Customer Reviews

Slow is Beautiful: New Visions of Community, Leisure and Joie de Vivre

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

 

 

This book offers compelling and contemporary commentary on the ubiquitous, rampant, relentless drive to consume in America ...and the resulting time impoverishment in so many of our lives. Andrews shows how our life/work merry-go-rounds have spun out of control. Accelerated by the information age, spurred on by the corporate culture, many of us who are rushed, stressed, and separated from our true selves perceive no way to get off.

Through research and witty descriptions of her own experiences, Andrews reveals how an obsession with professional status and commercial/material success can be antithetical to joyful living. She peels back the shallow surface of these cherished "values" and exposes them as surface intoxications, spurred by corporate culture -- and ultimately unsustainable. This builds her compelling case for the often repeated (but hitherto unheeded) message: personal happiness is more likely to emerge via simplicity than via complexity.... more likely to emerge via community than via self promotion.

For most of us to slow down, we need to make priorities adjustments and philosophy shifts, and we need to acquire new habits. Fortunately, Andrews' vision offers numerous alternatives and antidotes to the greed trap and the speed trap, reminding us that, with sufficient creativity, the choice of how to live is really ours. And when we do slow down, Andrews convincingly concludes, we can be effective members of a "subversive" (slow) counterculture. This burgeoning community will, with sufficient time, wield powerful influences....and powerful delights.

This book confirmed all my reasons for leaving the big city and raising my family in the country. It is too bad the author has to thrust her political views on the reader. Views that have nothing to do with slow living. I even gave the book to friends and they said her political ranting ruined the book for them. This is too bad because it is a wonderful book full of life changing advice and insightful quotes. I would have given it 5 stars if she had left out her personal hatred (which conflicts with her version of slow living), of certain political ideas. I found it hard to believe in the beauty of the book when it was filled with such negativity.

I picked up this book because it sounded like something that EVERYONE should read. We definitely need to slow down, become involved in our communities and bring more happiness back into our lives. What I was subjected to in this book, however, was the author's political rants about how Conservatives have ruined this country! I'm an independent and I actually felt sorry for any conservative who might be reading this book - it was harsh. We are ALL a part of the problem, which makes us ALL a part of the solution. She does have some great quotes and some ideas that sound good no matter what your political party may be - hence the two stars. The joy is hidden in the vitriol in this book.

This book present good information on a important issue. Unfortunately, the author's tone makes the book hard to read. For example, she makes disparaging remarks about "right-wingers." I enjoyed reading the first five chapters and highlighted a few lines here and there and wrote comments in the margins. I found less pleasure and enlightenment as I read the rest of the book. The bibliography lists several books that I would like to read.

I was very disappointed in this book. Though it includes some useful summaries of related literature and research, the author's self-aggrandizing and bizarre, long-winded defense of quitting her job (I would have told her she would be fired under the circumstances as well) diminishes her credibility. As well, though I may agree with her, her editorializing on the Right Wing is boring and lacks analysis. I'm actually amazed that she found a publisher and that an editor actually scrutinized this book. Great topic- poorly addressed.

Cecile Andrews has some good ideas and good things to say, but these are very difficult to ferret out, as she appears to be consumed by a hatred of all things right-wing, most particularly George W. Bush. It's a little hard to build a case for building community when one is so intolerant of roughly half of the US population.

I really wanted to love this book. And I agree with the reviewers who praise it for its basic premise -- and most of the content. But likewise, I was turned off by the abrupt political jabs and barbs that laced an otherwise lovely treatise on slow living. In the book, the author often points out that Americans are "competitive" and caught up in one-up-manship. Yet her periodic rants against Republicans and "the right wing" seem combative and challenging in ways that contradict the overall spirit of the lifestyle she is trying to promote. I should add that I share many of her political views. Yet I don't believe it was necessary to bring those views into the discussion here. It spoiled what could have been a first-rate argument for living peacefully and cooperatively. That said, it's a worthy read and will hopefully prompt more discussion about the topic of slowing down and stopping the madness that keeps us from living our best lives.

Like the other reviewers, I felt that I could have done without the arrogant "George Bush stole my bike!" ravings found in the book. There were a lot of good ideas in this book, but it seems that my Left is no longer a group of inclusion.

This could have been a 5 star book, but the chant of hate that is spewed out of what started out as a song of beauty was so diasppointing that it barely merits 3 stars.

It is almost as if an intensely bitter pill of rhetoric was wrapped in the most sensuous turtle cheesecake imaginable. I was lured in by the smell, initial taste and texture but it took a flask of tequila to get any relief from the raw horseradish I wound up with a mouth full of.

We need to get back to the business of living instead of chasing wealth and status. In that endeavor, we don't need to get bogged down by attacking those that don't live that way. That is almost the opposite of what we're trying to do here.

Cacile Andrews offers a compelling alternative to the hustle and bustle of modern society. She speaks to the recognition that we have become too fast-paced and ignorant of what makes us happy. Andrews provides strong arguments on why we should work a little less, appreciate our lives a little bit more, and improve our culture in the process. The reader would benefit from a bit more reassurance that Andrews' suggestions are realistic and attainable in our culture. While her discussion on the "slow life" is articulate, and her arguments are sound, readers may be left with concern. Can I survive on a lower income? Has the "slow life" worked for other Americans, besides the small handful of case studies Andrews includes? Are there statistics to assert the argument that we can get by on much less consumption? (By the way, there are many to be found!).

I would have given the book a 5/5, if not for a strong concern, which is echoed by most of the other reviewers. Andrews takes a *very* strong and unnecessary political stance throughout the book. She continually ridicules the Republican party, and repeatedly demonstrates her disapproval of right-wing politics/policies. The message of her book would be no less effective if she omitted her political opinions, or at least showed greater tolerance for the opposite. I began reading the book a year ago, and put it down after two chapters because of the unnecessary (and occasionally inappropriate) political banter. I might add, I'm a Moderate. I was ready to write off the book as a poor purchasing decision. I'm glad I gave it another shot.

Reading this book was like eating a moist, rich cake with little rocks in it: the presence of the good stuff could not make up for never knowing if the next bite would be safe.

There is a famous quote incorrectly ascribed to Samuel Johnson, "Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." That quote fits this book like a glove. Absolutely everything that is positive and true in this book is pulled from better books. At its best, this works serves as a well-annotated sampling of a movement for better living.

Unfortunately, these samples are laced with the poison of the author's vain, ignorant judgments-- NOT only about strangers on the political spectrum, but also about class culture, the experience of modern poverty, medical facts about modern neurological and psychiatric disorders, and (of all things!) the creative process and the nature of reform. If anyone is looking for an example of how humans use judgment to distance ourselves from the unfortunate, this book is it in a nutshell.

The intent may be innocent, but the accumulation becomes vicious, to the point that a friend of mine blurted, "I'd burn this if it didn't belong to the library." May the reader's time and money be saved for the many books that deliver the same wholesomeness without the poison... and may the author's life and heart be opened to a far greater spectrum of people before she writes again.