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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Quit halfway through. A bunch of anecdotal stories that have very little in common. Author constantly tries to take quotes from people in one town and use it as scientific evidence that his viewpoint is obviously true.
informative
medium-paced
Volumes of data, plus, it'll make you feel bad for living in the U.S..
Reto lector 2018, enero: Un libro que tienes pero no has leído.
Silvia Ortiz, un ocupado técnico de soporte de 31 años, nos cuenta que el libro es un buen punto de partida pero que está falto de "chicha".
-Ya sé que vivimos muy deprisa, no hace falta que me convenzan. Precisamente por eso me he puesto a leer un libro así -dice, rascándose la nariz con aire ausente-. Te da algunas pistas para ir más despacio por la vida. Pero, mayormente, es una colección de anécdotas de gente random a la que le ha funcionado el movimiento ~Slooow~ -afirma mientras gesticula con las manos-, y quedarían mejor en un documental, en vez de en un libro.
Silvia Ortiz, un ocupado técnico de soporte de 31 años, nos cuenta que el libro es un buen punto de partida pero que está falto de "chicha".
-Ya sé que vivimos muy deprisa, no hace falta que me convenzan. Precisamente por eso me he puesto a leer un libro así -dice, rascándose la nariz con aire ausente-. Te da algunas pistas para ir más despacio por la vida. Pero, mayormente, es una colección de anécdotas de gente random a la que le ha funcionado el movimiento ~Slooow~ -afirma mientras gesticula con las manos-, y quedarían mejor en un documental, en vez de en un libro.
This book really challenged my worldview, especially when I first read it as an impressionable teen. I am, by my very nature, fast. I like to be busy, I like to walk quickly, I like to feel the thoughts racing around my brain. But since I read this book, I try to take time to be slow. An hour to read at a leisurely pace, a slow cup of coffee on the back porch. . .and even though I tend to live most of my life in the fast lane, this book has made me slow down, even if just a little bit.
A read great that poses some thought-provoking questions about modern society and our place in it.
A read great that poses some thought-provoking questions about modern society and our place in it.
I bought this book years ago in the airport; an impulse buy. It has been to Germany, across the US, and sat on our bookshelves for years. Until a few weeks ago when we were purging books. We have too many. So it was either read it quickly or give it away!
Funny right, read the book about going slow fast or get rid of it?
The book makes the argument that we all need to slow down, not just with respect to food, which is the context where most people have heard of the slow movement. I think this is a great idea. I found myself nodding along, as I skimmed the book, because I did not want to spend too much time reading the book.
A few points points of interest from the book:
1. Don’t speed. You really won’t get there faster. If you do want to speed, think about someone you love getting run over by someone speeding and talking on their phone. Then don’t speed, or talk on the phone. (As an aside, I read the other day that only 2.5% of the human population are supertaskers, ie people who can do more than one thing at once. You are not in the 2.5%. Remember that.)
2. Meditation is really good for you. I am going to get a few books on meditation to get started.
3. Bra, Italy is the home of the slow food movement. We will be vacationing there soon!
4. The Super Slow exercise section was really interesting too. If you do weight training reps very slowly your body gets more out of the exercises. Read more here.
Good book. On to the next.
I dropped this book after a half of it, since I started to find it boring. I don't know whether it has any instructions on how to live slowly, but it felt almost as fiction about very similar people who enjoy very similar lives. "Our lives became better after we slowed down!", which sounded nice at first, but after dozens of repetitions came to be simply dull. While I got some nice ideas (now I actually want to try out yoga, although I believe this book wasn't the main reason for this thought to come to me), I think that "In Praise of Slowness" could be much shorter, so it wouldn't give an inevitable impression of being a well-written waste of time.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book was immensely frustrating for several reasons, some pettier than others. First I'll start with the nice things.
The nice things: I agreed with probably like, 80% of this book, and with all of Honoré's major points. We should, as a society, slow down. We're all run ragged by our obsession with doing as much as possible in as little time as possible. Burnout, isolation, and depression are rampant in our culture, and that has probably only changed for the worse since this book was published in 2004. Honoré is most certainly not WRONG, and his examples of different aspects of life that can be slowed down were a good list to begin thinking about areas of the reader's own life in which to slow down.
