This book was an interesting mix of naturism, activism and self-help, and a source of unusual ways of thinking about some of the very modern issues of maintaining focus and resisting the attention economy.
It is truly an unusual book and certainly not what I expected. But sometimes surprises can be good, and happily this was one of those times.
The book is not just about “doing nothing”, but really about deciding (and controlling) where your attention is spent. There are some excellent suggestions in here, with lots of information about art, nature and activism. It has been a long time since I’ve read calls to action like this – and I think I did a good job of not dismissing it as naïveté. Considering ideas from the young is just as interesting as from the old.
In an odd parallel the author grew up living around the same area where I had lived around the first dot com bubble, near Cupertino, Campbell and Los Gatos. It was hard to remember what life was like for me at that time – I remember mostly a lot of office work and hiking, not much in between. But while I was doing all this, the author was attending elementary school nearby and maybe hitting the same fast food restaurants that I was.
Like any book some ideas resonated with me and some didn’t. The section where social media feeds were described as information stripped of context was especially well written. There was also several sections heavy on labels and identities, and for some reason this rubbed me the wrong way and made me question some of the justifications given.
Overall it was a good read and I enjoyed stretching my brain a little bit.
I am still reading The Moonstone, and I’ll bring it along with me on our summer trip coming up. I’ll be posting a summary of the trip here, along with more book thoughts once we get back!
