The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love

There's something nice and something missing about this book. Being a book about amateurism, I do like of it the free "wandering" of the author through different topics and fields - in particular literature. What I'm missing is a more cohesive structure and, especially, a final chapter - the one devoted to an explicit political discourse - more focused on real, proactive actions and not so dangerously close to the drift of populism. I'm sure I'm writing this because I'm looking at the current (2018) Italian political situation, but I can't help but still having more faith in professional politics rather than in bottom-up "movements" which - at least in Italy - are giving voice and power to people lacking any kind of amateur attitude (in show more the sense of this book). I keep on loving the idea of being an amateur (I definitely am), so I *have to* like this book but I do really find difficult to think about this approach out of the arts-culture realm and extended to politics. Which is my fault and a pity, but this book doesn't help from this point of view. show less

I really wanted to get something out of this, but even though it was well argued, it was just too dry for me to connect.

The second half gains a bit of steam, particularly the "Genius of Curiosity" chapter.