“The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love” by Andy Merrifield

This is another book that I’ve been meaning to pick up for a while, I swear I have had it on my list of things to read for literally years. It is a subject that is personally pretty important to me, I’m an amateur in a few different fields that I dabble in (music, dance, acting, etc).

The content of this book was not what I expected, it focuses primarily on amateurs in the realms of politics and policy. It does not actually touch on the arts at all. Which I found disappointing, but I will try to meet this book where it is at. Because it is still interesting, the book essentially talks about our ideas of the professional and the amateur. The amateur is a student of the world who does not want recognition or accolades but does it for the work that they do. And the author uses several different books that represent these ideas through their characters as well as pieces written about this.

My first issue I already mentioned, I think excluding the arts here in favor of exclusively discussing public policy seems limited. Sciences aren’t mentioned either, which I think would be really interesting with the rise of anti-vaxxers and flat-Earthers. Or if there was a way to make it clearer in the title that it is only talking about this one area of expertise.

Another thing is that it does discuss the experience of being an amateur a lot. There are mentions to how hard it can be to be looking up this information on your own and maintaining that knowledge base in your free time while having a job. But there is not much beyond that, nothing about if people like that work and if they actually do find it that rewarding on its own or want recognition. As an amateur myself I wanted to feel like this captured my experience, and in a sense it did in that I agree with what it writes about how amateurs are seen, but I didn’t see ME.

Having said all that, I really like books that take the approach of looking at a specific idea and how it is shown in literature and can change over time. I think those are really interesting in that you can get a sense of how an idea can change and grow over time. So the overall structure of the book I found really intriguing and fascinating.

So given the scope of the book, I would recommend this with a grain of salt. If you know what it is discussing going in then go for it! But I do wish that I personally knew a little more before I picked it up.