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On Looking: About Everything There is to See
Did you know that we miss most of what is around us? That, as we go about our daily lives - walking, talking, working - we actually do not perceive much of what is before our very eyes?
On Looking shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary - structured around a series of walks the author takes with experts on a diverse range of subjects, but also a child and a dog, to see the world as they perceive it. What they see, how they see it, and why most of us do not see the same things reveal the startling power of human attention and what it means to be an expert observer.
Alexandra Horowitz shows how much more there is to see - if only we would really look. There is much that we are missing, so turn off the phone and other electronic devices and be in the real world where, indeed, there are worlds within worlds within worlds.
As readers of the bestselling Inside of a Dog have discovered, Horowitz is charmingly adept at explaining the mysteries of perception. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she discovers a feast of fascinating detail, all explained with her generous humor and self-deprecating tone. On Looking presents the same engaging combination, this time enabling us to understanding how human beings encounter their daily worlds and each other. This extraordinary book confirms her place as one of today's most illuminating observers of our infinitely complex world.
On Looking shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary - structured around a series of walks the author takes with experts on a diverse range of subjects, but also a child and a dog, to see the world as they perceive it. What they see, how they see it, and why most of us do not see the same things reveal the startling power of human attention and what it means to be an expert observer.
Alexandra Horowitz shows how much more there is to see - if only we would really look. There is much that we are missing, so turn off the phone and other electronic devices and be in the real world where, indeed, there are worlds within worlds within worlds.
As readers of the bestselling Inside of a Dog have discovered, Horowitz is charmingly adept at explaining the mysteries of perception. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she discovers a feast of fascinating detail, all explained with her generous humor and self-deprecating tone. On Looking presents the same engaging combination, this time enabling us to understanding how human beings encounter their daily worlds and each other. This extraordinary book confirms her place as one of today's most illuminating observers of our infinitely complex world.
308 pages, Paperback
First published January 8, 2013
1046 people are currently reading
23469 people want to read
About the author
Alexandra Horowitz
14 books427 followersAlexandra Horowitz is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Barnard College in New York, where she teaches courses on psychology and animal behavior. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.” Her studies on dogs have explored their ‘guilty look,’ sense of fairness, play signaling, and olfactory abilities, among other topics. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.
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February 9, 2014
Once, someone told me I was the most interested person alive. "Thank you!!" I told him, astonished that finally someone else realized what I've known all along - that the Dos Equis guy is lying. It is, in fact, I who am the most interesting person alive!*
"No, no - not interesting...interested," he said, shattering my dreams without even realizing it.
Shit. So much for that.
But then I thought about it, and being the most interested person alive is pretty cool, too. I can get sucked into ANYTHING because I am fascinated by EVERYTHING. I might be the only person on the planet who enjoyed Yann Martel's 14-page description of a pear in Beatrice and Virgil, and I have yet to encounter a subject that can't even pique my curiosity a little bit.
Soo, I felt pretty good when I started with Alexandra Horowitz's On Looking as I was anticipating having an obscure-fact party in my brain, but alas, there was no party to be had. Boo.
First off, the book is one giant LIE.
Okay so that may be a slightly extreme way of putting it, but I don't seem the be the only one who thought she would repeat the same walk with 11 different experts, thereby casting 11 different points of view on the same space. Wouldn't that have been infinitely more interesting?? (Spoiler alert: Yes.) I thought the entire point of the book is "look how much you're missing in everyday life" - so shouldn't these alleged** experts be able to illuminate one walk in 11 different ways? Oddly, some of the walks were in fact the same, whereas the others were in entirely different states. Huh?
There was also a problem of content. It often seemed the Horowitz didn't sponge enough information out of her experts to fill the whole book, so she resorted to bolstering each chapter with marginally relevant filler content. Example: In one chapter, she scours the streets with a doctor who's adept at diagnosing illness based on peculiarities of gait and appearance. Unfortunately, probably because people were bundled up against the cold and thereby hiding their sickly complexions from inspection, there were only about two people the doctor was able to size up on their walk. Rather than scrap that doctor idea and come up with a new expert to walk with, Horowitz is like, "hey guys, let me also tell you about this physical therapist I know from when my back was out, which I may have mentioned before because my back was out for like half of this project which probably was an ominous way to begin a book dependent upon my ability to walk but anyway this guy also knows some things about gaits, like let's see well usually you walk with your hips in synchronous rotation which thereby forces the legs forward via kinetic propulsion [yes, I made that up] and...what was I talking about again?" Right, like that.
