Rating: 
Summary: TAKE IT EASY, BUD..
Review: Along the way I've picked up several religions and spiritual books of all stripes that advocate the benefits of meditation, silence, and retreats as ways to heal the body, mind, and soul. But Honore's well researched treatise provides what I believe is the first incisive overview of an important cultural phenomenon as we immerse our lives in instant online messengers, SMS thumb tribes, skipped breakfast, limp chicken sandwiches for lunch, and a bout of 'power yoga' to punctuate that little crevice of a break in the evenings.. Honore's writing style may occasionally wear a "Manifesto" dress and many of his suggestions to live a slow life may have a fairly non-trivial opportunity cost depending on where you live, but it is a very timely and wonderfully thought-provoking read nonetheless.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm too busy writing to read anything.....
Review: As a bibliophile and "adjunct" professor (Columbia U), I have put together a wonderful collection of books on leisure, and will add this one. Two not mentioned in Honore's book is "This Beats Working for a Living: The Dark Secrets of a College Professor" by Professor X, and "The Importance of Living," by Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang.
I'm surprised that Honore has apparently not read Lin Yutang, who is probably the most famous Chinese philosopher advocating "letting go." Once I wrote this refrain from Lin on the board before a class of MBA students at Columbia: "The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy." A third of the B students dropped my class immediately. They could see no value in "letting go."
In academia, we're so busy writing our own stuff we don't have time to read anyone else's work. There's too much supply and not enough demand. It's a big problem.
Lin also says that Americans suffer from three vices: punctuality, efficiency, and goal-setting! Gee, I thought these were virtues....Lin would be disappointed to learn that today, seventy years after Lin wrote his classic book, the Chinese and Asians are now imitating the West by arriving on time, becoming efficient, setting goals, and using cellphones.
If you want to adopt a slowness philosophy, you must get rid of your cellphone!
Honore blames capitalism and the industrial economy for busy-ness...Afterall, business is a shortened version of "busy-ness," is it not? But I think it's more cultural. As Josef Pieper states in "Leisure, the Basis of Culture," capitalism in fact creates an incredible amount of leisure time, but we seem to think that we must fill this leisure time with more work. Most Americans (and the world) have lost the art of meditation and slowing down and letting go....Lin Yutang's book is a classic on this subject, up to date even though written in 1937, and it will be around a hundred years from now. Ironically, though, Lin wrote two dozen books in his lifetime!
Twenty years ago my wife and I got tired of the rat race in Death Star (Doug Casey's term for our nation's capital) and moved our family of four children to the Bahamas. We left behind our TV and other material goods....It was a life-changing experience, life in living color. We got involved in the local theatre, our kids became voracious readers, and we developed many new friends at school and church. It was liberating. (If you are interested in reading the whole story, go to "Easy Living: My Two Years in the Bahamas" at www.mskousen.com.) Now we live in New York, a different kind of experience, but I often have a hankering to go back to that Island of Eternal June.....
I try to be an "adjunct" at everything I do. Adjunct professor, adjunct financial writer, adjunct church goer, adjunct traveller, adjunct reader, etc.....the key to living a slowdown life is to never have a "full time" position in anything.
--Idle thoughts of an idle fellow
Rating:
Summary: An Antedote for the Super Stressed
Review: Bravo, Carl Honore. As an author myself of a new book aimed at slowing people down long enough to start getting more pleasure out of life, I was ecstatic to find out that at least part of the world agrees that we're hooked on a pace that's killing us, or at least putting fortunes into the pockets of therapists. Carl Honore does a fantastic job of encapsulating the antedote - the Slow Movement. From slow food to slow sex, and everything in between, Honore shows us the value of bumping our lives down a notch in a thorough examination of this Slow trend, which started in Europe and threatens, hopefully, to migrate to the U.S.
The phrase he uses in his sub title, Cult of Speed, is brilliant. I not only loved the book, but loved finding out about niches in the world like The Sloth Club in Japan, and the Society for the Deceleration of Time in Austria.
In Praise of Slowness will speak to anyone who ever uses the word "frantic" or "overloaded" or "stressed" to describe their life. Carol Wiseman, author of A Patchwork of Comforts: Small Pleasures for Peace of Mind
Rating:
Summary: Learning To Live Life: Similar To The Living Life Game
Review: For a few years now I've been interested in learning about simpler ways to live. I picked up this book as a whim, and I will probably read it many times again over the course of my life. It is not a "how-to" guide per se; it is more a general overview of the many movements (ranging from educational to sexual) designed to help you enjoy life more. One of the things that I appreciated most is the lack of any sort of preachiness. The author is cleary curious and open, acting as the spectator for us and describing what he has seen while acknowledging the difficulty in slowing down in the world today. I highly recommend this book to everyone; I have already decided that several people that I know are getting this book for a gift. If nothing else, it helps you think about your life.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Could Change Your Life (Or a
Review: For a few years now I've been interested in learning about simpler ways to live. I picked up this book as a whim, and I will probably read it many times again over the course of my life. It is not a "how-to" guide per se; it is more a general overview of the many movements (ranging from educational to sexual) designed to help you enjoy life more. One of the things that I appreciated most is the lack of any sort of preachiness. The author is cleary curious and open, acting as the spectator for us and describing what he has seen while acknowledging the difficulty in slowing down in the world today. I highly recommend this book to everyone; I have already decided that several people that I know are getting this book for a gift. If nothing else, it helps you think about your life.
Rating:
Summary: Slow truly is "the new fast"!
