Astonish Yourself! 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life

I abandoned this, so I won’t rate it.

This book is a set of short chapters (101 of them) which are exercises meant to expand your perception of the world (?).

I got through 5-6 of the chapters, but it’s very odd. The exercises are extremely abstract and vaguely spiritual. Some examples:

• Sit in a room and call out your own name, as if you were calling to yourself
• Look at your field of view and try to pretend it’s a two-dimensional painting, then envision it being “peeled away”

I just didn’t get it. I thought it was going to be something along the lines of The Art of Noticing which I loved, but I just couldn’t get into the weirdness of it.

Also, the writing is flowery and verbose. I understand it was originally written in French then translated.

Book Info

Here are some notes I took on the acquisition of this book:

I ordered this based on a testimonial in the Recommendo email newsletter.