What makes a book "good"?

I recently finished reading "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker. I read it as part of a book club, a 2 person book club. This was a recommendation by Linda, I don't think I would've ever read it otherwise. That's one of the many reasons why book clubs are cool.

This book is a bestseller, recommended by Oprah, has remained popular since being published in 1997 and has thousands of rave reviews online. By every possible measure this is a "good" book, but I found it to be frustrating, dishonest, and a badly hidden advertisement for Gavin and his company.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it, it is worth a read. This book didn't work for me, but that doesn't mean it won't for you. Rather than talk about the book directly I'd like to talk about why it didn't work for me, and try to explore the concept of a "good" book in the process. This is of course a very personal take, but that's all I can do so that's what I will.

It's a man's world

I am a man, and experience the world as a dude, which comes with a whole bunch of advantages. I have lived across 3 countries, traveled across the world, and put myself in some really dangerous situations. I have slept in an empty train station, stayed in random people's houses, and camped in a jungle. I would not have done these things if I was a woman.

I am bad at reading social signals, have no real survival instincts, and have basically existed through blind faith in humanity alone. Of course I feel bad that women cannot experience the world that I live in, but I do live in it, and I enjoy it thoroughly. Gavin's book makes me question my blind faith in the goodness of most humans, and I hate it.

It's a bit selfish, it's also stupid, but I don't want to live my life constantly evaluating dangers and preparing for the worst. I am 36 years old, and my strategy to just trust everyone without question has worked well for me. It is likely that this strategy will bite me in the ass someday, but I just can't imagine living any other way, and to me that's a risk worth taking. Some of the best stories in my life happened because of me blundering into a situation without thinking.

There's definitely a bit of denial in there, I know the world has bad people and it is a good idea to keep your guard up and use your brain, but I find that to be tiring, and it makes me sad. I am lucky to have almost always experienced good human connections through the multiple cities and countries I've lived, but maybe that's just because I've never lived in the USA.

American Psycho

The one question that kept rattling around in my brain through the entire reading of this book, like cutlery in a washing machine, was this: "Does this book make any sense outside of America?". I don't think it does, and that really annoys me.

This book only makes sense if you genuinely believe that the world is a dangerous place where constant vigilance is necessary to survive. That's not true for India, UK, or Germany. But America? That's a different story.

There are mentally disturbed humans in every country, but very rarely do they get such easy access to guns. Gavin clearly understands this, remove guns from America and his book and his company have very little reason to exist. That's clearly why he makes a half-assed attempt towards the end to address American gun culture and its implications.

This annoys me because I'm quite tired of America. I'm tired of that country and its people taking up all my attention and time. Recently I've been trying to read less things related to America, and then this book came along.

This book is as American as it gets, here's the basic premise:

1. America decides everyone has the right to guns

2. This, surprisingly, means that many people have guns

3. This, even more surprisingly, means people are afraid of being shot

4. But because this is America, their only other thought is: "how can I profit off this fear?"

5. Enter Gavin, he builds a business exploiting this fear

6. Then he writes a book which can only be described as the literary version of writing a love poem to yourself

7. The book makes such genius predictions as: A man who owns many guns and has made threats to use said guns could potentially use the guns

8. Standing ovation

Yes Gavin makes some good points in the book, like how kids should be taught in school that no means no, and that making serial killers into super stars is a bad idea, but these nuggets of good ideas are surrounded by a thick layer of dumb stories and cringe self-praise. And it's not like these good ideas are an invention of Gavin's extraordinary mind alone, you can find them elsewhere too, like, wild example, talking to a real, actual woman.

The main point of this book for me is that I should thank the stars that I wasn't unfortunate enough to be born in the USA, and that I should continue to be fortunate and never have to live there. The idea of living there is a much bigger nightmare to me than any stupid murder story Gavin told in the book.

The measure of man

Perhaps it's because I rarely read books written after 1960s, I'm not used to the level of self-pleasuring that Gavin enjoys in his book. One of the initial chapters is just him describing how FBI, CIA and every other 3 letter agency has used his services. Throughout the book he just can't stop himself from mentioning that every goddamn celebrity is his personal friend. The constant advertisement is nauseating, these fuckers just never stop selling do they.

What's more nauseating is the fact that there are no examples in the book where he admits that his methods can sometimes be problematic as well. Every story he tells is like "I am awesome I developed this cool sounding system and it works 100% no mistakes pinky promise". This is nauseating because incorrect profiling is a problem of epidemic scale in America, and people die of it. But Gavin never makes mistakes, and his threat detection systems are God-like edifices of surety and perfection.

This lack of nuance and abundance of overconfidence is again annoying, especially since most of the advice he gives is obvious common sense. The whole book reads like a propaganda piece for him and his company. This is even more infuriating when you realize that Gavin has no qualifications for the things he says. Experience is important for sure, but the level of certainty with which Gavin claims his truths does not make him sound like an expert, it makes him sound like a scammer. A scammer who's apparently a billionaire, but a scavenger of fear after all.

The end

A book feels good if you agree with the writer's premise, or find the content interesting, or generally enjoy the story that's being told. This book has none of those things, it actively tries to make you trust the world less, with the apparent aim of getting more business to Gavin. A book feels good when you trust the writer, and from the very beginning I found Gavin to be an arrogant little piece of shit who mansplained an entire book squarely aimed at women.

Ultimately, I'm following Gavin's advice and trusting my gut feeling. I hope I have been able to explain properly why I don't like this book, but if I didn't it doesn't matter, I am just following my instincts. I don't want to live in fear, and I refuse to accept fear as a "gift", when the only gift that fear seems to provide is more money to Gavin.

Everything this man is and says makes me angry, so I'm just gonna ignore his existence based on the assessment of the system I just invented called MOSAIC (Most Often Stupid Americans are Intolerable Cunts).