Publication
Imprint: New York : HarperOne, 2005. Edition: First paperback edition. Responsibility: Carl Honore. OCLC Number: 61514717. Physical: Text : 1 volume : 321 pages ; 21 cm. Features: Includes glossary, index.
Call number
Steward / Honor
ISBN
9780060750510
Collections
CSS Library Notes
Description: The Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word - balance. People are discovering energy and efficiency where we may have least expected - in slowing down." "In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honore details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream - in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. -- from jacket
Table of Contents: Introduction : Age of rage
Do everything faster
Slow is beautiful
Food : turning the tables on speed ; Cities : blending old and new ; Mind/body : mens sana in corpore sano
Medicine : doctors and patience
Sex : a lover with a slow hand
Work : the benefits of working less hard
Leisure : the importance of being at rest
Children : raising an unhurried child
Conclusion : Finding the tempo giusto
FY2007 /
Table of Contents: Introduction : Age of rage
Do everything faster
Slow is beautiful
Food : turning the tables on speed ; Cities : blending old and new ; Mind/body : mens sana in corpore sano
Medicine : doctors and patience
Sex : a lover with a slow hand
Work : the benefits of working less hard
Leisure : the importance of being at rest
Children : raising an unhurried child
Conclusion : Finding the tempo giusto
FY2007 /
Physical description
321 p.; 21 cm
Awards
Christian Science Monitor Best Book (Nonfiction — 2004)
Description
We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold, and American adults currently devote on average a mere half hour per week to making love. Living on the edge of exhaustion, we are constantly reminded by our bodies and minds that the pace of life is spinning out of control. In Praise of Slowness traces the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time and tackles the consequences of living in this accelerated culture of our own creation. Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Realizing the price we pay for unrelenting speed, people all over the world are reclaiming their time and slowing down the pace -- and living happier, healthier, and more productive lives as a result. A Slow revolution is taking place. Here you will find no Luddite calls to overthrow technology and seek a preindustrial utopia. This is a modern revolution, championed by cell-phone using, e-mailing lovers of sanity. The Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word -- balance. People are discovering energy and efficiency where they may have been least expected -- in slowing down. In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honoré details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream -- in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. Defining a movement that is here to stay, this spirited manifesto will make you completely rethink your relationship with time.… (more)
Language
Original language
English
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User reviews
LibraryThing member plappen
We live in an era of speed, where everything moves faster than ever before. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the idea has been to cram more into each minute of the day. Any unoccupied time during the day, whether for adults or children, is considered a reason to panic. At what cost? Imagine
Now a growing worldwide phenomenon, the Slow movement is not a Luddite call to abandon technology. Cellphones and email can be very good things. Nor does it suggest that people should live their entire lives in slow motion, while the rest of the world acts like a video tape stuck on fast forward. Occasionally, Fast is necessary. Slow strives to find a balance in people’s lives. Sometimes, slowing down leads to more energy.
Not everything in this book is possible for everyone but here are some examples. Cook a meal from scratch once a week. Eat a homemade tossed salad (made with locally produced vegetables) along with take-out Chinese food. Set the table for take out pizza, instead of eating in front of the TV; in fact, no more dinners in front of TV. There are a number of cookboooks that specialize in quick meals. When cooking, prepare more than is needed and freeze the rest.
If your child isn’t doing well in school, a possible reason is that every spare moment out of school is filled with activities. It leaves them no time to relax or just be a kid. Ask them if that’s what they really want. Turn off the TV.
There is a growing movement of health professionals who think that spending more time with each individual patient is not a bad thing. Consider trying alternative medicine, in addition to, not instead of, regular medicine. For those who need to lose a few pounds, try walking. It’s free, you don’t need to join a health club, and you may be surprised at what you will find in your own neighborhood.
This book is much needed, and I really enjoyed reading it. Stress seems to be endemic in the 21st century. Here is an antidote. This is very highly recommended.
