What are you reading - 2022?

[Simplemind]

Two fantasy, alternative life books I've recently read and enjoyed on a lawn chair with a drinky poo.... The Midnight Library and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

[Yppej]

The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19, and The War Against the Human by feminist author Naomi Wolf

[catherine]

I do love internet rabbit holes.

I was reading Ezra Klein's latest essay in the NYTimes: "I DIdn't Want it to be True, but the Medium Really is the Message." The https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/o...instagram.html

In it he references a book I had never heard of but which is a highly-acclaimed book: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by artist, writer and ornithophile Jenny Odell. This book seems like a logical book to read after having just finished bae's recommended 4000 weeks

I'm going to check it out.

[Rogar]

I was reading Ezra Klein's latest essay in the NYTimes: "I DIdn't Want it to be True, but the Medium Really is the Message." The https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/o...instagram.html

In it he references a book I had never heard of but which is a highly-acclaimed book: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by artist, writer and ornithophile Jenny Odell. This book seems like a logical book to read after having just finished bae's recommended 4000 weeks

I read the NYT article. For some freshman course I had, Marshal McLuhan's book about the medium being the message was popular and required reading. At the time, it made absolutely no sense to me. Now I might sort of understand. The Odell book sounds interesting and a lot of accolades. I just order a used copy through Amazon.

[rosarugosa]

My most recent reads:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky - this was a nice coming-of-age novel, with a character that was a bit more lovable than Holden Caulfield, at least to my older adult self.
On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger (non-fiction!) - I thought this might be redundant to Nickle and Dimed but it really wasn't. There was a lot of focus on how micro-managing metrics and technology have sucked all the possible joy and sense of accomplishment from lower level jobs (Amazon warehouse, a call center, and McDonald's). I found it especially interesting having endured Lean-like makeovers in my corporate department in the few years before I retired. It was certainly a much better work environment than the jobs in this book, but job satisfaction was greatly diminished post-makeover.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (another non-fiction!) - This was an absolutely fantastic book, and Stevenson is truly an amazing human being and modern-day hero, who has dedicated his life to fighting horrific injustice in the US judicial system. I know Greg was a fan of this book as well.

[catherine]

I read the NYT article. For some freshman course I had, Marshal McLuhan's book about the medium being the message was popular and required reading. At the time, it made absolutely no sense to me. Now I might sort of understand. The Odell book sounds interesting and a lot of accolades. I just order a used copy through Amazon.

I dowloaded a kindle version of "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell and finished it in 3 days. Luckily this was during my couple of weeks off to help my daughter with my new grandson, so whenever DH asked me to do something, I was able to say, "I'm reading How to Do Nothing and trying to be a really good student, so, no, I can't help you now."

The book isn't really about how to do nothing--it's really more about being present, especially to nature and taking time to work through impatience fostered by the instant gratification of social media, TV, and other cultural noises. But it's not a Zen manifesto, either. It's more than that. It's packed with really interesting thoughts and analyses of how art plays into time, on how using refusal is an act of rebellion and self-emergence; thoughts on finding the balance for retreat v being active in the world; thoughts on expanding our "filter bubble" to include strangers; how to dismantle and reframe the current notions of "progress."

Now that I've read the kindle version, I'm going to order a used copy so that it's on my shelf alongside Walden, The Good Life, Voluntary Simplicity and A Handmade Life--in other words, it has earned a place among my simple living bibles.

[frugal-one]

I dowloaded a kindle version of "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell and finished it in 3 days. Luckily this was during my couple of weeks off to help my daughter with my new grandson, so whenever DH asked me to do something, I was able to say, "I'm reading How to Do Nothing and trying to be a really good student, so, no, I can't help you now."

The book isn't really about how to do nothing--it's really more about being present, especially to nature and taking time to work through impatience fostered by the instant gratification of social media, TV, and other cultural noises. But it's not a Zen manifesto, either. It's more than that. It's packed with really interesting thoughts and analyses of how art plays into time, on how using refusal is an act of rebellion and self-emergence; thoughts on finding the balance for retreat v being active in the world; thoughts on expanding our "filter bubble" to include strangers; how to dismantle and reframe the current notions of "progress."

Now that I've read the kindle version, I'm going to order a used copy so that it's on my shelf alongside Walden, The Good Life, Voluntary Simplicity and A Handmade Life--in other words, it has earned a place among my simple living bibles.

Could you give an example of the bolded above and the meaning of “filter bubble” to include strangers? Not sure what you mean.

[Yppej]

The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19, and The War Against the Human by feminist author Naomi Wolf

Finished this and it was fantastic. She covers how our whole culture is changing from one of critical thinking, debate, intellectual curiosity, and raising our children with those values, to compliance and punishment.

[catherine]

Could you give an example of the bolded above and the meaning of “filter bubble” to include strangers? Not sure what you mean.

how art plays into time

Wow, this is hard to wrap up in a few sentences. She builds the case over a full chapter. But what it meant for me was that art takes time in the process of it, and attention requires time. Art, time and attention can all unbind us from our internal biases, which our brain uses to focus on things we are trained to see, and not see what might be important but ignored. She uses as an example which seems unrelated to "doing nothing"--David Hockney, the painter of tropical colored swimming pools. I'm not a fan of his in particular, but she describes some studies of his with Polaroid collages in which he took hundreds of polaroids of someone swimming and arranged them in a way that you could pay attention to the movement, even though each photo was a static image. Another example is her experience of gong to a symphony which was nothing more than an artful arrangement of everyday sounds made her reenter the world more aware of the sounds around her. She says: "When the pattern of your attention has changed, you render your reality differently. You begin to move and act in a different kind of world." Art and design has a role to play in influencing how we can be led to greater attention to things that would otherwise escape it.

"Filter bubble"

This pertains to our innate and regular practice of filtering out much of the inputs to our sensory and cognitive world. This means that just as we acknowledge these inputs and make use of them to form beliefs and perceptions, we recognize that we have subconsciously eliminated a huge number of inputs. It requires practice to intentionally look out for those "filter bubbles" to draw attention to what has been left out.

I don't have time to do a better job of distilling these two concepts because I have a day of interviews in front of me, but that's the basic gist with apologies to the author for probably screwing it all up.

[frugal-one]

Thanks Catherine. You did a good job. When you talked of filtering out strangers it made me think of people wary of talking with strangers... haha.