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BOOK REVIEW: A Sticky Note Guide to Life by Chaz Hutton

| 23 October 2016 | Reply

BOOK REVIEW: A Sticky Note Guide to Life by Chaz Hutton

Harper Collins
October 2016
Hardback, $18.99
Reviewed by Steph O’Connell

Lifestyle / Humour

8/10

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The quote on the cover of this book is right; this book can see into your soul.

Against all rational explanation, the distance between now and Friday actually increases the closer you get to Friday, which is about as close as you’re going to get to experiencing quantum mechanics.

Whether it be surviving on monthly pay, accidentally hitting the “facetime” button when calling someone, hangovers, or pretending you understand art,  this book is so spot on the majority of the time that it’s almost creepy.

Whether it’s living from pay to pay:

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‘I deserve to celebrate and spend all my money as a reward for surviving the previous two weeks, and no, I don’t care than doing that perpetrates a vicious cycle of recurring debt because I’ve already had three Martinis and you’re not my real dad.’

 

Success at work:

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People always offer up that advice when you’re starting out – the old Fake it till you make it – but what the advice should really be is: Understand that everyone else is faking it till they make it, no matter how long they’ve been doing it.

 

Doing what you love:

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People who unthinkingly regurgitate pseudo-philosophical platitudes will tell you that you should find something you love, and then make it your job. However, I am yet to find anyone willing to pay me to stand around completely naked and half drunk while microwaving different fruit to see what happens to it after certain amounts of time.

 

Your phone running out of battery:

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In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set off to cross Antarctica. Their ship, Endurance, was eventually trapped in ice and (failing to live up to its name) finally sank, stranding the men with no chance of rescue. Months later, they boarded their life-boats as the ice melted, eventually reaching an uninhabited island. From there, Shackleton and four others made an 800-mile sea journey in a small open boat until they finally found help

Thankfully, Shackleton would die long before he could discover how much worse it is when your phone runs out of battery on a Saturday night and you’ve got no way to find that house party.

 

Realising your story isn’t as funny as you believed when you started telling it:

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There’s nothing quite like being in command of a story that is headed at top speed into a conversational car wreck when you realise the brakes don’t work.

 

Or avoiding the dentist:

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If you can use quantum superposition and an ambiguously vital cat to explain to your parents why you still haven’t been  to the dentist it sounds very impressive, and they’ll begin to harbour fantasies that you’re going to eventually become a world-renowned physicist, albeit potentially one with no teeth.

 

This is like xkcd for your everyday life, and as such is more accessible for the every day reader, rather than those of us with a passion for science, language, maths, and various other things that xkcd focuses on. Reading this book (all in one go, if you’re like this reviewer) can be incredibly cathartic! Since reading it a week ago, I’ve already come across a few instances that called for sharing one of the pages.

This is a great book to read in one sitting, but is also a great gift, and a lot of fun to bring out when you have company.

A must have for anyone who is still waiting for the day when they feel like an adult, because this will reassure you that you’re not the only one who has these thoughts, and we’re all just faking it until we make it… in life.

 

 

Category: Book Reviews, Other Reviews

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