What I read in March 2024

I was sick in the beginning of the month, and I experienced fatigue and headaches for most of it. But I managed to do a quick refresh on Morning pages, powered through a romantasy, explored some Buddhist philosophy, and finished with an interesting read about attention span and technology. Overall, not bad at all.

  1. The Miracle of Morning Pages: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Most Important Artist's Way Tool by Julia Cameron, 52p: This is truly short and it's like a Q&A with the author giving more details about the Morning Pages. It was okay. I just wanted something short to read and this was on my TBR.

  2. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness by Pema Chödrön, 145p: This book brings concepts from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and focus on Bodhichitta and how to become a bodhisattva or warrior, in the sense of nonaggression and being open. I don't have a deep knowledge of Buddhist and some ideas were very abstract. It emphasizes the importance of having a meditation practice. The message is finding ways to nurture compassion for us and how to deal with fear. I might have to go back to this book to grasp the concepts more deeply.

  3. A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire #1) by Jennifer L. Armentrout, 626p: I didn't enjoy this one very much. I could have stopped reading it, but I really wanted to see where it would go, because it's a prequal to a series I've already read (Blood and Ash). I thought it was quite repetitive and it didn't make me want to continue reading the series. Note to self: I'm tired of dark vampire-like stories for now.

  4. Attention Span by Gloria Mark, 770 pages: This was a very interesting read presenting various research results on how we use our attention with our digital devices and how much our attention span has been diminishing as a society. I enjoyed the chapter about the Framework for Attentional States, in which she identifies how we have several types of attention depending on how challenging or boring an activity is. There are lots of insights in how we need to vary our attention states throughout the day. We can't be focused all the time, and we need downtime to replenish our cognitive resources. She debunks these myths that we could be “in flow” for extended periods of time, or that mindless activities like playing Solitaire are bad. It's recognizing that we need breaks, especially if we are being constantly bombarded with information nowadays.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.