danpo

2011 Book 24/100 This would be a 2.5 star review if we had that option. I swung back and forth between loving the overall concept of simplicity taken to a 12x12 dwelling extreme (as lived by Dr. Jackie Benton, who this book REALLY should have been about) and hating the, as another Goodreader Eileen put it, "smug yet whiny pseudo-Buddhist ramblings of one of the most entitled writers I've ever read". The author is a white, middle class, privileged male who has been doing foreign aid work with NGOs in Liberia and Bolivia, who returns to the U.S. and meets a woman who has been living simply in a 12x12 foot home in rural North Carolina since her children grew up and moved on to lives of their own. This woman, called Dr. Jackie Benton in this book in order to protect the privacy that she requested, chooses to continue practicing medicine, but refuses any pay over $11,000 (depite her salary being much, much more) so that she does not have to pay taxes that would go to the military and other defense spending. Similiarly, her dwelling is 12x12 precisely because that is the threshold in her county for being able to escape the zoning laws that would require her to have electricity or running water, both of which she has chosen to live without for years. I WISH that this book was about her life, rather than privilege boy, who just moved into her life for 40 days while she was on an anti-war demonstration pilgrimage. Now THAT would have been a good book.

2022-10-29 03:54