By far my favorite chapter was her walk with her toddler son as I myself have an almost-toddler son, and I am endlessly fascinated by what he finds fascinating. We take him to the aquarium to see the bright, colorful fish and silly penguins, and the kid stares at, say, the bolt holding the tank together. Horowitz was smart to start the book with this little man's walk, though, since it hammers home the point that really, nothing is intrinsically more interesting to look at than anything else (except faces, according to science - babies are born to respond to faces). Everything provides an opportunity for investigative study, when you think about it, but in this day of constantly being "on," we too often forget that. Horowitz's book is a nice, if slightly off-target, reminder to slow down and look at the world around you.
I can think of no better ending to this review than the immortal words of one Mr. Ferris Bueller:
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."***
*I pride myself on being a grammar nerd, but this is tripping me up. Do I say am or is there?? Calling Jess, help please...both sound wrong.
**I don't know why I said that. They're clearly well-established in their fields and are fully deserving of the "expert" title.
***RIP John Hughes.
"No, no - not interesting...interested," he said, shattering my dreams without even realizing it.
Shit. So much for that.
But then I thought about it, and being the most interested person alive is pretty cool, too. I can get sucked into ANYTHING because I am fascinated by EVERYTHING. I might be the only person on the planet who enjoyed Yann Martel's 14-page description of a pear in Beatrice and Virgil, and I have yet to encounter a subject that can't even pique my curiosity a little bit.
Soo, I felt pretty good when I started with Alexandra Horowitz's On Looking as I was anticipating having an obscure-fact party in my brain, but alas, there was no party to be had. Boo.
First off, the book is one giant LIE.
Okay so that may be a slightly extreme way of putting it, but I don't seem the be the only one who thought she would repeat the same walk with 11 different experts, thereby casting 11 different points of view on the same space. Wouldn't that have been infinitely more interesting?? (Spoiler alert: Yes.) I thought the entire point of the book is "look how much you're missing in everyday life" - so shouldn't these alleged** experts be able to illuminate one walk in 11 different ways? Oddly, some of the walks were in fact the same, whereas the others were in entirely different states. Huh?
There was also a problem of content. It often seemed the Horowitz didn't sponge enough information out of her experts to fill the whole book, so she resorted to bolstering each chapter with marginally relevant filler content. Example: In one chapter, she scours the streets with a doctor who's adept at diagnosing illness based on peculiarities of gait and appearance. Unfortunately, probably because people were bundled up against the cold and thereby hiding their sickly complexions from inspection, there were only about two people the doctor was able to size up on their walk. Rather than scrap that doctor idea and come up with a new expert to walk with, Horowitz is like, "hey guys, let me also tell you about this physical therapist I know from when my back was out, which I may have mentioned before because my back was out for like half of this project which probably was an ominous way to begin a book dependent upon my ability to walk but anyway this guy also knows some things about gaits, like let's see well usually you walk with your hips in synchronous rotation which thereby forces the legs forward via kinetic propulsion [yes, I made that up] and...what was I talking about again?" Right, like that.
By far my favorite chapter was her walk with her toddler son as I myself have an almost-toddler son, and I am endlessly fascinated by what he finds fascinating. We take him to the aquarium to see the bright, colorful fish and silly penguins, and the kid stares at, say, the bolt holding the tank together. Horowitz was smart to start the book with this little man's walk, though, since it hammers home the point that really, nothing is intrinsically more interesting to look at than anything else (except faces, according to science - babies are born to respond to faces). Everything provides an opportunity for investigative study, when you think about it, but in this day of constantly being "on," we too often forget that. Horowitz's book is a nice, if slightly off-target, reminder to slow down and look at the world around you.
I can think of no better ending to this review than the immortal words of one Mr. Ferris Bueller:
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."***
*I pride myself on being a grammar nerd, but this is tripping me up. Do I say am or is there?? Calling Jess, help please...both sound wrong.
**I don't know why I said that. They're clearly well-established in their fields and are fully deserving of the "expert" title.
***RIP John Hughes.
January 6, 2014
The idea is a good one, but the execution is terrible.
