jmtd → log → Three Minimalism reads

"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo is a popular (New York Times best selling) book by lifestyle consultant Mari Kondo about tidying up and decluttering. It's not strictly about minimalism, although her approach is informed by her own preferences which are minimalist. Like all self-help books, there's some stuff in here that you might find interesting or applicable to your own life, amongst other stuff you might not. Kondo believes, however, that her methods only works if you stick to them utterly.

Next is "Goodbye, Things" by Fumio Sasaki. The end-game for this book really is minimalism, but the book is structured in such a way that readers at any point on a journey to minimalism (or coinciding with minimalism, if that isn't your end-goal) can get something out of it. A large proportion of the middle of the book is given over to a general collection of short, one-page-or-less tips on decluttering, minimising, etc. You can randomly flip through this section a bit like randomly drawing a card from a deck. I started to wonder whether there's a gap in the market for an Oblique Strategies-like minimalism product. The book recommended several blogs for further reading, but they are all written in Japanese.

Finally issue #18 of New Philosopher is the "Stuff" issue and features several articles from modern Philosophers (as well as some pertinent material from classical ones) on the nature of materialism. I've been fascinated by Philosophy from a distance ever since my brother read it as an Undergraduate so I occasionally buy the philosophical equivalent of Pop Science books or magazines, but this was the most accessible for me that I've read to date.