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rereader33's review
2.0
This was fine. I understand the concept behind this, but I was pretty bored after the first few chapters. Despite that, this was a fairly entertaining, fast read. Read if you have some time to kill and want a quick, easy read.
wintrovia's review
5.0
A really lovely collection of low-key observations that the author saw as she went went about her day, recorded over the course of a year and retold chronologically. One of my key takeaways was that people in London behave very strangely but the book is more about those little moments we often forget which contain small amounts of joy. Reading this book has made me more attentive to these subtle parts of everyday living and more grateful as a result. Any book that changes your habits and minset for the better has to be a good thing.
dogtrax's review
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.5
This is a sweet little book, filled with observational moments of people, the city, nature
littlecogs's review
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Just a lovely snack of a book, full of beautiful slices of life. Makes me want to notice more.
thomasgoddard's review
2.0
I was shelving this in my little bookshop and just liked the pictures.
Then the introduction broke the fourth wall and so I figured... why not?
I picked it up and gave it a read.
I imagine, back before Haiku, the Japanese poets started just jotting down things they saw. Little moments. Women washing clothes in the river. A frog hopping into the water off the riverbank. A farmer shooing birds away from his fields.
The pieces that worked were the particular ones that stirred emotions in the reader. So after a while, they started to sift out the weaker texts and use constraints to achieve a more consistent success rate.
That's what this author needs. A bit more of a formula.
A handful of the fragments were spectacular. Most of them were just... Tweets... I don't mean to belittle them, but the idea is that a tweet is a small little yelp of happenstance or a thought that you clip off your mind like a fingernail. That's how the whole thing got started, so it's not silly of me to reference Twitter. But there's a reason there aren't more books like this. You really have to have a knack to hit that sweet spot. A bit like telling someone your dream... If you're not good at telling stories, you're just going to bore them. Keeling hit the sweet spot maybe 30 times. 5 times really really well. But its 176 pages...
You share it with the world. 99.9999% of it is just as meaningless as the things we filter out of our real lives. What strangers are wearing. We don't focus on every car passing by. Or the shape of every cloud. Couldn't. Not and still stay sane and get things done.
But every now and then a really amazing thing is noticed. The spoof slogan of a kid's t-shirt. The license plate that reads funny. Which makes up for all the rest of those things you'd hate to have to focus on all the time... anyway...
A lovely gift. A lovely cosy read. You can get it done within a few hours. But I'd be lying if I said it was fantastic and a recommended read.
The message of the book is a good one. Notice more of the things in your life. The reality is... The author edited the things they noticed down to ones they liked and even most of those I thought were just a bit pointless.
It's a cute idea. But it only has mileage if you're less tuned into life generally. Because I already notice a lot and would prefer not to a lot of the time. And you definitely have to live in a decent place. Preferably a rich location. because not everything you notice is fancy coffee, dreadlocks and dogs being friendly.
And maybe part of the true magic is being DRAWN in to noticing by accident anyway? I think so.
Then the introduction broke the fourth wall and so I figured... why not?
I picked it up and gave it a read.
I imagine, back before Haiku, the Japanese poets started just jotting down things they saw. Little moments. Women washing clothes in the river. A frog hopping into the water off the riverbank. A farmer shooing birds away from his fields.
The pieces that worked were the particular ones that stirred emotions in the reader. So after a while, they started to sift out the weaker texts and use constraints to achieve a more consistent success rate.
That's what this author needs. A bit more of a formula.
A handful of the fragments were spectacular. Most of them were just... Tweets... I don't mean to belittle them, but the idea is that a tweet is a small little yelp of happenstance or a thought that you clip off your mind like a fingernail. That's how the whole thing got started, so it's not silly of me to reference Twitter. But there's a reason there aren't more books like this. You really have to have a knack to hit that sweet spot. A bit like telling someone your dream... If you're not good at telling stories, you're just going to bore them. Keeling hit the sweet spot maybe 30 times. 5 times really really well. But its 176 pages...
You share it with the world. 99.9999% of it is just as meaningless as the things we filter out of our real lives. What strangers are wearing. We don't focus on every car passing by. Or the shape of every cloud. Couldn't. Not and still stay sane and get things done.
But every now and then a really amazing thing is noticed. The spoof slogan of a kid's t-shirt. The license plate that reads funny. Which makes up for all the rest of those things you'd hate to have to focus on all the time... anyway...
A lovely gift. A lovely cosy read. You can get it done within a few hours. But I'd be lying if I said it was fantastic and a recommended read.
The message of the book is a good one. Notice more of the things in your life. The reality is... The author edited the things they noticed down to ones they liked and even most of those I thought were just a bit pointless.