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the time spent, over a lifetime, sitting in commuter traffic, or being placed on hold. Imagine the health care dollars spent on stress-related illnesses. The average American adult spends only a half-hour per week making love. There is an alternative, called the Slow movement.Now a growing worldwide phenomenon, the Slow movement is not a Luddite call to abandon technology. Cellphones and email can be very good things. Nor does it suggest that people should live their entire lives in slow motion, while the rest of the world acts like a video tape stuck on fast forward. Occasionally, Fast is necessary. Slow strives to find a balance in people’s lives. Sometimes, slowing down leads to more energy.
Not everything in this book is possible for everyone but here are some examples. Cook a meal from scratch once a week. Eat a homemade tossed salad (made with locally produced vegetables) along with take-out Chinese food. Set the table for take out pizza, instead of eating in front of the TV; in fact, no more dinners in front of TV. There are a number of cookboooks that specialize in quick meals. When cooking, prepare more than is needed and freeze the rest.
If your child isn’t doing well in school, a possible reason is that every spare moment out of school is filled with activities. It leaves them no time to relax or just be a kid. Ask them if that’s what they really want. Turn off the TV.
There is a growing movement of health professionals who think that spending more time with each individual patient is not a bad thing. Consider trying alternative medicine, in addition to, not instead of, regular medicine. For those who need to lose a few pounds, try walking. It’s free, you don’t need to join a health club, and you may be surprised at what you will find in your own neighborhood.
This book is much needed, and I really enjoyed reading it. Stress seems to be endemic in the 21st century. Here is an antidote. This is very highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member WinterFox
No one can deny that our modern world is a very fast place. People zoom around in cars or public transport, crunch through work as fast as they can (and for as long as they can, most days), start focusing on the next thing as soon as the current event has started, rush through their food and their
I first encountered this book, In Praise of Slow, a few years ago, and it's taken me a while to get around to reading it. Part of it is that, well, I feel that advocating slowing my life down all over isn't feasible, and so I felt that reading a book like this would only make me feel bad about myself and somewhat ashamed that I can't take control of my life the way that the author suggests, even if I may want to. Thankfully, this isn't the case. The stories that the book advances resonate with me not just because I can recognize details of my own life in them, but because the morals and suggestions stemming from a lot of them seem practical and usable.
Honore details just how speed and constantly watching the clock, feeling like we're always battling against time, came to be one of the defining characteristics of our society, starting from the Industrial Revolution and moving onwards towards the present day, and the harms it has for our society - making us sicker, making us less happy, giving less time to the activities and connections we say are important to us. He then goes through a variety of different movements (which all seem to have some version of the word "slow" in them somewhere) that are trying to ameliorate things. The Slow Food movement, I'd already heard of: it consists of people who believe we should take longer to eat, enjoying better, more local food and the atmosphere and company that should go with it. And that's certainly something I can get behind.
What I hadn't connected up before, and what's the real interesting throughline of the book, were all these other ideas: Slow Cities, encouraging changing the use of cities to get more people walking, more green space, less cars, etc.; changes in how to work, including job-sharing, more flexible hours, being able to step back, etc; different movements for slowing down in education, and letting kids explore and learn at a more natural pace for them. Trends for slower, more relaxing forms of leisure, like knitting, reading, or gardening - even slowing down classical music to the way it used to be played; trends for differing approaches to medicine, to meditation, to sex. I think I'd heard of a large number of these, but having them grouped together like this really pointed up that they all stem from similar desires for things to proceed at a more reflective pace.
