Notes on a Nervous Planet
By Matt Haig
Blurb
The follow-up to the number one bestseller Reasons to Stay Alive. The world is messing with our minds. What if there was something we could do about it? Looking at sleep, news, social media, addiction, work and play, Matt Haig invites us to feel calmer, happier and to question the habits of the digital age. This book might even change the way you spend your precious time on earth.
Our Review
Back when such things were allowed, I saw Matt Haig speaking about Notes on A Nervous Planet at Newark Book festival and I was fascinated. I finally got around to reading the book yesterday and I finished it in an hour. It was relevant and easy to read.
“My heart was racing. There was a tightness in my chest. Fight or Flight. I felt cornered and threatened by someone on the internet who lived over 8,000 miles away from me and who I would never meet but she was still managing to ruin my weekend.”
When the author said out to write Notes on a Nervous Planet there was a question he wanted to answer.
“How can we live in a mad world without ourselves going mad?”
I think he does a good job of attempting to answer this question within the text of the book.
The reasons I chose to read this book now had less to do with the amount of time it had been sitting on my bookcase unread and more to do with how appropriate I thought it was with everything going on in the world at large.
One quote in particular made me think about life in a pandemic.
“Worry is a small, sweet word that sounds like you could keep an eye on it. Yet worry about the future – the next ten minutes, the next ten years – is the chief obstacle I have to being able to live in and appreciate the present moment.”
The book talks about the ways in which the design of modern life increases instances of anxiety.
My favourite passage from the book is one about happiness and I think it is a nice one to end my review on.
“Maybe happiness is not about us as individuals. Maybe it is not something that arrives into us. Maybe happiness is felt heading out, not in. Maybe happiness is not about what we deserve because we’re worth it. Maybe happiness is not about what we can get. Maybe happiness is about what we already have. Maybe happiness is about what we can give. Maybe happiness is not a butterfly we can catch with a net. Maybe there is no certain way to be happy. “
Our Final Rating...
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