Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased the Kindle version of this book because I believed the author's basic premise was an important one and I wanted to read more about how I can spend less time regretting what didn't happen in my life and more time focusing on living the life I have. I was disappointed to discover that although the author had a good idea for a book, he had no idea what to write about it. The author does a fair job of explaining the premise of the book in the prologue, which I believe can be summarized in one sentence: You are devoted to ruining the life you have by fretting over the life or lives that you didn't have. I expected that the author would follow up the prologue with some suggestions that would help people realize the importance of enjoying and appreciating the life they are living, while at the same time avoiding regret and sadness over what they perceive to be unfulfilled potential, bad luck, mistakes, wrong turns, and so on. Instead, it seems the author conceived of this book as a philosophical treatise on the meaning of frustration and satisfaction. I could accept this if it were meaningful and well-written, but it is not. The author writes long, wordy, and pretentious sentences that seemed designed to impress us with the profundity of his thought and the erudition of his learning. In addition, he has the annoying habit of interrupting his own sentences with hyphenated clauses, as well as randomly inserting the phrase, "whatever it is" throughout the book. Here is a sample of his so-called sentences: "What experiences are made possible by not getting it, and what getting it, whatever it is, might protect us from." "Frustration is always, whatever else it is, a temptation scene;" "We can get out only by presuming an omniscience about what we are getting out of; which is always, whatever else it is, an omniscience about the satisfactions we seek." "But it would be sensible to believe that if we have misconstrued the whole notion of frustration - or if our frustrations are difficult to construe - we might have misunderstood the nature of satisfaction: had the meaning but missed the experience." You are probably thinking you might understand these sentences if you read them in context. Maybe, but don't plan on it. The author seems lost in a world of abstraction, following a thought process that has little relevance for those of us who might be looking for help with getting on with our lives. If the author had focused on the needs of his readers rather than on fashioning an image as a pipe-smoking, turtle-neck wearing philosopher, he might have written a book worth reading. As it stands, it is a book to be avoided.