That's what this comes to, in the end, and that's what makes the book practical and useful: the real take-home message, reinforced regularly through the book, is that this isn't meant to be a slow-down-in-everything philosophy. Speed has its place, too. It's an argument for taking each element of one's life at the speed it's best appreciated. Rushing through things that should be savored doesn't make us happier, and not taking time to reflect and calm ourselves before rushing on leads to consistently worse results. Honore puts this before us time and again, referencing studies, giving testimonials, drawing back to point at the ways we damage ourselves and our world with too much speed, and trying to show how people can succeed more by taking things more naturally. The style is a little bit cutesy sometimes - man, he adores alliteration ad nauseam, to take a quote from somewhere I can't recall - but it's engaging and keeps you into it. I read it slowly, so it'd sink in. And I think others would probably enjoy reading it, as well. A lot of these books, I finish, and I can't see how I'll be able to keep applying it; this one, I think I can really use.
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play and their time with their kids as if reaching the end on time - or before time is up, even better! - is the true target of these activities. Not enjoyment, not fulfillment, not even necessarily doing the job well. No, speed, speed and punctuality is the key.I first encountered this book, In Praise of Slow, a few years ago, and it's taken me a while to get around to reading it. Part of it is that, well, I feel that advocating slowing my life down all over isn't feasible, and so I felt that reading a book like this would only make me feel bad about myself and somewhat ashamed that I can't take control of my life the way that the author suggests, even if I may want to. Thankfully, this isn't the case. The stories that the book advances resonate with me not just because I can recognize details of my own life in them, but because the morals and suggestions stemming from a lot of them seem practical and usable.
Honore details just how speed and constantly watching the clock, feeling like we're always battling against time, came to be one of the defining characteristics of our society, starting from the Industrial Revolution and moving onwards towards the present day, and the harms it has for our society - making us sicker, making us less happy, giving less time to the activities and connections we say are important to us. He then goes through a variety of different movements (which all seem to have some version of the word "slow" in them somewhere) that are trying to ameliorate things. The Slow Food movement, I'd already heard of: it consists of people who believe we should take longer to eat, enjoying better, more local food and the atmosphere and company that should go with it. And that's certainly something I can get behind.
What I hadn't connected up before, and what's the real interesting throughline of the book, were all these other ideas: Slow Cities, encouraging changing the use of cities to get more people walking, more green space, less cars, etc.; changes in how to work, including job-sharing, more flexible hours, being able to step back, etc; different movements for slowing down in education, and letting kids explore and learn at a more natural pace for them. Trends for slower, more relaxing forms of leisure, like knitting, reading, or gardening - even slowing down classical music to the way it used to be played; trends for differing approaches to medicine, to meditation, to sex. I think I'd heard of a large number of these, but having them grouped together like this really pointed up that they all stem from similar desires for things to proceed at a more reflective pace.
That's what this comes to, in the end, and that's what makes the book practical and useful: the real take-home message, reinforced regularly through the book, is that this isn't meant to be a slow-down-in-everything philosophy. Speed has its place, too. It's an argument for taking each element of one's life at the speed it's best appreciated. Rushing through things that should be savored doesn't make us happier, and not taking time to reflect and calm ourselves before rushing on leads to consistently worse results. Honore puts this before us time and again, referencing studies, giving testimonials, drawing back to point at the ways we damage ourselves and our world with too much speed, and trying to show how people can succeed more by taking things more naturally. The style is a little bit cutesy sometimes - man, he adores alliteration ad nauseam, to take a quote from somewhere I can't recall - but it's engaging and keeps you into it. I read it slowly, so it'd sink in. And I think others would probably enjoy reading it, as well. A lot of these books, I finish, and I can't see how I'll be able to keep applying it; this one, I think I can really use.
