The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir

“Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, must-have gadgets, when in the end, all any of us will have is our simple beating heart....I hate to put it in such dramatic terms, but it's kinda true.”

Oh so true. Williams thought about this for a long time. One day she discovered she had a heart that wasn't so reliable and she decided to make the jump into a simple life in a small home she would build herself. So she did.

An inspiring story.

Note: I read an advanced copy of this book. The finished product may be different that what I read. I finally finished this. I went into it gung-ho, as I am currently obsessed with the tiny home movement and mindfulness. Where this bogged down for me was in the day to day drama of hanging out with friends, injuries, and ...well, the “memoir” end of it. Dee is perpetually upbeat and the pollyanna-ness kind of wore on me after awhile. I did LOVE the descriptions of the house: building the house, life in the house, parking the house. I just didn't care about anything else. The final chapter is, in my humble opinion, the strongest chapter because it really describes the “why” of Dee's philosophy. Is it wrong that I really wanted to know more about how the composting toilet worked and less about who was having dinner at who's house?

Overall, I think it is an interesting read, but I would have liked smoother storytelling. There are some real inconsistencies. For example, Dee is injured in a book store(?) and helped by a librarian (?) in one of the early chapters. Another chapter talks about the dog's odd behavior, features an injury on the ladder, and then a death. And then another death.