I have a healthy blogroll and active RSS feeds – came across these today:

Get Rich Slowly has an interview with the kid and a brief review of the other book that says it’s impossible to move up from being poor.

Megan McArdle says kind of what I said, albeit more eloquently.

SHC echoes the sentiment as well.

I haven’t read the other lady’s book (being poor is hard, impossible) Nickel & Dimed but I’m not surprised that other folks echo that she set out to fail. Failing is easy! For instance, when trying to make it on minimum wage, she’s living in a hotel room and eating out. You’re doing it wrong. The guy’s (being poor is a state on the way to better things) book is: Scratch Beginnings.

I spent a few minutes trying to search for an alt-opinion on this, someone who had put together any kind of coherent reasoning as to why this guy shouldn’t get any credit, and I’ve only found stories like this one. It actually goes through the motions of researching and listing some of the real life difficulties other poor people may face, but also acknowledges that for anybody in or reasonably near Adam’s standing (in terms of health, attitude, and mental capacity), it is truly possible to succeed.

This is the only negative I found. The concentration there seems to be again nitpicking at things outside the actual heart of what was accomplished, such as “taking up room in a homeless shelter that a real homeless person would need.” Further, they’re more interested in framing poor people as having the same problems as gays. Ok!

I have holds in at the library – I’ll read both books and report back.