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LibraryThing member hydeph
This book is really just one example after another of some individual taking one aspect of his or her life and slowing it down. It does also talk about a number of "movements" promoting a change of pace. I think that it would have been more effective in another form, possibly more concise. After a
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while I grew tired of reading example upon example of the seemingly wondrous effects of Slow. The title is fitting because it is a one-sided presentation of a slower pace. There are maybe 2 or 3 things that I took away from this book, the rest of it didn't really stick. Show Less
LibraryThing member colinsky
I never really got traction with this book, perhaps because its sweep was a bit too broad and treatment of each topic was too superficial. It also seems as though you can take a large number of different types of social initiatives and stuff them into the general rubric of a 'slow' movement, when
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many of them had to do with other things. It did make me marvel all over again about the differences between European cities and North American cities (though I think Honore exaggerates these), and how many of them have come about because European cities predate automobiles. Show Less
LibraryThing member prima1
interesting book about life issues, although the support is too circumstancial
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
This started as a series of articles in the National Post and it does show somewhat in the slightly disjointed feel of it, and also in the slightly superficial treatment. However it's also an interesting meditation on time and our use of it. How many people devote their lives to their jobs only to
I found a lot of food for thought in this one, ideas that I will have to mull over and see what they produce.
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look back later and regret that they haven't done things they wanted to do? This is a look at some people who are taking that to heart and trying for a life that satisfies them on several levels rather than rushing at things.I found a lot of food for thought in this one, ideas that I will have to mull over and see what they produce.
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LibraryThing member subbobmail
In Praise of Slowness is a plea for deceleration. Author Carl Honore would like us to remember that even though our machines have become very fast indeed, human beings need not emulate them.
Naturally he starts with the Italians, who invented the Slow Food movement and inspired various other
In Praise of Slowness would be a better book if it proceeded at a leisurely pace, rather than darting from point to point in a brisk, glossy-magazine manner. Then again, if Honore didn't keep the pace brisk, how many modern readers would set aside the time to read it?
Naturally he starts with the Italians, who invented the Slow Food movement and inspired various other
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movements: Slow Sex, Slow Cities, Slow Parenting, et cetera. This book (and the many people quoted in it) make a good case for chilling out. Do we really want to live in a world where books of One-Minute Bedtime Stories are bestsellers? How many people really enjoy a caffeinated lifestyle, fueled by nuked food?In Praise of Slowness would be a better book if it proceeded at a leisurely pace, rather than darting from point to point in a brisk, glossy-magazine manner. Then again, if Honore didn't keep the pace brisk, how many modern readers would set aside the time to read it?
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LibraryThing member briandarvell
Great overview on how to begin taking more control of your time and approach a new way of living. Gives suggestions on many different areas of life and was much more enjoyable and thought-provoking than I had initially expected it to be.
LibraryThing member mandochild
I must be getting a reputation. I don't think there are many people left who don't now know that my early report card read "You can't hurry Helen". Well, Tamette loaned me what she figured was the perfect book for me: In praise of Slow. I had no idea that there are whole movements across the world
But, most fascinating of all, for me, was the fact that so many people, including the author before he began his research, need to be persuaded that slowing down can be less rather than more stressful, and that it might not be boring. But then, I was always very slow - noone was ever going to convince me that hurrying up was a good idea!
One of the supposed benefits of slowing down in at least some areas of life is that when we slow down, we allow our brains to enter their more creative thinking mode. At such times our thinking becomes less linear and rational (no wonder I'm not logical!) but makes more and deeper connections, meanings and new ideas. Perhaps this could explain why I sometimes catch people whispering to each other that I'm actually pretty intelligent. I never know whether they're finding that I'm more intelligent than they had realised or expected, or whether they believe that I don't recognise the level of my own intelligence. What I do know is that I have many times caught people at finding a need to express the fact of my intelligence, as though this is a thing that needs to be mentioned.
This seems quite strange really, because while they're busy reading biography, science and literature, I'm reading children's books. While they're catching up with the news and the latest discoveries, I'm surfing the net for barbie dolls. Not much comparison really - I'm pretty much an intellectual barbarian. But then, it's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy for me. It's not that I have no interest in or capability to read and do the things that others routinely do; it's just a matter of priorities. Reading (basic, imaginative reading) is at the priority level of sleep for me. If I have read enough stories and walked enough and thought enough, then I might have some brain and spirit room available for higher orders. But, by the time I have finished with work and people, there is not enough time even for my basic priorities, so I quite firmly leave everything else alone. But perhaps because I am so stubborn, I have a bit more time for my brain to simply wander as it needs to do, so that, even though I have taken in little useful information, my brain has thoroughly processed and connected the information it has received, with the result that I appear surprisingly "intelligent". If that's the case then all the swots out there are wasting their time - they should just relax and have a good read!
