Book Review of The Weekend Effect - The Life-Changing Benefits of Taking Two Days Off, by Katrina Onstad

I really tried to like this book. It was a gift from a dear friend.

 

The book encourages everyone to steal back time into their busy lives to ensure weekend serve as down-time. It is a book that takes the 24/7 world and wrestles it back to weekday and weekend segments. There is an argument that productivity increases where work hours concentrate to a set time.

 

The book, at times, is little more than a conglomerate of patched together research pieces. Material of the author from firsthand account is very limited. The author’s sought experience is thin and is simply recorded.

 

What really killed it was a table at the end of the book. The table has the heading “Manifesto for a Good Weekend”. Under a sub-heading of “Seek beauty”, the author includes the tip:

 

“Stand outside a church on a Sunday morning and listen to the choir”

 

Get that, “stand outside a church”!

 

Now, that tip is wrong on so many levels:

 

1. Contrary the book’s objective: The book calls people to seize the weekend and squeeze it for all it is worth. If people have duly heeded the call to make time then why would they only stand outside the church – surely they have the time to go inside the church.


2. Acoustic: Show me one church; just one - I dare you, where the acoustics are better on the outside.

 

3. Beauty: There seems to be an implication that the beauty of a church environ starts and ends with a choir. It is plausible that by going inside a church people will find other items of beauty.

 

4. Health: The author is writing from a location where it snows. In my country, church days can be quite hot. It is plausible that standing outside to listen to a choir would be detrimental to one’s health.


5. Singing: A church with a choir is a church where people all stand to sing with the choir. Listening outside does not lend well towards singing outside. Listening inside lends well towards singing inside. For instance, you can sing inside amongst a mass of people and have your voice lost in the din. With my poor singing voice, I’m very happy to have my feeble contribution drowned out by others.

 

I’ll not be standing outside a church to listen to the choir. If I do find myself at the front of a church on a Sunday morning, it will be natural to make the step of going inside the church. Listening to a choir outside a church would be like going to a beach and not taking shoes off to feel the sand – all presence but no connection.

 

And, when inside the church, I’m sure that there will be more beauty than just the combined voice of a choir.

 

Shalom,

Ozhamada

 

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