It's a cute idea. But it only has mileage if you're less tuned into life generally. Because I already notice a lot and would prefer not to a lot of the time. And you definitely have to live in a decent place. Preferably a rich location. because not everything you notice is fancy coffee, dreadlocks and dogs being friendly.
And maybe part of the true magic is being DRAWN in to noticing by accident anyway? I think so.
whogivesabook's review
2.0
I was shelving this in my little bookshop and just liked the pictures.
Then the introduction broke the fourth wall and so I figured... why not?
I picked it up and gave it a read.
I imagine, back before Haiku, the Japanese poets started just jotting down things they saw. Little moments. Women washing clothes in the river. A frog hopping into the water off the riverbank. A farmer shooing birds away from his fields.
The pieces that worked were the particular ones that stirred emotions in the reader. So after a while, they started to sift out the weaker texts and use constraints to achieve a more consistent success rate.
That's what this author needs. A bit more of a formula.
A handful of the fragments were spectacular. Most of them were just... Tweets... I don't mean to belittle them, but the idea is that a tweet is a small little yelp of happenstance or a thought that you clip off your mind like a fingernail. That's how the whole thing got started, so it's not silly of me to reference Twitter. But there's a reason there aren't more books like this. You really have to have a knack to hit that sweet spot. A bit like telling someone your dream... If you're not good at telling stories, you're just going to bore them. Keeling hit the sweet spot maybe 30 times. 5 times really really well. But its 176 pages...
You share it with the world. 99.9999% of it is just as meaningless as the things we filter out of our real lives. What strangers are wearing. We don't focus on every car passing by. Or the shape of every cloud. Couldn't. Not and still stay sane and get things done.
But every now and then a really amazing thing is noticed. The spoof slogan of a kid's t-shirt. The license plate that reads funny. Which makes up for all the rest of those things you'd hate to have to focus on all the time... anyway...
A lovely gift. A lovely cosy read. You can get it done within a few hours. But I'd be lying if I said it was fantastic and a recommended read.
The message of the book is a good one. Notice more of the things in your life. The reality is... The author edited the things they noticed down to ones they liked and even most of those I thought were just a bit pointless.
It's a cute idea. But it only has mileage if you're less tuned into life generally. Because I already notice a lot and would prefer not to a lot of the time. And you definitely have to live in a decent place. Preferably a rich location. because not everything you notice is fancy coffee, dreadlocks and dogs being friendly.
And maybe part of the true magic is being DRAWN in to noticing by accident anyway? I think so.
Then the introduction broke the fourth wall and so I figured... why not?
I picked it up and gave it a read.
I imagine, back before Haiku, the Japanese poets started just jotting down things they saw. Little moments. Women washing clothes in the river. A frog hopping into the water off the riverbank. A farmer shooing birds away from his fields.
The pieces that worked were the particular ones that stirred emotions in the reader. So after a while, they started to sift out the weaker texts and use constraints to achieve a more consistent success rate.
That's what this author needs. A bit more of a formula.
A handful of the fragments were spectacular. Most of them were just... Tweets... I don't mean to belittle them, but the idea is that a tweet is a small little yelp of happenstance or a thought that you clip off your mind like a fingernail. That's how the whole thing got started, so it's not silly of me to reference Twitter. But there's a reason there aren't more books like this. You really have to have a knack to hit that sweet spot. A bit like telling someone your dream... If you're not good at telling stories, you're just going to bore them. Keeling hit the sweet spot maybe 30 times. 5 times really really well. But its 176 pages...
You share it with the world. 99.9999% of it is just as meaningless as the things we filter out of our real lives. What strangers are wearing. We don't focus on every car passing by. Or the shape of every cloud. Couldn't. Not and still stay sane and get things done.
But every now and then a really amazing thing is noticed. The spoof slogan of a kid's t-shirt. The license plate that reads funny. Which makes up for all the rest of those things you'd hate to have to focus on all the time... anyway...
A lovely gift. A lovely cosy read. You can get it done within a few hours. But I'd be lying if I said it was fantastic and a recommended read.
The message of the book is a good one. Notice more of the things in your life. The reality is... The author edited the things they noticed down to ones they liked and even most of those I thought were just a bit pointless.
It's a cute idea. But it only has mileage if you're less tuned into life generally. Because I already notice a lot and would prefer not to a lot of the time. And you definitely have to live in a decent place. Preferably a rich location. because not everything you notice is fancy coffee, dreadlocks and dogs being friendly.
And maybe part of the true magic is being DRAWN in to noticing by accident anyway? I think so.