A cultural history of seizing the day and how the idea has been co-opted by a range of special interests until it can be used as a description for almost any practice or commodity. Krznaric has a historian’s eye for contradictions and re-purposings, but also manages to draw out a number of practices that might be helpful to readers seeking to make space in their lives. (My favourite is to imagine dying, going to a dinner party in the afterlife, and meeting alternative you’s who took different decisions at critical points in your life. Which ones might you envy? Which would you pity? And how do the answers to these questions illuminate how you might want to make future life choices?) Altogether a good antidote to the commercialisation of carpe diem.

4/5. Finished Wednesday 25 April, 2018.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)