Neasden booth biography of michaels

Write a Review. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews. Search review text. Displaying 1 - 30 of 1, reviews. This is a book about Scandinavia - judged time and time again by various polls to be the happiest and most satisfying place to live in the world.

Neasden booth biography of michaels

Yet we British ignore it. I came to this book with high levels of ignorance It made me realise how much we look south - towards France, Italy, Spain and Greece. We want sunshine and olives, and Mediterranean waves lapping at our feet. We don't give a hoot about the northern lands, and their strange cold habits. Well, more fool us. This book is fascinating voyage through Nordic history, culture and psychology, and I am going to award it a full five stars.

The author writes very amusingly, and that adds great charm to his observations. He is a British journalist and his wife is Danish. He spent several years living in Denmark, and has obviously travelled around Scandinavia extensively. But he has also done his research, and the book is far from being purely anecdotal. There are a lot of references to surveys done by various respectable bodies.

One of my GR friends was critical of this book, describing the author as xenophobic. Yes, he is pretty rude. But I see this as a reflection of his personality, rather than an indictment of the people he describes. He's a glass half full sort of chap, with a dry sense of humour - so his way of seeing is bound to be rather jaded. I found it easy to see beyond some of his negative observations and evaluate the Scandinavians in my own terms - and much of that was positive.

All in all I found the author incredibly readable, and because so much of this book was completely new to me, I found it utterly fascinating. I shall end with a few of the compliments that are given to Scandinavia by the rest of the world. Most of us are familiar with these Nordic labels, but the book explores them in ways that are extremely interesting - and there were lots of surprises, or at least there were for me.

Put down your bowl of taggiasca olives, and put aside your glass of sun-warmed Cabernet Sauvignon, it is definitely time to explore these amazing countries of the chilly north. This book makes the perfect introduction - it's a marvellously entertaining read. This is my new favorite book, and I'm excited to start pestering others to read it.

The Almost Nearly Perfect People is my idea of a perfect read, with its elements of travelogue, history, anthropological and sociological observations, all peppered with British humor. A blurb quote on my copy described it as "Bill Bryson goes to Scandinavia," which is a good description. Michael Booth is a British journalist who lives in Denmark.

One day he saw a story in the newspaper about the Danes being ranked as the happiest people in the world, and he was puzzled. They don't seem all that frisky to me. The result is a delicious blend of fascinating research and amusing stories. I listened to this on audio, and I frequently laughed out loud at Booth's wit. Some of my favorite stories were when Booth visited a Finnish sauna, when he tried to understand the Danes' enthusiasm for their flag, when he witnessed a Norwegian parade, when he experienced the interconnectedness of Iceland, and when he tried to get Swedes to be more polite.

He also includes some traditional jokes about each place, to see how the countries poke fun at each other. There is so much great stuff in this book that it feels impossible to do it justice in a summary. I thought it was a delight from start to finish. Highly recommended. Hat tip to Goodreader Caroline, whose excellent review prompted me to check out this wonderful book.

It is easy to mock their Gary Larson aestethic sandals with socks, cutoff denim shorts with their shirts tucked in, and so on and their Ned Flanders sensibilities. In truth, a more contended, kind, honest, community-minded group of people you could never hope to meet. The problem was that, for a cynical misanthrope such as myself, folkelig [folksiness] has much the safe effect as Kryptonite on Superman, or water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

I become weak and confused, and begin to question who I am. Prolonged exposure to folkelig undoes me, smothers me, suffocates me. Trying to get the Swedes to be more polite was like picking on Italian men for being vain, or Japanese women for being shy. The poor creatures could not help themselves, and besides, what had the Swedes ever done to me?

It is an instinct I may not have been entirely successful in resisting over the course of this book, but I hope that any Nordic people who might read it will forgive me. Put it down to envy, if that helps. This region has its own set of problems and challenges, weird personality kinds and frailties, just like the rest of us. But ultimately its success is still hard to argue with.

