My friend Patrick Rhone has unveiled his newest book, enough, to the world today. His last book, Keeping It Straight, was an excellent read and I expected nothing less with this latest work of his.
I wasn’t disappointed.
At 135 pages and with the entire draft manuscript written entirely using the iOS app PlainText, enough is filled with essays that weren’t just written by Mr. Rhone — they were crafted by him.
Here’s what the back cover enough reveals about it:
What is enough? Enough is a very personal metric. Like our center of gravity, each of us must find what is enough by swaying from less to more until a comfortable medium is found. The goal, then, is not to find what is, or will be, enough forever. That is impossible. The goal is to discover the tools and strategies you need to find what is enough for you right now and provide the flexibility to adjust as the conditions change.
As I read through each passage I really felt a connection not just to him in a much deeper way, but to myself in a much deeper way. While I’m fairly sure that he never meant the book to be a self-help book of any sort, it winds up being the best kind of that variety — but in a more profound way. You see, enough is a book that compels the reader to dig into self-realization. There’s no “preachiness” to it; the words simply resonate within the reader so that they can draw their own conclusions from the text.
Patrick never gives you the answers to the questions that enough inevitably brings up, such as “What is enough?”, but rather he asks you to ask those questions of yourself — the answers can only come from within, after all. Whether you read his thoughts on saying no versus saying yes or
One of the best things about enough is how accessible it is for anyone. The language doesn’t escape you, even if you’re walking into it thinking the book is about minimalism (Spoiler Alert: It really isn’t about minimalism). I found the best pieces were the ones that took a seemingly ordinary and unrelated aspect of our world and turned it on its ear. Things like dealing with rainy weather and vampire lore aren’t the first things you think of when the word “enough” comes to mind (other than tiring of either and wanting there to be no more of it — i.e. The Twilight Saga in terms of vampire lore), but Patrick manages to connect the dots in a way that shows the care and craftsmanship he called upon while writing the book.
Every single essay in enough makes you think — even dwell — on the idea of where you are willing to draw the line between enough and everything on both sides of enough. The meat of the words aren’t so much in the words themselves, but in what the reader does with those words. The fact that Patrick is able to pull that off with such deftness is a testament to his writing talent.
I’ve been a big fan of Patrick’s for a long time, and enough is another stellar achievement for him; he has assembled a work of true art with this book. It is well-packaged, well-delivered and entices a wellspring of thought and mindfulness from its readers that very few books can do on such a large scale. You can return to enough time and time again — I’d recommend that, in fact — because it can act as a touchstone for those who want to be able to connect with what they need as opposed to what they think they need.
All we really need is enough. My enough will be very different from yours. Patrick Rhone has written a book that allows us to reflect on what our own version of “enough” is — and it can do that for us whenever we need to be reminded of that, or when our “enough” has changed. This book is a must-read and a must-have on your bookshelf so that you can return to it whenever you feel the need. Even one essay will bring a sense of order to the chaos because each essay compels the reader to look inward and deal with it rather than push it aside.
Without question, enough is a masterful work. Pick it up today from First Today Press. I could not recommend highly…enough.
