anulekha
maaaaaybe 2.5
I really thought i'd like it a lot more but it was a chore to finish honestly. rooney's writing, while it added to the plot in conversations with friends, here it does nothing. and definitely not enough to make the book enjoyable. In fact, I think it made it less enjoyable.
for a character driven story, the characters lacked personality. They were very bland and static. They felt very “fake”, which made me feel very distant from them. I struggled to connect with them emotionally.
The inner conflicts that they're supposedly struggling with came across as whiny sometimes.
Things like eating disorders and domestic abuse were kind of just thrown in there and not well explored, or rather were not handled properly.
The ending was really abrupt and came out of nowhere.
There are so many interesting, yet disturbing, facts (all backed by reliable studies) throughout this book that I can't fit into a review without quoting the entire book. It is an absolute must read for everyone. And I mean everyone - parents, teens, CEOs, government officials, artists, anxiety driven people, people with adhd - everyone.
Two things that stuck with me the most is sleep's correlation with autism and the impact of early school start times on crucial adolescent brain development. Although evidence of linkages between sleep and autism is very limited, and mainly correlative, the book provides enough to suggest some correlation and therefore an early diagnosis.
The second, is school timings. The circadian rhythm for early teens runs a few hours behind those of adults, which is they tend to stay up later at night. However, the ridiculously early school start times in most schools in the US disrupt the completion of their sleep cycle causing them to lose their REM sleep, which is crucial in the brain development of teens, particularly the increase in our ability to “recognise and therefore successfully navigate the kaleidoscope of socio=emotional signals that are abundant in human culture”. This topic is one I'm most concerned about considering kids are the future of our society, and our society ain't looking so good right now. It's insane to me to think about what society could've looked like if schools just let kids sleep longer. Maybe there would be more empathy in the world, less violence, less prejudice.
In his last chapter, Walker goes through his vision for sleep on different levels of society: Individual, educational, organisational, government, societal. Each of these areas are so well thought out and thought provoking, by looking into how advancements in technology can serve and improve sleep
on an individual level, how machine learning algorithms can assess an individual's sleep patterns and quality and adjust smart home tech to provide them with the best conditions for optimal sleep.
He further goes to suggest that long term highly accurate sleep tracking can be used predictively to show individuals increasing risk of conditions like Alzheimer's or cancer if they continue sleeping too little.
Overall, this is an incredibly informative book, very well laid out, well though out, backed by lots of studies, yet very accessible. I wish he explored the relationship between trauma and sleep more but I understand that's a whole other field of study that probably can't fit into a chapter.
Written as a relief and respite from the dark, sinful, and obsessive Humbert from Lolita, Pnin is about the comical misadventures of an expat Russian professor in America.
Nabokov's strength in his prose is assuredly indulgent and always a treat, but it does make for a slow read at times.
The eponymous hero of the novel is extremely loveable and peculiar and has won my heart in more ways than one.
This book was a pleasant surprise. I almost didn't buy it, I was just browsing at the bookstore but the cover was too pretty. I also didn't really know who Philip Dick was although it did sound familiar (I don't read a lot of sci-fi). Turns out he's the guy that wrote the book that Blade Runner was based on!
The book is a curated collection of interviews, leading up to quite literally his last interview, since he suffered a stroke that would kill him the very next day. A lot of people would call Philip K. Dick cuckoo, and I get why. The entire time I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend while we were high on shrooms. And I loved it. It had everything you could expect from a shroom session: paranoia, conversations of all sorts, deep, philosophical, silly, and crazy. It also has Dick feeling like he was literally God.
I think there's a lot in here that would spark interesting conversation with open minded people, which I really enjoyed. Everyone can agree that Dick was a little bit crazy (especially in that last interview) but I believe that to reach that stage of craziness, you had to have not been afraid of imagining the whackiest of realities. And for that I appreciate him.
Needless to say, I will be reading every book in this series.
This took me forever to read. Not my cup of tea but it was quite interesting and I did learn a quite a bit about modern romance. Plus, it's Aziz Ansari, so it was great.
things i liked:
1. beautifully written
2. good representation
things i didn't like:
1. so much shit happened in Jude's childhood, maybe a little too much, made me a bit numb
2. plateaued a little in the middle of the book. while i understand it's meant to be more detail-oriented, it needed a little bit of more momentum from the story line.
3. i just wish Jude was a little bit less self-pitying
4. it felt a little feminine, maybe because it was written by a female author. she didn't understand the male psyche well enough (in my personal opinion)
stopped halfway but I don't think I missed much. However, the visuals were brilliant and gorgeous.
this book was great. I think it's extremely important for everyone to read. If you have had a traumatic experience/childhood, then this book will help you understand yourself and your trauma responses. If you have never really had any traumatic experiences, then this book will help you become more sympathetic and understanding of other people.
Kolk deals with the ‘what' and the ‘why' of trauma really well. What exactly does trauma do to your brain, and why your body reacts the way it does. Without going into my own personal trauma, I can say that it's helped me become kinder to myself and my body because I now understand that all the things I might dislike about myself is simply the way my body has adapted to trauma. My body has worked its hardest to keep me alive and survive through trauma.
It has helped explain certain things about myself such as my adhd, why I find it difficult to put into words exactly what I'm feeling (alexithymia), my social anxiety, and even my sexual experiences.
Kolk also addresses the ‘how' - how to deal with trauma and the trauma induced behaviours. He does so by going through the various forms of healing trauma, from meditation & yoga to neurofeedback to acting! Although I wish he went a bit deeper into the meditation/yoga I like that he doesn't try too hard to talk about the things that are out of the scope of his experience. That being said, because his experience is more in the medical field, there are no concrete suggestions on how you can deal with trauma when you can't really go to therapy.
This book is very extensive and science based, but told through lots of anecdotes. It's a little bit too anecdotal for my personal liking but nothing too extreme. Very accessible and easy to read.
I do admit, it took me forever to read this book. slow at times but honestly, it's brilliant. and beautiful and wonderful and just yeahh
Overall, it was a pretty good book. Although I felt like a lot more could have been done in terms of character and plot development. Hate the way it ended. even for a book that's part of a series, the ending felt a little too abrupt and loose. I mean, what happened between Lara Jean and Josh? Did they make up? Did he apologize? Looking past the ending, I thought it was a cute, quick and easy read. Perfect for a day at the beach.
i thought this book was just so beautifully written, and had a wonderfully touching story.
