{"id":4071,"date":"2012-09-03T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"book-review-enuff-a-guidebook-for-simple-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/book-review-enuff-a-guidebook-for-simple-living\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: ENUFF a Guidebook for Simple Living"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have grown weary of the rat race and are looking for an alternative, Kate Carpenter\u2019s book ENUFF is a good place to start.\u00a0 ENUFF is an acronym for E<\/strong>liminate the N<\/strong>eedless, U<\/strong>seless, F<\/strong>oolish and F<\/strong>rivolous and in it you will find a primer on minimalism and tips for simple living.<\/p>\n

ENUFF \u2013 The Book<\/h3>\n

\"ENUFF,<\/a>The book itself follows the tenets it teaches by not being stuffed full of pontification.\u00a0 It takes a direct and entertaining approach.\u00a0 In each chapter Carpenter explains her topic, explains the need, and offers a supportive anecdote, then uses great quotes from famous people, charts or illustrations, to make the point.\u00a0 Most chapters include an expanded reading list and a list of movies that embrace the topic of that chapter.\u00a0 Most of these outside resources are not about minimalism, they are popular books and movies about people and life, but they embody the simple living principle being discussed as a part of their story.<\/p>\n

Along the way she makes some very interesting observations about the life most people live.\u00a0 One of my favorites discusses labor saving devices: why is it that in a home stuffed full of all the latest labor saving devices that are supposed to reduce our work load and save us time, we are still over worked and short on time?\u00a0 Her answer sat me back in my chair and really made me think.<\/p>\n

ENUFF – The Technical<\/h3>\n

A soft-cover, comb bound book containing 76 pages.\u00a0 The text is well written; I encountered no editorial goofs. \u00a0The book uses a lot of lay-out: using boxes to highlight certain text, simple illustrations and charts to \u201cshow\u201d a topic more clearly than \u201ctelling\u201d it with text would. \u00a0When first flipping through the book, it looks very busy, but once settled in to read it, the whole thing comes together nicely and is not distracting.\u00a0 The only objection I came across is the over-abundance of fonts used.\u00a0 Most readers probably won\u2019t notice this, being a publisher myself I did.\u00a0 Generally you want to keep the number of font faces and styles you use in a book to a minimum, (two fonts that look good together with italic and bold gives you eight choices) and use these consistently to create continuity in the book by using the same font size and style for each appearance of that element (Title, heading, sub-heading, etc.).\u00a0 Ms. Carpenter got a little font-happy and the result is distracting from her message.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h3>\n

Simple living is similar to religion in the fact that if your mind is not ready to receive it, it is foolishness to you \u201cWHY in the world would I want to give away or sell most of the things I\u2019ve worked so hard to hoard over the years?\u201d \u00a0If you are ready, and you want a gentle introduction to minimalist concepts and ways to simplify your life and allow yourself the freedom to enjoy your life now rather than later, get this book.\u00a0 ENUFF shows you the ropes in a clear, unpretentious, and entertaining manner and the included resources alone are invaluable.\u00a0 If you\u2019re ready to take your first step away from the rat race, this will become a go-to resource you will want to keep on hand.\u00a0 If you have embraced the simple life and want a booster, the resources will give you fresh fuel for the fire.<\/p>\n

The book, a sample, and more information, are available at: http:\/\/enuffstuff.info<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have grown weary of the rat race and are looking for an alternative, Kate Carpenter’s book ENUFF is a good place to start.  ENUFF is an acronym for Eliminate the Needless, Useless, Foolish and Frivolous and in it you will find a primer on minimalism and tips for simple living. ENUFF – The … Continue reading “Book Review: ENUFF a Guidebook for Simple Living”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-4071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-share-the-love","tag-simple-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21592,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions\/21592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}