Book Review: Start 2018 off the right way with Sarah Knight’s You Do You

Sarah Knight, anti-guru and author of best sellers The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving A Fuck and Get Your Shit Together, is back with another empowering message for her readers. Only this time they can actually print the book’s full title in The New York Times. Score!

Are you difficult or do you just know what you want? Are you selfish or are you just making a healthy decision to put yourself first? Do you want to spend time going to that event/doing that thing/watching Breaking Bad or do you just feel obliged to do it because you’ve been told by somebody else that it’s important?

You Do You has the answers to those questions (spoiler: it’s usually the second one) and is a rousing challenge to, well, do you. And not in the eye rolling way people say it when your food order hits Sally Albright levels of difficult.

Drawing on her own (often very funny) experiences, Knight offers advice that will allow you to not only live an authentic life, but battle through the inevitable embarrassments, awkward conversations, and confused relatives that are sure to follow.

It’s honestly refreshing to find a self-help book that doesn’t ask you to change, instead actively encouraging you to embrace your weird (unless your weird makes you a really terrible person, in which case Knight would prefer you to put her book down and walk away), do what makes you happy, and stop worrying about the Judgey McJudgersons of the world. Did my life change after reading it? Well, I found myself suddenly feeling a lot less bad about preferring the company of my dog than other humans on my days off work, so I’d say it’s a start. At it’s heart, You Do You is an exercise in exorcising guilt and I, for one, feel a little bit thicker skinned for having read it.

The kind of self help book you won’t mind looking like an idiot reading during the first weeks of a New Year (resolutions, ugh!), Sarah Knight’s You Do You is available now through Hachette Australia.

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Jodie Sloan

Living, writing, and reading in Brisbane/Meanjin. Likes spooky books, strong cocktails, and pro-wrestling.