This also makes me think of C S Lewis. I remember reading, with enormous envy, that for a good part of his life he managed to work according to what, to him, was the perfect schedule. He worked in the morning for 4 hours. After lunch he spent the whole afternoon walking, and then in the evenings he read and conversed with friends. That always sounded absolutely divine to me but very "unproductive" by current standards. However, according to Slow, we are actually more productive if we spend more time in unstructured ways and less time "working". And, given the nature of Lewis' work, imagine the meanings, connections and ideas that could be developed with so much time spent in solitude, with the mind wandering freely, and then in reading and dialogue. He would have been much healthier than most people today and probably capable of much greater levels of intellectual prowess. What a wonderful template for living!
I think I have a new (corny) slogan: "Born to be Slow"!
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with the aim of "slowing down" in one arena of life or another, complete with theories that everything from health to productivity improves as a result. It was an informative and enjoyable read, and I was particularly fascinated by the musical concept of tempo giusto, which argues, among other things, that our current reading of early metronome markings is incorrect. There used to be two beats to every note, not one, meaning that most music is probably played twice as fast as it ought to be. The idea is not that everything should be played ridiculously slowly, but that each piece should find its natural rhythms, or its tempo giusto. Apparently, much music is more complex and beautiful than we are able to comprehend at the speeds normally played. An example of inappropriate speed is Mozart's Rondo alla turca which is meant to be a march, but which is usually played at something more closely resembling a flat out sprint.But, most fascinating of all, for me, was the fact that so many people, including the author before he began his research, need to be persuaded that slowing down can be less rather than more stressful, and that it might not be boring. But then, I was always very slow - noone was ever going to convince me that hurrying up was a good idea!
One of the supposed benefits of slowing down in at least some areas of life is that when we slow down, we allow our brains to enter their more creative thinking mode. At such times our thinking becomes less linear and rational (no wonder I'm not logical!) but makes more and deeper connections, meanings and new ideas. Perhaps this could explain why I sometimes catch people whispering to each other that I'm actually pretty intelligent. I never know whether they're finding that I'm more intelligent than they had realised or expected, or whether they believe that I don't recognise the level of my own intelligence. What I do know is that I have many times caught people at finding a need to express the fact of my intelligence, as though this is a thing that needs to be mentioned.
This seems quite strange really, because while they're busy reading biography, science and literature, I'm reading children's books. While they're catching up with the news and the latest discoveries, I'm surfing the net for barbie dolls. Not much comparison really - I'm pretty much an intellectual barbarian. But then, it's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy for me. It's not that I have no interest in or capability to read and do the things that others routinely do; it's just a matter of priorities. Reading (basic, imaginative reading) is at the priority level of sleep for me. If I have read enough stories and walked enough and thought enough, then I might have some brain and spirit room available for higher orders. But, by the time I have finished with work and people, there is not enough time even for my basic priorities, so I quite firmly leave everything else alone. But perhaps because I am so stubborn, I have a bit more time for my brain to simply wander as it needs to do, so that, even though I have taken in little useful information, my brain has thoroughly processed and connected the information it has received, with the result that I appear surprisingly "intelligent". If that's the case then all the swots out there are wasting their time - they should just relax and have a good read!
