On the fourth day of Christmas My Truelove gave to me a book:
IT’S good to see a book which is different on the best seller lists.
This is how the book is described on Amazon:
This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.
Really, the only phrase out of place in that rather long description is “New York Times best-selling guide”
Our Bent Banana Books slogan is “books which are different”. If Marie Kondo can best-sell a book which is different, BBB can too. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is #18 on the Amazon top-seller list and Michael we really have to talk is # . . . well, a fair bit lower than that.
Marie "KonMari" Kondo runs a consulting business in Tokyo helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration. The late Michael O’Neill worked in state and federal Australian public services for 50 years, mainly as an employee counsellor. Marie de-clutters your house and Michael your mind.
The kernel of the KonMari method is quite simple and sound. “What I should be doing is finding the things I want to keep. Identifying the things that make you happy: that is the work of tidying.” Michael O’Neill’s philosophy is more complicated because he believes the noble institution of the public service is being corrupted by ego-driven Mandarins trying to impose a market economy on it. Pollyannas who pretend everything is okay while ruthlessly supressing well-meaning critics are a particular bane of Michael’s professional and writing life.
Reviews
Michael has no reviews for his book and Marie has 6500 of them and that hardly seems fair. Marie’s funniest review is from l. Whiton who writes:
“My wife read this book and threw away a bunch of my stuff. I had to hide things in my truck to keep them off the chopping block. I no longer have a charger for my old iPod, she threw it away. I hate this book.”
Another review which I loved was from Aafke-Arton.
“Marie is Shinto and so thanks all her stuff when using it, after using it and when throwing it out. I thought it was brilliant. I am not a Shinto animist, but I am "barking mad", and one reason I cannot get rid of stuff is that I feel sorry for the stuff that gets discarded. Marie has a different take on storing and keeping stuff.”
When Michael’s reviews trickle in, I trust some will be entertaining.
More books for us
,The Goldfinch has 23,000 reviews
Some other books
Other books to look out for this Christmas are novels The Goldfinch, a Pulitzer Prize winner,
and
The Nightingale is #57 in books
and
Iraqi Icicle
which I wrote and you should buy for whatever reason comes to mind.
Here is our song which will help declutter your mind.
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