Loading...
108th out of 129 books
—
74 voters
My rating:
add to my books
A Sideways Look at Time
A brilliant and poetic exploration of the way that we experience time in our everyday lives.
Why does time seem so short? How does women's time differ from men's? Why does time seem to move slowly in the countryside and quickly in cities? How do different cultures around the world see time? In A Sideways Look at Time, Jay Griffiths takes readers on an extraordinary tour o...more
Why does time seem so short? How does women's time differ from men's? Why does time seem to move slowly in the countryside and quickly in cities? How do different cultures around the world see time? In A Sideways Look at Time, Jay Griffiths takes readers on an extraordinary tour o...more
Paperback, 416 pages
Published
March 8th 2004
by Tarcher
(first published 2002)
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
343)
christina
is currently reading it
I heard the author of this book on Radiolab, and she talked about various alternative ways of telling time, which people have invented over the years.
The smell clock, which switches from spice to spice by hour, so you wouldn't need light to tell time, and most impressivley the flower clock. Which is a circle in your garden planted with flowers in sections, that open for an hour, then close.
So you can tell the hour by what is blooming at the moment!
The smell clock, which switches from spice to spice by hour, so you wouldn't need light to tell time, and most impressivley the flower clock. Which is a circle in your garden planted with flowers in sections, that open for an hour, then close.
So you can tell the hour by what is blooming at the moment!
This book gives me very mixed emotions.
I was excited to start reading it. The subject matter is very interesting and it sounded great when I heard about it on Radiolab. Griffiths' writing style is very clever while still accessible (although at times unnecessarily highbrow). She makes an interesting argument, rich with really great annotations and perspectives.
My complaints about this book start with the digressions she makes into subject matter that doesn't seem pertinent ...more
I was excited to start reading it. The subject matter is very interesting and it sounded great when I heard about it on Radiolab. Griffiths' writing style is very clever while still accessible (although at times unnecessarily highbrow). She makes an interesting argument, rich with really great annotations and perspectives.
My complaints about this book start with the digressions she makes into subject matter that doesn't seem pertinent ...more
Can you hear that? It's the sound of an axe grinding for almost 400 pages.
Bet you didn't know that all the evils in the world can be attributed to time! Bet you didn't know that we're all going to hell in a hand-basket because of watches and clocks and so forth. Yep. It's all Time's fault.
Villains like corporations and science and men and christianity and industrialization and Benjamin Franklin and governments and such, yes, they're all bad, according to Ms. Griffiths - but what do t...more
Bet you didn't know that all the evils in the world can be attributed to time! Bet you didn't know that we're all going to hell in a hand-basket because of watches and clocks and so forth. Yep. It's all Time's fault.
Villains like corporations and science and men and christianity and industrialization and Benjamin Franklin and governments and such, yes, they're all bad, according to Ms. Griffiths - but what do t...more
I really enjoyed this book, and i recommend it for anyone interested in "the domestication of time". In general, the theory itself is not new, but I enjoyed the author's take on it - with her historical/cultural anecdotes. However, the overall "literariness" of it all was a bit pretentious at times (pip.pip.pip...jeez.), and some of her ultra-feminist views were unnecessary to the content. In other sections, it reads like a thesis, which can be a bit bland.
All ...more
All ...more
Men. Men DID IT ALL, ALL THE BAD THINGS!
Egad, this killed me, because there are so many interesting things in this book, lots of little factoids and perspectives I was tremendously curious about. And I would have enjoyed it a lot more, if she could have quit finding different ways to say how the "witchy, twitchy blood flow of the she-goddess moon" was repressed by The Men. Bloody fucking hell. Around page 130 I just gave up and started writing notes in the margins for the n...more
Egad, this killed me, because there are so many interesting things in this book, lots of little factoids and perspectives I was tremendously curious about. And I would have enjoyed it a lot more, if she could have quit finding different ways to say how the "witchy, twitchy blood flow of the she-goddess moon" was repressed by The Men. Bloody fucking hell. Around page 130 I just gave up and started writing notes in the margins for the n...more
It's not often that I will actually STOP reading a book, on purpose, once I've started. Sure, sometimes I'll put it down for a while and come back to it later, but like leaving in the middle of a movie, putting down a book--for good--without finishing it is something I just don't do.
Well, now I have.
