is anyone supposed to feel sympathetic to her 'plight' when she talks about spas, yoga classes, going to the gym, and shopping at expensive stores all the time? It's like a spoiled rich kid saying, "Oh no! I can't believe I have to live without my chauffered limo for two whole weeks!" or "OMG, my dad took away my iPhone AND my Sidekick!" I feel repulsed rather than sympathetic with her and it was only through sheer effort of not leaving a book unfinished that I forced myself to read through to the end, but with an ever-increasing sense of annoyance and disgust.

All in all, she offers no societal insight, throws in a (unsupported by footnotes or endnotes) generalized statistic every now and again that she maybe thought would give weight to her book but they really just sound like they're from a brochure, and does not engage in any kind of personal transformation or insight. I received this book for free from a friend after mentioning I'd wanted to read another book by this author, and I'm glad. I'm glad I didn't have to pay any money for this book, and I'm glad that I now know not to spend any money or waste any time reading any of her other work. If this book is any kind of insight into her mind and approach to things, I wouldn't spend a single grimy penny on any of her books or services. Please, don't waste your money on this, folks.