This also makes me think of C S Lewis. I remember reading, with enormous envy, that for a good part of his life he managed to work according to what, to him, was the perfect schedule. He worked in the morning for 4 hours. After lunch he spent the whole afternoon walking, and then in the evenings he read and conversed with friends. That always sounded absolutely divine to me but very "unproductive" by current standards. However, according to Slow, we are actually more productive if we spend more time in unstructured ways and less time "working". And, given the nature of Lewis' work, imagine the meanings, connections and ideas that could be developed with so much time spent in solitude, with the mind wandering freely, and then in reading and dialogue. He would have been much healthier than most people today and probably capable of much greater levels of intellectual prowess. What a wonderful template for living!
I think I have a new (corny) slogan: "Born to be Slow"!
Show Less
LibraryThing member nazgul.sp
Great book unveiling the myth that doing things faster is always better. Great for those feeling overwhelmed by the ever increasing speed of things nowadays. The author shows us this trend of slowness in many groups of interest ranging from cooking to sex life. I think the book is a great effort in
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mapping this trend on many different segments and unifying them in one place. Show Less
LibraryThing member RachelGodfrey
This book really annoyed me, the author is clearly an upper-middle class Londoner who seems to have no idea that not everyone in the modern world shares his lifestyle. He begins a lot of sentences with "nowadays we all..." and his basic grasp of the concept of slowness seems to be that "we all"
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rush around at a pace dictated by our yuppie bosses and are all raising dual income families in "money rich, time poor" circumstances and therefore this helpful new movement, the slow movement, has come along to help us rethink our lifestyles. He seems totally unaware of the existence of other lifestyles which have never subscribed to the "cult of speed" to the extent that his demographic probably has, and almost all the ways he suggests of engaging in the slow movement are expensive and elitest - for example, he claims that fruit and vegetables from farmers markets are cheaper than those at the supermarket and therefore accessible to those in lower income brackets, while totally ignoring the fact that working class London markets have always sold cheap fruit and vegetables and are nothing to do with the slow movement. One thing I found particularly ridiculous was the brainchild of a particular businessman he quotes who wants to set up a 'slow hotel' with no electronic gadgetry allowed; the rest of the description (horse-drawn carriages, etc) makes it clear that this would be a very expensive form of holiday - has this man never heard of going camping? Or perhaps that sort of back to basics slowness isn't sexy enough for the book due to its lack of commercial value.. Show Less
LibraryThing member wester
Yes, this book praises slowness a lot. There just never is a real argument about why exactly slowness would be a good thing, just a lot of anecdotal evidence. Most of it consists of bad things happening, society speeding up at the same time, so there has to be some connection in the mind of the
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author. Some of these connections are plausible, in some of them they may be partially right, and some of them I really can't buy. Most of the rest of the book is about several "slow" movements,but they are never covered in any depth. There are no workable suggestions on how to lead a slower life either, at least not in the first four chapters, after which I stopped waiting for this book to make its point. And I get annoyed with the constant insistence that "slow" is not the same as backwards, lazy, etc. Show Less
LibraryThing member M-M
Absolutely brilliant
LibraryThing member pussreboots
In Praise of Slowness makes an interesting companion book to another one I'm reading, Buddhism for Mothers. Both make arguments for slowing down one's pace of life and both make assumptions that the person reading the book must have a life similar to that of the author's. In the case of In Praise
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of Slowness I already live a fairly slow life, taking time to go the speed limit, not agressively driving, cooking most meals and eating at the table as a family. Part of my choice to live slower is one of economics. It is honestly cheaper to cook from scratch. It has also given a way for my son and I to bond — he loves to cook. The point is, while the book has some valid points it makes those points through numerous assumptions. Show Less
LibraryThing member spiritedstardust
With regards to this book it is more about the advised philosophy than the strength of the writing. I picked this up because I was interested in the Slow Movement. One of my favourite subjects was that of time, the opening subject, which started off well with the following paragraph - What is the
In my opinion it was one of the strongest subjects and made me think about my own relationship with time.
