Complaint
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Review
`Baggini is as accessible as ever.' --Independent on Sunday
Book Description
'This book could change the way we live ... [a] relaxed, affable, yet startlingly lucid analysis of humanity's tendency to complain' - The Independent
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and thought provoking,
This review is from: Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (Big Ideas) (Paperback)
How ironic would be to complain about a book entitled 'Complaint'? Let's not go there, there's no need to. As someone who loves to complain, moan and rant, I found this book both funny and reflective. I've read a few Baggini books now. I like his style. He's detailed in his presentation of arguments but not overly dry and cumbersome like so many other philosophers both past and present.
Baggini examines and discusses the various different types of complaints. Their uses, their consequences, their purposes, their benefits. He captures things we all know about but expresses them in a way that very few of us could. A sign of a good thinker. A sign of a good writer. Although there's no outstanding Eureka moment in this book, it's a very solid framework for thought and discussion. His opinions on the habbits of men and women are interesting and his idea that complaining being a human universal that if used correctly is something which has practical benefits. This can take many shapes; the complaint can be the starting moment of a process which will produce required change or it just be a form of human catharsis. Either way, it's worth remembering complaining is an interesting characteristic which reflects who we are and how we feel about ourselves and think about what's around us.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An illuminating read,
This review is from: Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (Big Ideas) (Paperback)
Clearly written and convincingly argued, 'Complaint' is a brilliant book full of insight and knowledge (Baggini clearly knows his stuff when it comes to philosophy, and its lucky for us that he also happens to be a sharp and elegant writer). While the chapter on the study he conducted (chapter 4) is perhaps less informative then the others, it is still beautifully written and the other chapters contain more than enough content (especially the last chapter, which makes a great case for ethics over excessive legalism). I can highly recommend this book.
13 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I'm not one to grumble, but ...,
By
This review is from: Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (Big Ideas) (Paperback)
The concept is fine: a Malcolm Gladwell-style pop-science look at the psychology and social history of complaint would have made for a fascinating little book.
But Julian Baggini's short entry - very short: it is done and dusted in 130 pages - is neither focussed or organised enough to pull that off. It reads more like a loosely-themed ramble through a field of the author's favourite hobby horses. Baggini describes himself as a "philosopher" - every man's right, I suppose - but it does imply some sort of tenured academic role, whereas the most I can extract from a quick Google is that he has a PhD in philosophy and has fashioned for himself a role as a public commentator of sorts on matters ethical and metaphysical. However good his philosophical credentials, they don't qualify him especially well to write a pop-science book on complaint: you'd think a psychologist, psychiatrist or sociologist might be better equipped for that. Nor, having read his offering, does he appear to have much of substance to say. In 130 parsimoniously entexted pages he manages to distract himself from the subject at hand on a number of occasions, wandering off piste into tangential ruminations on what appear (from his other writings) to be pet subjects - particularly religion and atheism. Elsewhere he doesn't really fashion much of an argument: there's a cursory attempt to categorise types of complaint and a half-hearted reader survey from which Baggini draws half-hearted conclusions, but he doesn't really have anything to say other than "complaint has its place, and isn't all bad". Some respectable commentators have found value in his book, however: Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times, for whom I have a great deal of respect, raved about it (and on that recommendation I bought it), so perhaps it just caught me on a bad day. But all the same, I can't see this one tipping The Tipping Point out of the bestseller list anytime soon. Olly Buxton
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