Tsundoku reviewed Can't Even by Anne Helen Petersen
Give to Boomers everywhere
4 stars
It's a fine book based off a fine article, but you have to keep in mind:
If you come into the book expecting self-help solutions, you will be inevitably disappointed. This is NOT a self-help book.
This is a book about a societal problem and the many shapes it takes. The whole point of it is you yourself can only do so much to help yourself, it's how we run things that needs to be fixed.
The book may be better for Boomers or Gen X, instead of Millennials, because it could help them understand why things suck so much for Millennials and Zoomers. It explains why the solutions we were taught by our parents do not work anymore.
I appreciate the author trying to approach this from multiple non-white perspectives.
I found the afterword comparing the US to Japan very interesting (because being a bit of a weeb I …
It's a fine book based off a fine article, but you have to keep in mind:
If you come into the book expecting self-help solutions, you will be inevitably disappointed. This is NOT a self-help book.
This is a book about a societal problem and the many shapes it takes. The whole point of it is you yourself can only do so much to help yourself, it's how we run things that needs to be fixed.
The book may be better for Boomers or Gen X, instead of Millennials, because it could help them understand why things suck so much for Millennials and Zoomers. It explains why the solutions we were taught by our parents do not work anymore.
I appreciate the author trying to approach this from multiple non-white perspectives.
I found the afterword comparing the US to Japan very interesting (because being a bit of a weeb I kept thinking of Japan's way of approaching things, though I am not weeb enough to white-knight Japan). I would love to see other authors approach this issue from a non-American perspective. I don't know if the American Dream is uniquely American, but I feel like the death of it is part of why it sucks so much to be a Millennial.