On Giving Up

De: Adam Phillips

Narrado por: Liam Price

From acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, a meditation on what we must give up to feel more alive.

To give up or not to give up?

The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple.

Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable.

There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which. We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are. In this sense, giving up is a critical moment―an attempt to make a different future.

In On Giving Up, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up and helps us to address the central question: What must we give up in order to feel more alive?

©2024 Adam Phillips (P)2024 Tantor Media

PLEASE buy the Book

I don’t often review, I even more seldomly leave poor reviews. I like to read the book, and then listen to it or vise versa. Adam Phillips is wryly brilliant, this book is well worth a physical read. But I’ve never heard a narrator as annoying as this bloke.

For one thing, he has a really odd way of punctuating certain words unnecessarily. More damning, when a thinker is quoted, he puts on the accent of the thinker!! I’ve never heard someone do this in a nonfiction book. Very bizarre.

Repetitive and robotic

The content was boring, uninspired and repetitive. The narration matched the content exactly. I gave up.

Reader sounds like AI. DO NOT BUY

I barely made it through the Prologue and had to google "Liam Price" as I was convinced it was AI. Price has narrated a number of fiction books but he is an unmitigated disaster reading Phillips. I have never had such a negative, visceral reaction to a reader. Recommend skipping the audio book and buying the Kindle or physical book instead as it is worth reading. Whoever hired Price to read this book should be sacked.