Eric

The book that makes you happy to have gone to college.

It's been a number of years since this book was first published, and I still think it is excellent. Just as relevant now as ever (if not more so), and a very straightforward, sharply written, illuminating (and even very entertaining) first-person essay on trying to live like most Americans do: as unskilled laborers in the lower rungs of America's service industries. A decent amount of research footnotes the story to better inform readers. Most pleasing is that the author avoided writing this book as an anthem or a guilt-trip: she's never self-righteous about her assignment and she claims up front that she's not going “all the way” – in other words, she knows that temporarily acting like she has to live on minimum wage is a far cry from truly having to your whole life. Overall there's a lot to like here, and at about 200 pages, it's a quick, satisfying read.

The beginning was very intriguing, some parts are very funny, and the “world” the author created for the book is great. But the story started dragging for me the longer it went on, and the “Deus ex machina” style ending was unsatisfying.

So-so on this one. A really fun premise and some really yummy awfulness in the first half that kinda flattened out in the second as the author needed to figure out some kind of plot. The narrator's weird psychiatrist Dr. Tuttle is delightful and a highlight of the book. Reva is perfectly drawn as a significant/insignificant side character for the narrator. The semi-comatose trip to Reva's family home was great. I wish some inner (or outer) development in the two major conflicts for the narrator - grieving her troubled relationship with her dead parents, and reconciling her terrible years-long relationship with Trevor - were a larger factor in explaining *why* she is able to come out of her Infermiterol bender in a better place, instead of the thinly-wrought blackout relationship with Ping Xi and then magically being okay selling her parent's house and going outside to watch dogs on a park bench. Dunno, seemed kinda convenient that the first 8 months or whatever saw zero character growth and the last stunt was perfectly successful. I really liked how it was set just-enough before September 11, 2001 that you wondered the whole book if that event would be included or not. Overall it was a pretty fun doomer/goblin-mode read.

The system is good, this book is okay.

Part I “The Preparation” is your standard throw-away lead-in stuff about why anyone should track/journal and Ryder's origin story.

Part II “The System” is where all the good stuff is, about how to actually bullet journal.

Part III “The Practice” gets pretty life-coachy about goal setting, stoicism, wabi sabi, finding meaning, acknowledging mortality, etc.

Part IV “The Art” offers some tips to non-beginners about how to optimize things.

Overall I'd say if you just want to get a solid grasp on HOW to bullet journal, you don't need this book. Just read a blog post on how to make Tasks, Events, and Notes and use the Daily, Monthly, and Future Logs, and Index. I actually think Rachel Miller's book “Dot Journaling” does a better job explaining it than Ryder himself does here.

If instead you want to read a self-help book that tells you a bunch different ways how starting a bullet journal is the key to a better life, then you'll like this book.

Nowhere near as interesting as I expected it to be, considering it won the Pulitzer. But a few good scenes.