Brief Book Thoughts: Noticing, Pleases, Worthing, Dreams

Noticing, by Ziyad Marar

[Disclosure: I have a personal bias towards this book]. There's a really interesting category of books that kind of serve like mantras. I listened to this one on audiobook and it made me more notice-ful for the duration of my listening, which is wonderful.

I feel like I should pick some traits I wish I had more of (say, Bravery) and just listen to an audibook about them regardless of its quality, as a kind of mantra-practice to prioritize prioritizing that trait.

The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases, by Lu You

I got this because I enjoyed Yu's poems about cats, and also because the title is so fantastic. But I did not enjoy this book at all. But do check out his Cat Poems.

The Worthing Saga, by Orson Scott Card

So, many years ago I had this idea for a sci-fi premise where this new invention allows people to sleep as long as they like and spread their waking-lifespan over as much or little time as they wanted: you could choose to be awake 24 hours a day for 50 years, or 2 hours a day for 600 years, or 10 minutes a day (average) for 7200 years.

My intuition was that this would create an economic split where if you make your money from capital you would want to extend as much as possible, while if you make your money from labour you would want to compress as much as possible, but I'm not at all sure about that.

I never got anywhere with it in part because I felt like I had a premise but no plot. A while ago I mentioned the concept to a dear friend who said oh yeah that's already been done, check out Orson Scott Card's Worthing Saga. Since life is short and my ideas for books are many, this was more relief than disappointment: someone else has already done it! I can experience this world without needing to create it!

Alas, I feel that Card doesn't do the idea justice at all – it's an element of his world but I don't think he really thinks through the implications or figures out how this world would work.

(Overall I thought the book was fine, Card is a very proficient craftsmen so once I started I found it hard to put down, but at the end of it all I wish I hadn't started, I don't think this one will stick with me at all).

What Dreams May Come, by Richard Matheson

I kind of enjoyed the book but can't really recommend it – it's EXTREMELY "here are my ideas about the afterlife pretending to be a novel", and I'm extremely tolerant of Novels of Ideas and still only found this one good-or-ok, and most people I meet seem to hate the whole category so probably shouldn't read it. I do really recommend the movie!