The book is subtitled “Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes.” Even loosely defined, simply being a dog or a youngster or blind does not make you an expert. I’m sorry.
But the biggest problem is simply that Horowitz is annoying . . . and she goes on all the walks.
I have a few specific beefs with her. First, she’s condescending. She has an annoying habit of using words and defining them in the text (like “I was seeing a glimmer of animism in my son—the attribution of life to the inanimate,” and “My son’s neophilia—love of the new . . .”).
Second, she is extremely self-centered. The point of the book as presented was for Horowitz to gain new and interesting perspectives on her everyday walk. Unfortunately, too much of the book is focused on her own observations and research. And that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the information and observations provided by the experts.
Third and finally, she is untrustworthy. Remember when Oprah got so pissed at James Frey when The Smoking Gun report came out revealing that A Million Little Pieces wasn’t the memoir he claimed it was? That’s because you have to be able to trust your non-fiction author (whereas, when reading fiction, you know that you have the potential to be tricked by an unreliable narrator).
Horowitz got some things straight-up wrong, so I couldn’t trust her. Here’s an example: she talks about Tetris at one point (as I mentioned here, I’m a bit of a geek . . . especially when it comes to puzzle games), describing the “Tetris Effect”:
"I became a Tetris player. Do you know the game? [. . .] Four simple shapes floated down from the top of the screen, and all one had to do was rotate them and send them scurrying to the left or right in an attempt to fill all the bins at the bottom of the screen before the shape landed, clumsily, on its edge. Tetris players know what happens after hours of playing this game. Objects in the real world all turn into variation on these shapes. Entering the library, I saw the jagged pieces that needed to be rotated vertically and set onto a matching shape."
The problem: Tetris has seven simple shapes (even if you give her the benefit of the doubt and count the L and its mirror image as one shape and the z and its mirror image as one shape, you’re still left with five different shapes). Horowitz notes that the name Tetris is derived from the prefix “tetra-” . . . but she should know that the four refers to the fact that each of those seven simple shapes is comprised of four segments.
If Tetris is a game she has played so much that the library starts turning into tetronimos, as she claims, then she should certainly know how many different shapes there are. Something doesn’t add up. I understand that this is a silly bone to pick. But I use it simply to illustrate my point: people writing non-fiction need to get their facts straight. If they don’t get the simple things right, how can we trust anything else they write? Not to mention, this Tetris Effect tangent is also a great example of the many self-centered tangents she goes on . . . at the expense of the more interesting observations of the experts.
Read the full review here: http://iknowwhatyoushouldread.wordpre...
The book is subtitled “Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes.” Even loosely defined, simply being a dog or a youngster or blind does not make you an expert. I’m sorry.
But the biggest problem is simply that Horowitz is annoying . . . and she goes on all the walks.
I have a few specific beefs with her. First, she’s condescending. She has an annoying habit of using words and defining them in the text (like “I was seeing a glimmer of animism in my son—the attribution of life to the inanimate,” and “My son’s neophilia—love of the new . . .”).
Second, she is extremely self-centered. The point of the book as presented was for Horowitz to gain new and interesting perspectives on her everyday walk. Unfortunately, too much of the book is focused on her own observations and research. And that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the information and observations provided by the experts.
Third and finally, she is untrustworthy. Remember when Oprah got so pissed at James Frey when The Smoking Gun report came out revealing that A Million Little Pieces wasn’t the memoir he claimed it was? That’s because you have to be able to trust your non-fiction author (whereas, when reading fiction, you know that you have the potential to be tricked by an unreliable narrator).
Horowitz got some things straight-up wrong, so I couldn’t trust her. Here’s an example: she talks about Tetris at one point (as I mentioned here, I’m a bit of a geek . . . especially when it comes to puzzle games), describing the “Tetris Effect”:
"I became a Tetris player. Do you know the game? [. . .] Four simple shapes floated down from the top of the screen, and all one had to do was rotate them and send them scurrying to the left or right in an attempt to fill all the bins at the bottom of the screen before the shape landed, clumsily, on its edge. Tetris players know what happens after hours of playing this game. Objects in the real world all turn into variation on these shapes. Entering the library, I saw the jagged pieces that needed to be rotated vertically and set onto a matching shape."
