Exceedingly Mundane

I almost gave up and quit reading my latest book “Talk to the Hand” by Lynne Truss. I have been struggling for the past several days, trying to read this book and not give up and chuck it. I finally persevered, more out of stubbornness than a desire to read the book and get anything out of it.

I tried to branch out of my comfort zone and read a “different” kind of book for me, and in this particular instance, it didn’t really work. Reading this book was a struggle and I didn’t really enjoy the book, and didn’t retain much from it. I’m accustomed to reading fiction, where there are characters I can enjoy and “get into” and there’s a plot and story that I want to learn that happens. This book is more like a textbook, more like being back in college and sitting in a sociology class and hearing the professors drone on and on in a monotone voice.

I agree with what the author is saying – the world has become a more rude place and the advent of technology has really speeded up that progression. Courtesy, respect, manners are quickly becoming harder and harder to find in others. People have their own private space, a bubble, and they don’t interact with others as well as they did in the past. Blame cell phones, blame email, blame text messaging, blame the Internet, blame lots of these things. I agree with all of this, and there were several vignettes in the book where she related personal experiences to attest to this fact. Those were quite enjoyable, as well as a few other passages in the book. However, she would also quote from books such as “The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations” by Norbert Elias (1939). Ack. The bibliography is 3 pages long, she quoted from so many boring textbooks on social behavior. This is just not me anymore, I guess.

I almost quit…. but I didn’t. The OCD part of me did not want to give up and be a quitter, so I did finish it. Barely. That makes 4 for the year so far.

If you’d like an example of how the book reads, you can click on the Read more section and read an excerpt from the book.

From the chapter on the first of six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door – “Was That So Hard to Say?” —

It seems that once the rigidities of feudal society have given way to complex and diverse social networks, the Freudian super-ego inside each one of us becomes responsible for us having manners. Thus, the individual judges his own actions against a standard set by his own super-ego, and feels shame; he judges other people’s actions against the same super-ego, and feels repugnance.