[HN Gopher] Hilary Mantel Reviews "A Life of One's Own/An Experi...
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       Hilary Mantel Reviews "A Life of One's Own/An Experiment in
       Leisure" (1986)
        
       Author : gradschoolfail
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2024-08-14 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (literaryreview.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (literaryreview.co.uk)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | A Life of One's Own is a great book, far ahead of its time (she
       | was using the word 'mindfulness' 90 years ago), and a classic in
       | 'thinking for oneself', something that used to be popular to
       | recommend but has never been easy to do.
       | 
       | Joanna Field was the pen name of Marion Milner. I have a quote
       | from her in my profile. It took me a long time to track down the
       | paper but that quote was the only interesting thing in it.
        
         | superb-owl wrote:
         | What a beautiful quote! And it does a great job capturing the
         | thought you've put into building this community
        
         | globalnode wrote:
         | If only a quote like that could be taken to heart and applied
         | to ones own life, I'm pretty sure that would be life changing.
         | If everyone did it, it would be world changing.
        
       | superb-owl wrote:
       | A Life of One's Own is incredible, and is one of two books I
       | credit with changing my life.
       | 
       | I reviewed it partially here:
       | https://superbowl.substack.com/p/how-to-enjoy-things
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | don't know if additional vocabulary might help you turn up
         | anything more useful, but the "narrow attention"/"wide
         | attention" dichotomy you point out is something I've mostly
         | heard talked about in metaphorical terms: a "hard eyes"/"soft
         | eyes" dichotomy.
        
           | superb-owl wrote:
           | Neat! I've never heard that one, will definitely add it to my
           | vocab
        
           | dang wrote:
           | If you guys want to go down an unusually interesting rabbit
           | hole, the book Open-Focus Brain by Les Fehmi and (especially)
           | the associated audio exercises, is all about this.
           | 
           | The exercises are something like guided meditations, but
           | unique in my experience, and I never do exercises like that.
           | It's a pity that his work isn't better known*. He died a
           | couple years ago.
           | 
           | * Edit: although HN does not disappoint!
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12712532 (Oct 2016)
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8721704 (Dec 2014)
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8718142 (Dec 2014)
        
       | telesilla wrote:
       | Anything by Hilary Mantel is extraordinary and worth your reading
       | time. Wolf Hall trilogy threw me into a decade-long search into
       | who really was Thomas Cromwell, A Place of Greater Safety finally
       | made me feel like I understand the French Revolution (I enjoyed
       | this as an audio book on a very long drive) . Thanks to her,
       | complex history has made sense, and how today's machinations are
       | not much different.
        
       | blueridge wrote:
       | Highly recommend:
       | 
       | Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper
       | 
       | https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-...
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-14 23:01 UTC)