"Boredom - the word itself hardly existed 150 years ago - is a modern invention." This sentence really made me stop and think. 'I'm bored' is a term I have heard with increasing frequency each year. I only have to think back to when I was a child, and how the more technology developed and the less time we spent outdoors, the more bored we got, and to look at my young cousins now who are glued to their DS's which once the battery dies have absolutely no idea how to amuse themselves. It seems we have all forgotten how to slow down and simply be alive rather than constantly trying to maintain a state of hyper stimulation.
"Thanks to speed we live in the age of rage."
This rang truer for me than I would like to admit. I'm embarrassed to think of all the times I have huffed and puffed and gotten angry just by getting stuck in traffic or if I have to line up somewhere for more than a minute, not to mention if my Internet is lagging, having obviously completely forgotten what it was like when the first modem came out...When I think back on all the times I have gotten angry, most of it has been over nothing. Really. What does it matter if you have to wait a few minutes? After reading this I changed my ways. I know longer mind waiting. Instead I do some deep breathing, day dream about the newest hunk on True Blood or simply have a gander at what is going on in the world around me - birds finding twigs, children playing games, a leaf dancing on the wind etc. Slowing down has made me happier and calmer.
What I didn't like about this book was the chapter on music; it dragged on far too long and was very repetitive. Some chapters too suffered from repetition.
I also lost respect for the author on the chapter of Tantric sex. It might be a personal bias, but I could not understand how he could go back to the second class WITHOUT HIS WIFE. He went on to say, that although he performed the night's exercises with another woman (including touching her in places to see how pleasurable it was for her etc) it was all completely innocent. I mean honestly, he couldn't skip one night and wait until the next to go back with his wife to experience non-sex-induced orgasms??
After that I didn't really enjoy hearing his personal slant on everything and would have preferred he stay neutral and merely inform me of the different fields of the Slow Movement.
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very first thing you do in the morning? Draw the curtains? Roll over to snuggle with your partner or pillow? Spring out of bed and do ten push ups to get the blood pumping? No, the first thing you do, the first thing everyone does, is check the time. Page 17. In my opinion it was one of the strongest subjects and made me think about my own relationship with time.
"Boredom - the word itself hardly existed 150 years ago - is a modern invention." This sentence really made me stop and think. 'I'm bored' is a term I have heard with increasing frequency each year. I only have to think back to when I was a child, and how the more technology developed and the less time we spent outdoors, the more bored we got, and to look at my young cousins now who are glued to their DS's which once the battery dies have absolutely no idea how to amuse themselves. It seems we have all forgotten how to slow down and simply be alive rather than constantly trying to maintain a state of hyper stimulation.
"Thanks to speed we live in the age of rage."
This rang truer for me than I would like to admit. I'm embarrassed to think of all the times I have huffed and puffed and gotten angry just by getting stuck in traffic or if I have to line up somewhere for more than a minute, not to mention if my Internet is lagging, having obviously completely forgotten what it was like when the first modem came out...When I think back on all the times I have gotten angry, most of it has been over nothing. Really. What does it matter if you have to wait a few minutes? After reading this I changed my ways. I know longer mind waiting. Instead I do some deep breathing, day dream about the newest hunk on True Blood or simply have a gander at what is going on in the world around me - birds finding twigs, children playing games, a leaf dancing on the wind etc. Slowing down has made me happier and calmer.
What I didn't like about this book was the chapter on music; it dragged on far too long and was very repetitive. Some chapters too suffered from repetition.
I also lost respect for the author on the chapter of Tantric sex. It might be a personal bias, but I could not understand how he could go back to the second class WITHOUT HIS WIFE. He went on to say, that although he performed the night's exercises with another woman (including touching her in places to see how pleasurable it was for her etc) it was all completely innocent. I mean honestly, he couldn't skip one night and wait until the next to go back with his wife to experience non-sex-induced orgasms??
After that I didn't really enjoy hearing his personal slant on everything and would have preferred he stay neutral and merely inform me of the different fields of the Slow Movement.
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