The premise of this book intrigued me, with its vague intimations of a philosophic and Zen inspired discourse on time--how we perceive it, and how we might get back to a bette...more
Well, now I have.
The premise of this book intrigued me, with its vague intimations of a philosophic and Zen inspired discourse on time--how we perceive it, and how we might get back to a bette...more
view 1 comment
Rare event: I hated this book, and could only make it through a couple of chapters. Opinions vary, and several blurbs indicated that the author is witty, but his writing had a strong "fingernails on the blackboard" effect on this reader.
Apart from style, the book seems vaguely structured, tendentious and repetitive. The two-star rating understates my reaction.
Apart from style, the book seems vaguely structured, tendentious and repetitive. The two-star rating understates my reaction.
A wonderfully interesting and thought provoking book, after I read it I went around telling everyone they needed to read this book. It has so many ideas and thoughts that I, for one, hadn't considered before. Read it, and I guarantee you will enjoy the things it says and brings to mind.
Very interesting winding book about how we use and are used by time, and how other cultures might have done it better. Jay comes from an eco feminist angle, and the book is very personal and funny and downright fascinating.
A discussion of time from many viewpoints, including gender realted. A lot of history is discussed here, especially concerning Christian ideas about time. A very thought-provoking book.
Do you ever stop and really smell the roses? This is a cool way to slow down and just think about time...or as I like to think of it, think about thinking. Was a fun read!
Simply loved it. She's a wonderful writer. I actually fell in love with her while reading this. It is on our high focus on time.
Full of fact after fact and idea after idea about time and different ways that it is viewed and how it can affect us.
fixed my craving for information, but written in a adhd/zillah eisenstein/polemic kind of way
Rocked my world, in a big way. Loved the research put into this socio-political piece.
Griffiths articulates what it's like to live in modern techno-time better than anyone else I've read on the subject, and gives a sense of what we're missing -- no mean feat to write so eloquently from both inside and outside one's own culture. She is by turns brilliant, say, when describing forest time, and exasperating, devolving at times into diatribe and rant. She is lucid bordering on genius in picking out the historic strands of the cultural shift toward linear clock-time. It would be very ...more
Alas, alack, the Modern Western World, etc.
One of my all time favorite books.
An often frustrating examination of how our perception of time has evolved (or devolved) over the centuries, and how different cultures have radically different concepts of time. Griffiths is acutely aware of the gender and class bias in the subject she's writing about and examines it in depth. Her self-indulgent prose sometimes made me wish I'd been her editor. And then just as quickly made me glad I wasn't ever her editor. Sheesh.
Ouch! If you lived life by the clock and watch, this book gives a big finger to a penciled life and the guys who live off their blackberry's. Pretty amazing book! Indulges much though bites out of its scope. It gives valuable life affirming lessons though to meditation and to giving life its own time circle. Could do with a trim and would have been a book worth the keep and a yearly re-read!!
I heard about this book on NPR's Radio Lab podcast and I was completely convinced I needed to read it. Unfortunately, while the book does contain the fascinating historical information that was presented on RadioLab, it is mostly a feminist, post-modern rant on modern societies obsession with time. I just couldn't take the constant preaching, so I quit after one chapter.
I'm almost halfway through this book, but having an increasingly hard time as the author is quite anti-Christian. Because of that, it's hard to remain engaged when my armor is up to block the barage of attacks! For now I'll continue on...
Quirky with some original ideas, but she DOES go on. Clever, enjoys playing with words, but rather than charming, I found it tiresome. Intriguing insight into the history of clockwork and its impact on power, control and industrialization. Considering planting an herbal or floral clock.
An insightful look at the way various societies measure and interpret the passage of time. Not for everyone, though, and the feminist arguments peppered throughout the book do not add much to it.
a few interesting historical tid bits but lots of genralizations to stretch a few observations into a pretentious treatise "pip, pip" - what the???
WOW. Time IS on my side or rather on ALL sides, if there were sides. I especially like the amazingly diverse anthropological versions of time.
Loved this.
Brilliant exploration of time and how much our worldview is affected by our concepts of it.
Brilliant exploration of time and how much our worldview is affected by our concepts of it.
Too much like a text book. Interesting, poetic, but too long. Like a 400 page essay.
... but want to
EC
added it
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
