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(Read as part of a book club) I'm conflicted about "The Lost Bookshop". Looking back at it, it's not bad and I was able to finish it without giving up. However, as it usually is, a book that you didn't have high hopes for, but it turns out okayish leaves a better impression than one which you really liked the premise of, but it falls short. "The Lost Bookshop" is the latter for me. Let me explain.

The book follows a story across two different timelines, which are interconnected. About 100 years in the past there is Opaline - a woman running away from home and his abusive brother to work as a book dealer, traveling around, while being hunted, trying to find a place for herself. In the present the story follows two people. The first one is Martha - a woman who also runs away from her home, from an abusive husband, to work as a servant for a mysterious character. The other person is Henry - an university graduate, hunting for a lost manuscript, one that he suspects, could've been stored in the titular lost bookshop.

Now, I thought that the premise of the book is amazing. However, my problem with the execution is that, the bookshop is not that important really. 4/5th of the book just follows the character's intertwined stories and, while it has some amazing or really terrifying moments, most of it plays out like a telenovela. The characters are pretty one-dimensional. There are plenty of serious topics involved, but none truly developed. Hearts are constantly being broken, everyone has to get in terms with their pasts, there is love, kissing, sex, abuse, murder, constant misunderstandings, that made me roll my eyes in so many cases. While I understand that relationships aren't that easy in real life, especially when there are elements like past abuse involved, I just couldn't stomach most of this drama that just dragged on and on. Another issue is that you can usually see the plot twists coming from the mile away, since there is an insight from the past and many patterns repeat themselves. I'm disappointed because it could've really been a better book.

Edit: My book club came to the almost unanimous conclusion that the book is mostly trash, so it's not just a me problem

“Less is More” is an eye-opening book that goes in detail about the rise, mechanisms and threat of capitalism. As people, governments and corporations continue their business as usual - ploughing through forests, extracting copious amounts of resources and accelerating mindless consumerism, the threat of our civilization’s downfall through the irreversible effects of climate change looms closer. Is it possible to stop it? Perhaps, but it will require for us to move away from the ever-unsustainable ideas of endless growth, Jason Hickel argues and establishes “degrowth” as the new model countries around the world should follow and gives examples of a few already successful transformations. Ideas of equality, healthcare, ecology and post-consumerism, among many others, contribute to “degrowth” and are going to be essential for creating sustainable future. It is not about asceticism, as one may fear, but about flourishing.

I hope this book finds its way to as many people around the world as possible. For me, it destroyed many assumptions I had about how our economy and our relation with the environment works. It highlighted the issues of the ever-present chase for more GDP growth, consumerism and how capitalism often creates and feeds on artificial scarcity to unnecessarily produce and sell more things.

I hope humanity can address all of these issues in this century. However, there is still doubt at the back of my mind. To implement the ideas “Less is More” presents, it basically requires that mythical world peace, in order for countries to stop growing, producing so much military hardware and flexing their muscles on the international stage. And as things stand right now, we’re unfortunately not headed in that direction.