600bars's review against another edition
3.0
Review TL;DR: The book covers a wide range of topics from the author’s personal relationship to loneliness to interviews with randos to more scholarly studies in loneliness. It’s very beautiful with excellent use of color. While I did enjoy the meandering way this book looked at a topic from so many angles, I wasn’t really sure what to take away in the end. I don’t know if I gained any more insights about loneliness or any of the specific topics. I don’t expect her to have the answers of how to cure the loneliness epidemic, but I felt like all this scattered info never crystallized/synthesized into something greater than the sum of its parts. The wide range of subjects may have been slightly too wide ranging and becomes almost repetitive.
Diary entry thoughts on loneliness while reading:
The person who had this book before me annotated/highlighted the book using EXACT color matches. The book's colors change on a gradient throughout and the previous reader took the time to get different highlighters to match it. It took me at least 50 pages to notice that it was in fact a reader’s markings and not meta commentary from the author. I felt such affection for this stranger who was enhancing my reading experience! This is something I would totally do if I owned this book.
I think about loneliness pretty often, I’m always worried about it from a public health standpoint. I am never ever alone and sometimes want a day to myself but it takes like 4 hours until I wish someone would come home. Sometimes I am doing nothing and just chilling talking to my roommates, and I think to myself “I should do something productive”, but then I remember that these unimportant conversations are actually the utmost important thing in life. I am still at an age where loneliness is rare, I’ve never in my life lived with less than 4 people and I’ve only had my own bedroom for age 14, 15, 18, and summers/breaks here and there. But as I get older and connections are not as automatic I realize that I have to put effort into maintaining relationships in a way that you don’t have to when you’re young and attending school and seeing friends daily. I used to wonder if it was bad to not have an “independant era” but thinking about how fractured our world is and how hard it is to get back into a connected era after isolating makes wholly uninterested in ever being alone.
One thing the pandemic killed for me is those relationships with tertiary friends, the kind of people you run into at parties or something and would chat with but aren’t your best closest friends. It feels like everyone I interact with besides coworkers/roommates are people I’ve been friends with for a minimum of a decade. It is sad to feel like it would be weird to reach out to those acquaintance level friends, because those relationships are also important and help make a sense of community!
I have mostly read/thought about everything in here, the thing I learned the most about was the dude who did all those fucked up monkey experiements. That part was very difficult to read. Did we really need to do those experiments to come to the conclusion that love/touch is as necessary as food and water? Reminded me of a story from Exhalation by Ted Chiang.
The sequence about school shooters obviously depressed me given we’ve had 2 in the past week or so. Someone called the store at work the day of the Uvalde shooting and asked when we closed. I said the usual schpiel of our hours, and she said “I can’t come until I’m done watching the news. Did you hear????” I had no clue what she was talking about because I had been at work all day. She informed me that there had been another mass shooting at an elementary school. I was shocked, even though at this point I’m pretty desensitized to mass shootings and tragedy. I got the sense she was relishing in being the one to break the news to me, which is maybe an uncharitable interpretation. She could have just been horrified and had no one to share in that horror and I happened to be the nearest living thing to talk to. The conversation took a weird turn because I felt I had to comfort her while she processed what she was seeing on the news. All this from calling a bookstore to ask about hours! I was very shaken and had to take a second. It’s very common to have phone calls at work that are clearly more about loneliness than actually needing to find a book. It makes me so sad. My coworkers and I were discussing this aspect of our job just last night. None of us mind acting as a librarian/google service, but there are people who are actually trained to help people in this particular way and we are just bookstore workers. I’m glad we can be a resource but there has to be something better than a site of commerce :(. This particular phone call happened the day before I read the school shooter sequence in this book so it was at the forefront of my mind.