Review: I actually read this book about six weeks ago while vacationing with friends. The fact that I still remember it clearly and am still thinking about it is one of the best recommendations I could give. I read several books a week, and most of them do a relatively quick mental disappearing act. But this one is definitely a keeper.
As one of the other readers pointed out, this is not so much a how-to guide as a cultural snapshot of some of the more absurd Western practices that have accelerated our lives to an almost ludicrous degree. (Those who have tried driving a car during lunch hour while using one hand to eat fast food and the other to return phone calls will know immediately what I'm talking about.)
I once read a review that started by listing all of the things the reader had done differently since reading the book. In that same spirit, let me tell you that since I read this book more than a month ago, I have been:
*giving myself permission to take naps and get a full night's sleep almost every night
*watching less TV and taking more walks
*making a point to cook a real dinner several nights a week, with the whole family assembled at the table
*taking breaks during the work day, which I find has actually increased my productivity
*calling old friends long-distance and reconnecting
*taken my daughter out of gymnastics to keep the family at home and unscheduled
These are not enormous changes in my life -- I was doing some of them before -- but they are important ones. What's more, they've been easy to implement. Now I need to work on not taking my laptop everywhere and telling myself it's OK not to check my work email when I've got the flu!
The chapter I most appreciated was the one on parenting. Children do not understand the need for our fast pace, and what they need more than anything is our time. This book made me realize the number of times I tell my daughter to hurry up/we're late for school/we need to go now/blah blah blah. I do not want my daughter to grow up like so many kids in our culture: overprogrammed, overscheduled, and stressed out.
So, five stars for this book. I've already recommended it to several friends, including the ones I read parts of this aloud to on vacation. (We spent the week repeating the book's mantra, "Slow is the new fast.") Ironically enough, this book on slowness is a remarkably fast read. The chapters are short and engaging; the writing is sharp and sometimes quite funny. Honore is deeply conscious of his own need to change, such as when he gets a speeding ticket on his way to one of the 4-hour Italian dinners that feature in the "slow food" chapter. :-) One thing I wish he had talked about, since the book delves into spiritual issues, is the movement back toward the observation of a weekly sabbath. That practice has changed my life and the whole rhythm of my weeks. Well, perhaps that's fodder for a sequel. This is an excellent book.
Rating: 
Summary: take the rat outof the race & go at your own pace
Review: I've long had the opinion that people run themselves ragged chasing a carrot that doesn't actually benefit their lives but allow them to pursue this compulsion for a better life.
Certainly in this day and age, we have been socialized that consumer goods will fill this need. It will not, this is a profound freedom that exists within.
It's all about knowing what truly matters and living to enjoy it.
Those who may not have realized this will really have their eyes opened by reading this book.
Those who have realized this will have some beleifs reaffirmed and realize that there are many others with the same outlook.
Honore does a good job at scratching the surface with slowing down in many of the most gratifying parts of life. He centers on these topics in easily digestible chapters on Food, Urban Design & Cars, Lovemaking, Work, Leisure Activities, Raising your Children, etc.
I know many people who would benefit from this book, those working extra jobs for toys and someone to raise their kids while they work, have no time for sex, work hard to pay for cars and gym memberships when a bike would do. There are so many examples--if you know someone who doesn't get it. Buy them this book, you'll save them from madness, medicating and burning themselves out.
This book is an easy read, scratches the surface on reorganizing soem prorities in life and ficusing on setting a more sustainable pace.
A good read, I dug it.
Rating:
Summary: Read it and Reap
Review: So many of us are caught up in an endless spiral of cell phones calls, Internet and email, driving from place to place, and chores, that we need a break. And now. Turns out the only thing stopping us (or keeping us going actually) is ourselves.
This isn't a new message of course, but somehow the author relays the message so lyrically that it sticks this time. You'll be caught in your day to day stuff then suddenly the book's message comes to you. Like a line from a song.
So what's the hurry buddy? Who's to say how we spend our time? We are, of course, and not what our 21st Century American society encourages. Buy this book and change how you live your life.
Rating:
Summary: Learning To Live Life: Similar To The Living Life Game
Review: This book does a tremendous job of letting us know that we need to slow down and truly live life. It is very similar to an inspirational gift/game that I love that I bought on Uncommongoods.com called Living Life (www.LivingLifeGame.com), which guides us through thirty heart warming activities like contacting old friends, watching the sunrise and buying a toy for a child. These activities slow us down and show us how to cherish those things in life that matter, but that we often over look in our hectic lives. Both the book and the Living Life game help us to slow down and live our lives to the fullest as we only have one beautiful life to live. I have bought this book and the Living Life Game for friends who have love it and they have bought it for many others. They are both worth the money and make others lives more beautiful!
Rating:
Summary: simple message, profound effects
Review: Using a wide range of personal observations, the book provides an interesting way to look at the hustle-bustle of modern day life, especially in the western world. The underlying theme of the book is that western lifestyle imposes an artificial sense of urgency and productivity which forces people to adopt manners and thought processes, which the author finds to be undesirable. He makes his arguments on a number of broad issues such as food habits, city planning, sex, etc. There is certainly a "new age" flavor to some of the arguments, but it needs to be pointed out the basic philosophy touted in the book is nothing new to Eastern religions (as correctly stated by the author). Being a follower of one of those Eastern religions, I think that the author does a praiseworthy job of presenting profound philosophical paradigms in relatively down-to-earth style - beneficial to those not familiar with Eastern religions. However, there is no religious bend to the arguments and the author uses secular reasoning to make a simple premise - slow down! A good read, though don't rush it. One of those books which is tempting to be read in one sitting, but shouldn't!
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