He likes Steve Jobs and he likes having things look a certain way, which means he likes the clean aesthetic look of minimalism. It's not so much about what is minimalism as it is what is minimalism from his perspective. The book is written from his view and his journey.

As those go this one has a lot more personality to it than most.

I wouldn't call it literature but I don't require that bar for something in a 'how-to' book. I appreciate and agree with maybe like 70% of the concepts he talks about, however some of it is just nonsense and even the highlights are hard to enjoy when they're written like a 15 year old's homework. I think there are maybe like 3/4 ideas to be gained from reading it. My main issue with the book is mostly just how badly it's written. If this was a good guide to minimalism i hardly think you'd have sections which encourage you to borrow things like that. I found that bit really strange - he talks the entire time about everyone freeing themselves from objects to focus on what matters but then he slaps in a page where he's just like 'yeah you dont need to keep items cause you can just borrow it off everyone else!'. For anyone who hasn't read it, he makes the point that it's a positive to throw out your yearbook because of the social interaction you'd have when asking to see a friend's yearbook. One part that particularly annoyed me was the part about the yearbook. Some of the points seem like they've been shoved in to try and flesh the book out. He reiterates the same fairly weak points over and over again. I just thought that, although I understand the style it is written in, it was written terribly.

Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki