What is the news? Like so much of the modern world, it’s both something we deem important to know without giving much thought as to why. Confession: never thought to think about the news, but then Alain du aBottom came along and did the thinking for me. In this age of “fake news” this cleans the pallet ( )

This book appealed to me much more than How Proust Can Change Your Life. The author does an excellent job of stating how we relate to the subjects and the sheer volume of news in our life. The book’s 2014 copyright reminds us that things have only accelerated since the writing of this book. The news now follows most people everywhere they go, your smartphone always has an update and breaking news. We now also have all manner of subsets of the news, topics that we have friended and otherwise linked ourselves to, the news is always there waiting in our pocket for your attention.
The book breaks the news into politics, world news, economics, celebrity, disaster, and consumption. I initially found myself writing off some of the segments, but reading through each one of them, I found myself engaged with each one more than I thought possible. I attribute this to an author who is very well versed in the subject, has a robust intellect, and is a writer who knows his craft.
The book is published in a small format and written in brief segments, segments that would work nicely online, but as a whole, it works brilliantly as a book. This is another most thought-provoking book from Alain de Botton. ( )

Questa recensione è su: The News: A User's Manual (Formato Kindle)
La vita come notizia, la notizia come vita. Non si sa da dove inizia, non si sa dove finisce. In questo piuttosto confuso libro il suo autore mi conferma quello che scrisse Qoehlet oltre due millenni fa: tutto sembra inutile, anche se accade. Tutto ciò che accade è "notizia" quindi tutto sembra inutile. Ma soltanto perché manca il "senso", altrimenti tutto resta chiaro. Non so se mi spiego...

A fairly shallow examination of news culture pretends to want to reform the news while simultaneously exalting some of the most troubling aspects of it. Quite disappointing.

About the news, but also picks up on the preoccupations of the author's other books (art, travel, etc). This is no bad thing, insights and wisdom require being repeated to us. For the news itself, it discusses our addiction, the distortion, and what it says about our inner longings. As ever with de Botton, it is engagingly and convincingly written. ( )