I read this article 7 years ago and it still stays with me: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html
I’m also listening to the Evelyn Hugo book and thinking about how cruel it is that if you are lucky enough to live a long time your reward is often isolation! Thinking of different elderly people in my life and their levels of social connectedness and getting depressed
Diary entry thoughts on loneliness while reading:
The person who had this book before me annotated/highlighted the book using EXACT color matches. The book's colors change on a gradient throughout and the previous reader took the time to get different highlighters to match it. It took me at least 50 pages to notice that it was in fact a reader’s markings and not meta commentary from the author. I felt such affection for this stranger who was enhancing my reading experience! This is something I would totally do if I owned this book.
I think about loneliness pretty often, I’m always worried about it from a public health standpoint. I am never ever alone and sometimes want a day to myself but it takes like 4 hours until I wish someone would come home. Sometimes I am doing nothing and just chilling talking to my roommates, and I think to myself “I should do something productive”, but then I remember that these unimportant conversations are actually the utmost important thing in life. I am still at an age where loneliness is rare, I’ve never in my life lived with less than 4 people and I’ve only had my own bedroom for age 14, 15, 18, and summers/breaks here and there. But as I get older and connections are not as automatic I realize that I have to put effort into maintaining relationships in a way that you don’t have to when you’re young and attending school and seeing friends daily. I used to wonder if it was bad to not have an “independant era” but thinking about how fractured our world is and how hard it is to get back into a connected era after isolating makes wholly uninterested in ever being alone.
One thing the pandemic killed for me is those relationships with tertiary friends, the kind of people you run into at parties or something and would chat with but aren’t your best closest friends. It feels like everyone I interact with besides coworkers/roommates are people I’ve been friends with for a minimum of a decade. It is sad to feel like it would be weird to reach out to those acquaintance level friends, because those relationships are also important and help make a sense of community!
I have mostly read/thought about everything in here, the thing I learned the most about was the dude who did all those fucked up monkey experiements. That part was very difficult to read. Did we really need to do those experiments to come to the conclusion that love/touch is as necessary as food and water? Reminded me of a story from Exhalation by Ted Chiang.
The sequence about school shooters obviously depressed me given we’ve had 2 in the past week or so. Someone called the store at work the day of the Uvalde shooting and asked when we closed. I said the usual schpiel of our hours, and she said “I can’t come until I’m done watching the news. Did you hear????” I had no clue what she was talking about because I had been at work all day. She informed me that there had been another mass shooting at an elementary school. I was shocked, even though at this point I’m pretty desensitized to mass shootings and tragedy. I got the sense she was relishing in being the one to break the news to me, which is maybe an uncharitable interpretation. She could have just been horrified and had no one to share in that horror and I happened to be the nearest living thing to talk to. The conversation took a weird turn because I felt I had to comfort her while she processed what she was seeing on the news. All this from calling a bookstore to ask about hours! I was very shaken and had to take a second. It’s very common to have phone calls at work that are clearly more about loneliness than actually needing to find a book. It makes me so sad. My coworkers and I were discussing this aspect of our job just last night. None of us mind acting as a librarian/google service, but there are people who are actually trained to help people in this particular way and we are just bookstore workers. I’m glad we can be a resource but there has to be something better than a site of commerce :(. This particular phone call happened the day before I read the school shooter sequence in this book so it was at the forefront of my mind.
I read this article 7 years ago and it still stays with me: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html
I’m also listening to the Evelyn Hugo book and thinking about how cruel it is that if you are lucky enough to live a long time your reward is often isolation! Thinking of different elderly people in my life and their levels of social connectedness and getting depressed
vsheaberry's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
kellyd's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
A must-read for every American.
reading_hobbit's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
kricketa's review against another edition
4.0
Very well researched and presented, very informative. Aaaand kind of a bummer- perhaps not the best December read.
merissavictor's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
hannahrose_99's review against another edition
5.0
I knew within the first 20 pages of this book that it was probably going to be one of my favorites of the year. Loneliness is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and this book explored it beautifully. Ughhh, I just have no words. Also, this illustrations are absolutely stunning.