Book Review: F?@K Knows by Shailendra Singh

Book: F?@K Knows

Author: Shailendra Singh

No. of Pages: 234

Genre: Self Help

Publisher: Rupa Publication

Please read the following line 10 times (or at least 5 times; its important) before proceeding to read the rest of the review … (if possible – no one is around – say it out aloud)


F?@K! F?@K Knows! F?@K Off! F?@K Me! F?@K it! F?@K! F?@K man! F?@Ker! F?@K-shit! F?@K! F?@King unbelievable!


If you felt uncomfortable reading the above line multiple times … then this book is NOT for you. If you could easily sail through repeating this line multiple times AND you are interested to hear from someone else, how screwed up your life is and how can you make an attempt to make it better … then and ONLY then should you pick up this book and attempt to read it.



The philosophy of life and how to live through it is aptly summarized in the title of the book. The title ‘F?@K Knows’ is the all-pervasive ANSWER to all those ridiculous ‘Why Me?’ questions we keep troubling ourselves with … and many more of course.

The book does not have new content. If you have read a couple of ‘self-help’ books, you would find that the book repeats the general funda BUT there is a huge difference. F?@K. The book reiterates the same age-old fundas in a manner which the generation of today find easy to understand and digest since it does in their language where the F-word makes more appearances than the common word ‘the’. The book mirrors this language style, having the F?@K appearing in the book a record number of times; second only to Osho’s famous discourse on the versatility and utility of the word F?@K (which of course, finds mention in the book).

In the past 35 years (or is it 34, doesn’t matter) of my life, I have refrained from using the F-word. The number of times I might have used this word can actually be counted on the fingers of the hand without going over them again. I always saw the word as abusive and un-cultured. NOW … after reading this book, I guess I will be far more comfortable using the word (but hardly aloud, I have my own self-image to protect after all).

I liked the book. It gives you advice … real, practical, usable, sensible advice in digestible and understandable format … something you can actually make an effort to apply in your own F?@King life (see, I have begun to use it).

The book talks of various aspects of life reiterating various philosophies and also debunking various philosophical myths guiding on a clear path and direction with advice on what you should focus on and what you should not. The book gets autobiographical in some sense as Shailendra relates incidents (striking, emotional as well as gross) from his personal life to send across the message to you.

The book is written in the form of more than 75 very short chapters talking about different aspects of life – goal setting, to-do lists, love, health, wealth, attitude, listening to the heart, listening to the body, sex, respect, life anchors, knowing yourself, understanding yourself, speaking, shutting up, understand the mind-brain-heart functions, career, aspirations, healing, destiny, god, suicide, life, thinking, doing, values, morals, right v/s wrong, greed, happiness, sadness, smiles, drugs … and so on.

As I said, Shailendra covers a lot of ground without overwhelming you with it. He does it in a F?@King comfortable manner (and of course, along with the advice right up front to NOT read the book cover to cover like a fiction novel in one go; but to take it slowly, chapter by chapter, bite by bite, chewing on properly what had already been consumed before stuffing the next morsel in an already full mind)

I loved the writing style of the book and would love to meet the author someday … just to say ‘Great Job. Well Done. Thank You. I really enjoyed reading the Book”. If not, at least, I hope he reads this review. Message conveyed, goal accomplished

I would readily recommend this book to anyone (who doesn’t mid the F?@King language of the book) … just like I would recommend a Dale Carnegie book (How to Win Friends and Influence People) to anyone. It’s that good.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda. Participate now to get free books!

 

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