From the back of the book: “‘It has never been easier to make a great living doing what you love. But to make it happen, first you need an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs to get away from lousy bosses, from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate, and ACTUALLY start doing something they love, something that matters. Life is short.’ -Hugh MacLeod

Freud once said that in order to be truly happy people need two things: the capacity to work and the capacity to love. Evil Plans is about being able to do both at the same time. The sometimes unfortunate side effect is that others will hate you for it. MacLeod’s insights are brash, wise, and often funny.”

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I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon when FedEx pulled up and delivered a package I wasn’t expecting.  Upon grasping the envelope, I knew it was a book, but I couldn’t fathom what the title was, seeing as I haven’t ordered any new books lately.  The book turned out to be an advanced copy of Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination, by Hugh MacLeod, which won’t be out in bookstores until the middle of this month.  Imagine my surprise!  An invoice was located inside the book, and it looks like I apparently won the advanced copy from a drawing on Goodreads.com.  I knew I loved that website!!!!

Because Evil Plans is an advanced copy, I pushed my other books to the side and began reading it right away.   Very interesting…

Honestly, I had no idea what the book was about when I put my name in for the drawing.  I just liked the title of the book.  As I read the back cover and flipped through the pages, I thought that this novel might be similar to Apathy and Other Small Victories, by Paul Neilan (a phenomenal book, if you love sarcasm), but it wasn’t.  It turns out that Evil Plans is more or less a self-help book.  I was not expecting that!  However, it was funny and very insightful.  Instead of being long and drawn out, each chapter is a quick read, and the author is a cartoonist as well, so there are many supplemental cartoons to enjoy (though I didn’t find them funny… I probably just don’t understand them.  Dry humor and I don’t get along very well…?).  What I did like was that most chapters told a true story about how someone pulled away from the traditional work of 9-5 and became their own boss, mainly through using the internet. 

 If you hate your job, or feel like it’s a dead end, then I do recommend this book to you, because it has a ton of good advice about becoming your own entrepreneur.  I currently love my job, which is a prerequisite MacLeod says you must have in order to begin an as entrepreneur—you must love what you do (or, I guess, what you’re about to do), so I guess I’m golden for the time being.  I’m only going to give this book two stars, since it wasn’t as interesting as I hoped, since it doesn’t pertain to me, but perhaps one day I’ll decide to branch out and become my own boss.  In that case, I’ll turn back to Evil Plans.