Looking to the future, the Nordic countries are also facing some serious challenges — aging populations, creaking welfare states, the ongoing integration of immigrant populations, and rising inequality. But it's still Scandinavia. It is still the enviably rich, peaceful, harmonious, and progressive place it has long been. It's still The White Album.

I really wanted this book to be good. And I am SO mad that it was terrible! This is exactly the topic that I want to read about--why do we have this pervasive envy of all things Scandinavian? Is it deserved? What are the Scandinavian countries really like, are they really paradise on earth? What aren't we seeing through our worship of them?

This book looks like it will answer these questions, but it answers none. It is a poorly written blog post of a book. Then I talked to his expert. He didn't cite any facts, just said some platitudes. Is this something meaningful?!? This is in the really bad category. Terje Enge. I am a Scandinavian who was based in Norway for more than sixty years, this book shows that I'm not even close to perfect.

But this book is: It is good written, it is funny and it even gave a Norwegian new insight! It is both a critique and hymn to the supposedly the happiest, most trusting and successfull people on this planet. I always loved Denmark, I even planned to move to Copenhagen once upon a time. After having read this book I'm glad I didn't. I learned that the Norwegians are even more Danish than the Danes.

We have the Jantelov, the koselige, the folkelige and the same social cohesion, but mixed with the Swedes respect for ordning. The chapters on Denmark are clearly the best, the author is a brit who lives in Denmark with wife and children. The chapters on Norway are not as good, but that may be because I already know the Norwegians pretty well.

If you plan to stay in Scandinavia this book is a must-read. It may tempt you to stay for a long time. If you are a Scandinavian you should read it too, but it may make you want to leave. I did …. It was entertaining, interesting and thought provoking. Michael Booth is a Brit who has moved to Denmark, as his wife wanted to return to her home country.

From this vantage point, Booth sets out to write a book about the people of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and to explore what makes their lives different, better, worse and odd, compared to each other and especially compared to the rest of the world. His starting point are statistics suggesting that the people of Denmark are happier than people anywhere else in the world.

He provides some historical context and anecdotes, recounts his own experiences and reports on interviews with experts and ordinary people. I became quite a bore at the dinner table at my house for a few weeks as I recounted some of these interesting tidbits of information. He packages the whole thing with a lot of humour, some self-deprecation, many strong opinions, many impressionistic reactions and very little objectivity.

The narrator of the audio has a great spirited British accent which brings a lot of life to the whole experience. He highlights the tension between the benefits of economic and social stability and the inevitable consequential sameness and conventionality. He takes offence at the taxation rates, but recognizes that these are countries with extraordinary school systems and social safety nets.

He dwells on the equality between the sexes and the smaller spread between rich and poor, but recognizes that these countries face real challenges when it comes to recent immigration movements. Notably, he is fearless when it comes to making generalizations and pointing out some of the deficiencies or down sides to the countries and cultures he depicts.

Which for a Canadian listener makes for an interesting experience because in many ways what Booth describes is not that different from our Canadian reality. So while his book was entertaining and interesting, it also provoked me to think of some of what I take for granted, to try to see it from an outside perspective. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version.

In other projects. Wikidata item. Background and release [ edit ]. Content [ edit ]. Reception [ edit ]. The Countries React. Michael Booth [ 11 ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. The country has the largest private debt in the world, and its people work the fewest hours, and on every comparative measure of productivity rank low.

It all seems rather fragile. One of the strengths of the book is the use the author makes on the factual data available, e. He also makes good, though not systematic, use of the international comparative indices compiled by the Organisation for European Cooperation and Development, the United Nations, and non-government organisations. The book seems to omit any account of the natives of the northern tip of the north, the Suomi peoples.

They are mentioned but that is that. Who are they? How do they differ, how did they differ from Finns or Norwegians. Press Esc to cancel. The whole world wants to learn the secrets of Nordic exceptionalism: why are the Danes the happiest people in the world, despite having the highest taxes?