Consciousness is said to be the greatest mystery facing science today and Christof Koch is the famous proponent of one of the top theories – Integrated Information Theory. But the book is not just tough science – he begins with describing the dramatic psychedelic experience he had in which ‘he’ completely disappeared. I wish he had said a lot more about the experience itself, but what I loved was that he has taken this personal experience and integrated it into his great work as a neuroscientist of consciousness.
In Then I Am Myself the World, Christof Koch explores the only thing we directly experience: consciousness. At the book's heart is integrated-information theory, the idea that the essence of consciousness is the ability to exert causal power over itself, to be an agent of change. Koch investigates the physical origins of consciousness in the brain and how this knowledge can be used to measure consciousness in natural and artificial systems.
Enabled by such tools, Koch reveals when and where consciousness exists, and uses that knowledge to confront major social and scientific questions: When does a foetus first become self-aware?…
I loved this book because it shocked me into realising just how bad some of my habits are – and how short our lives! Burkeman’s starting point is that we can expect our lives to be just four thousand weeks long – and we’d better make the most of them. I’ve long suffered a deep fear of ‘not getting everything done’ and now he tells us to stop thinking we ever can. Most helpful to me was his ways of dividing up the many demands on my time into those I really want to do – for myself, those I need to do, and those I just might let go of because I can’t do everything. So refreshing, invigorating, and unforgettable.
"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." ―Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.
Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of…
I resisted reading this book – it sounded so soppy and girlie! But friends told me I must, and I loved it from the start. Gilbert is outrageously honest about gluttony, sex, religious longings, and all the deeper things of life. Yet she’s funny too, and in her search for happiness faces up to misery, divorce, rejection, and boredom without giving up. In the end she finds happiness is not what she thought it was and is not found the way she expected. I took away many life lessons from this romping story, and am grateful for them all.
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'Eat, Pray, Love has been passed from woman to woman like the secret of life' - Sunday Times
'A defining work of memoir' - Sunday Telegraph
'Engaging, intelligent, and highly entertaining' - Time
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It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it.
A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own…
Burying her head in her beloved cat Frumpy’s fur, Jinny tries to forget the trouble she is in (yet again) and escape into worlds of her own. Through delightful flying and lucid dreams, to terrifying tunnels and a swirling black void, she learns to control her vivid imagination. When the creepy cupboard monster makes its quiet rumbling noise to remind her that he’s there, her favourite floppy yellow hat Hatty makes her face up to her fears and with Hatty’s help she becomes a better and kinder person. Thanks to Frumpy and Hatty, Jinny embarks on strange spiritual adventures that take her flying above rooftops and floating on a faraway sea.
