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katiey's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I like Odell's take and thesis overall - I like that she approaches the topic of social media and the attention economy from a very nuanced perspective and reading many of the anecdotes and connections she made was very interesting. However, I think oftentimes I struggled to understand her point. She disclaims in the beginning that the book is somewhat all over the place, a collection of anecdotes, but I think I could have used more connections back to her main thesis. Overall it was interesting and I just read it for a class anyhow.
tildahlia's review
3.0
I wanted to like this more than I did. I felt like it was so adorned with references and metaphors (art, literature, nature) that I often found myself struggling to keep track of the point. The central thesis (about solitude, communing with nature, the value of deep thought and conversation, the shortcomings of the attention economy etc) are all solid but not groundbreaking enough for me and were too obscured. Could it have been an essay? Maybe. Don’t recommend the audiobook for this one.
xtie's review
5.0
So clear, so beautiful, and honestly so helpful, even tho Jenny Odell definitely doesn’t want this to be a self-help book. This is a library-book-upgraded-to-bought-book for me!
jamiejamie's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
I think there was just a mismatch between what I expected and what I got. I hoped for a real dig into how to avoid the attention economy and got much more of a treatise on activism. Fair enough, but not what I was looking for.