Friday, December 16, 2022

Eight books that capture a life in motion

Tree Abraham is an Ottawa-born, Brooklyn-based writer, art director, and book designer. Her authorship experiments with fragmented essay and mixed media visuals.

Cyclettes is her first book.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight of her "favorite books that keenly track on the page the experience of a mind in motion." One title on the list:
Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee

Published a year after Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing and a week before the country entered COVID-19 quarantine, Headlee’s book is a more pragmatic dismantling of productivity. She charts the evolution of work culture—the rise of the 8-hour work day, how busyness became a virtue, careers got equated with identity, and people began working harder rather than smarter. Headlee challenges the foundation around which we assess the quality of our life, presenting research on how the brain reacts to technology, being overworked, and under socialized. She offers strategies for how to better perceive and make use of time, idle with intent, and enact daily habits to destress. The art of doing nothing is a trendy topic. This book is one accessible introduction to a greater consciousness around how and when to power down.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue