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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Parts of this book were brilliant, and other sections were so dense and/or scattered (yes, sometimes both at once!) they were difficult to digest.
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
slow-paced
I was hoping to be at least intellectually stimulated by this, and while I did enjoy the tangents on different philosophers or works of art and artists, the language was so overly didactic and hard to grasp. The audiobook narrator may not have helped me. I honestly would have like the option to immediately skip from the first and last paragraph of each chapter, because that's where the real meat of her points lay. At one point the author comments something like -oh you picked up this book but you don't actually want to know how to do nothing-... well, actually I did want to know how to do nothing. So, you're wrong... All of the rants on birdwatching and bioregionalism and her upper class San Francisco/California life were off-putting to me and not really palatable or relatable as someone of much lower ranking in society. Pretty sure I remember seeing this book in the instagram feed of Urban Outfitters and that's probably a great demographic for this book...young rich adults who can afford to buy a pretty hardcover book and never bother to read it anyway (is that harsh?) I can understand how people like this book, but I honestly would've been better off with a SparkNotes summary or just reading the main takeaways from other reviews. Woof.
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Ch. 1 :
- "Unless there is something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly 'potentially productive' the second you open your eyes in the morning, and in my opinion, no one should accept this."
- "Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything."...
"The platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead, they reward shouting and oversimple reaction, of having a take after having read a single headline."
-"That which cannot be verbalized is figured as excess or incompatible. Although every in-person encounter teaches us the importance of nonverbal expressions of the body, not to mention the very matter of fact presence of the body in front of me."
-The practice of doing nothing is a remedy to the rhetoric of growth. Maintenance and care is as important as what is considered as productive, usually growth or innovation.
Ch. 2 :
-Epicurus and the Garden School
-"There is no escaping the political fabric of the world... the world needs my participation more than ever. Again, it's not a question of whether, but how."
Ch. 3 :
-"There is nothing inherently unusual of the notion of not working while at work", yet the notion of complete inactivity seems so appalling as opposed to obviously seeking other distractions.
Ch. 6 "
-"The choice, not of what to say - what's on your mind, but of whether or not to participate, doesn't feel like it belongs to me when I use Facebook and Twitter."
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Ch. 1 :
- "Unless there is something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly 'potentially productive' the second you open your eyes in the morning, and in my opinion, no one should accept this."
- "Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything."...
"The platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead, they reward shouting and oversimple reaction, of having a take after having read a single headline."
-"That which cannot be verbalized is figured as excess or incompatible. Although every in-person encounter teaches us the importance of nonverbal expressions of the body, not to mention the very matter of fact presence of the body in front of me."
-The practice of doing nothing is a remedy to the rhetoric of growth. Maintenance and care is as important as what is considered as productive, usually growth or innovation.
Ch. 2 :
-Epicurus and the Garden School
-"There is no escaping the political fabric of the world... the world needs my participation more than ever. Again, it's not a question of whether, but how."
Ch. 3 :
-"There is nothing inherently unusual of the notion of not working while at work", yet the notion of complete inactivity seems so appalling as opposed to obviously seeking other distractions.
Ch. 6 "
-"The choice, not of what to say - what's on your mind, but of whether or not to participate, doesn't feel like it belongs to me when I use Facebook and Twitter."
This is not just another self-help book telling you to put down your phone. Instead, it’s an activist manifesto rooted in embodied experiences of proximity—through birdwatching/listening, artistic creation, and activism—offering a critical reflection on the many inequalities of the Anthropocene and the actions needed to dismantle them.
And oh, this book reminds me that back in early 2021, I lived next to a rose garden.
And oh, this book reminds me that back in early 2021, I lived next to a rose garden.
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Might be 5 stars but I listened to it and ironically, considering the actual topic of the book, the narrator sounds like she could be computer generated, which was distracting. Need to get my hands on a print copy. I really liked it other than the narrator (who google assures me is a live actress), and chapter 6 kind of blew my mind. I’ve been trying to describe my personal issues with social media for years, and it turns out there’s a name for it: context collapse. I loved and still love sharing on the internet when I know who my audience is and isn’t. Sharing when it could be seen by anyone anyone from my mom to my high school crush to my politically adversarial neighbor to some near strangers who friended me because they liked a comment on a mutual friend’s post to that professional acquaintance who became an influencer and just wants my likes to a complete stranger just stresses me out. Lots more good and relatable stuff in this book.