So, he's not wrong, but also, he's not right.
The petty reasons this was frustrating: I listened to this on audio, and it was read by the author. Usually that's a positive, but unfortunately, Honoré cannot pronounce "artisanal" nor the "Quixote" portion of Don Quixote, which just. Were really jarring and weird. Like, it's "artizznle" right? He says "art-is-annall" the entire time he was talking about food and I just wanted to put my head through a pane of glass. Also, he has advanced degrees in Italian, but pronounced Quixote like "kwik-soat," like????? I DON'T have an advanced degree in a Romantic language, but I know it's "kee-hoh-tay." This was not only frustrating, but definitely a small thing that notched at credibility, which is pretty important for nonfiction.
The not petty reasons this was frustrating: Honoré spends an obnoxious amount of this book sucking up to capitalism. Like, really. In several chapters, it comes to a head where the next logical step of what he's discussing indicates that, hey, maybe CAPITALISM is BAD???? And he's just basically like, "nope, it's not actually!" He has this pipe dream that the super-wealthy will ever give a single fuck about the little guys at the bottom of the food chain enjoying their lives. He doesn't take into account the corrupt and amoral people at the top of our society enforcing capitalism on lower classes. The book in general is just very privileged in every way you can imagine, especially in the realm of class.
His idea that capitalism can be reformed to benefit us instead of treating the middle, working, and lower classes like fodder is just not realistic. The people at the top will not abide it. It's a nice idea, but if you want to achieve a slower lifestyle, you're going to have to substantially overhaul the system. I don't pretend to know enough about economics to say what can or should be done, but I feel like I know enough about the capitalist society we currently live in to say that just asking the wealthiest class to please let the working class have some free time to enjoy their lives isn't going to get you any results. We've been trying that tactic for decades, but the dehumanization of lower class people by the super-wealthy means that it ain't gonna happen that way.
Since this was published in 2004, I really hope that Honoré has come to realize that capitalism and slow living are fundamentally at odds. They cannot coexist. Or, at least, not for everyone. Only some people will have enough money to make slow living a reality. Some people are living fast because if they substantially slow down, they will literally die.
Like I said, I agree with most of what Honoré had to say. I do think we should slow down. I think people should be able to enjoy their lives rather than be obsessed with their schedules and their achieve rates and their pace of life. We all deserve the opportunity to see the beauty of being alive rather than rushing through our lives without having a moment to enjoy it. But he's not really willing to take the intellectual steps necessary to make a slow lifestyle accessible to everyone, and that involves dismantling capitalism.
In Praise of Slowness makes an interesting companion book to another one I'm reading, Buddhism for Mothers. Both make arguments for slowing down one's pace of life and both make assumptions that the person reading the book must have a life similar to that of the author's. In the case of In Praise of Slowness I already live a fairly slow life, taking time to go the speed limit, not aggressively driving, cooking most meals and eating at the table as a family. Part of my choice to live slower is one of economics. It is honestly cheaper to cook from scratch. It has also given a way for my son and I to bond — he loves to cook. The point is, while the book has some valid points it makes those points through numerous assumptions.
Gosh, I'm really surprised to have bailed on this one. I was intrigued, but I couldn't get past the overwhelmingly middle class undertones. The underlying idea is one that I'm on board with, but this book was not for me, I guess.
I bought this book years ago and never found time to read it. Quelle surprise! But I finally made the time and found it to be the balm or mirror we all need right now. If you’re feeling slow or sluggish already this book will smile at you warmly, pat you on the back, and help you settle deeper into that slower, wiser, more meandering self. In fact, you’ll feel positively virtuous for doing so! And if you’re the opposite, if you feel like the treadmill you’re on was just cranked to 10, then this book will offer you a little reflection to encourage you to pause and take pulse. Chock full of research and wonderfully narrated by Carl Honoré in that “sitting beside you on the bus” vein of Quiet or So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, I felt like this was the book I have needed for years. As they sing in RENT: "There's only this. Forget regret. Or life is yours to miss." Slow it down. And read this wonderful book.