The problem: Tetris has seven simple shapes (even if you give her the benefit of the doubt and count the L and its mirror image as one shape and the z and its mirror image as one shape, you’re still left with five different shapes). Horowitz notes that the name Tetris is derived from the prefix “tetra-” . . . but she should know that the four refers to the fact that each of those seven simple shapes is comprised of four segments.
If Tetris is a game she has played so much that the library starts turning into tetronimos, as she claims, then she should certainly know how many different shapes there are. Something doesn’t add up. I understand that this is a silly bone to pick. But I use it simply to illustrate my point: people writing non-fiction need to get their facts straight. If they don’t get the simple things right, how can we trust anything else they write? Not to mention, this Tetris Effect tangent is also a great example of the many self-centered tangents she goes on . . . at the expense of the more interesting observations of the experts.
Read the full review here: http://iknowwhatyoushouldread.wordpre...
May 22, 2013
Alexandra Horowitz is an incredibly intelligent and interesting person. I just really wish she was a better writer.
She has the unfortunate inability to tell when she's gone on far too long on a topic. I can sense her passion, but she's far more engrossed in each individual topic than I was.
About a third of the way through the book she noticed a couch on the side of the road, and the first thing I thought was "great, now we're going to have three pages in a row about a couch".
All in all, I don't think it's worth reading unless you really like her style. I just found it very slow and repetitive, despite her occasional moments of genius.
She has the unfortunate inability to tell when she's gone on far too long on a topic. I can sense her passion, but she's far more engrossed in each individual topic than I was.
About a third of the way through the book she noticed a couch on the side of the road, and the first thing I thought was "great, now we're going to have three pages in a row about a couch".
All in all, I don't think it's worth reading unless you really like her style. I just found it very slow and repetitive, despite her occasional moments of genius.
December 27, 2015
Horowitz's book concept is good, although not necessarily new (both James Levine's and John Berger's books on seeing come to mind). Make no mistake that these are just "walks," though. They are urban walks.
Horowitz portays herself as an educated lay person or ingenue on these forays into her city neighborhood, and her disingenousness didn't always strike me as believable. E.g., that she never knew that fossil impressions could be seen rock; that she never realized that blind persons walk toward stationary objects (like a building) and tap them in order to gauge their surroundings and delineate the borders of their current environment (didn't she ever "play blind" as a child?).
Because she returns to it repeatedly, Horowitz's central message is neuroplasticity and our brains' changes based on what we choose to focus upon.
In a book that by and large avoids controversy, strong opinions, or discussions of her own research, I couldn't help but appreciate this little jibe that Horowitz, the research psychologist and animal behaviorist - not the layperson -, got in at certain scientists:
Horowitz portays herself as an educated lay person or ingenue on these forays into her city neighborhood, and her disingenousness didn't always strike me as believable. E.g., that she never knew that fossil impressions could be seen rock; that she never realized that blind persons walk toward stationary objects (like a building) and tap them in order to gauge their surroundings and delineate the borders of their current environment (didn't she ever "play blind" as a child?).
Because she returns to it repeatedly, Horowitz's central message is neuroplasticity and our brains' changes based on what we choose to focus upon.
In a book that by and large avoids controversy, strong opinions, or discussions of her own research, I couldn't help but appreciate this little jibe that Horowitz, the research psychologist and animal behaviorist - not the layperson -, got in at certain scientists:
Scientists first learned this, as well as most of our knowledge about brains, not from examining our own brains, but from peering at monkey brains. The monkeys did not submit to this voluntarily, of course: the content of the words you are about to read come from the poignant sacrifices of enough monkeys to type that Shakespearean play after all. A monkey's brain is similar enough to ours that scientists find it informative about human brains, but different enough that the same scientists are willing to sacrifice a monkey life for that bit of information.
May 3, 2017
I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but the author puts on a great show of not knowing things that I just assume are common knowledge. Not knowing that fossils can appear in rocks used as building material ? Not being aware of the variety of typefaces ? Come on, I'm guessing she is just using this as a means of allowing her walking partners to display their expertise. As in a "Golly, that sure is interesting Mr. Science Man!" kind of way.
Wether it was on purpose or not, it is very irritating. The result is writing with little depth or insight. So Its a well intentioned book, but really not of great interest to anyone who is even somewhat well read.
Wether it was on purpose or not, it is very irritating. The result is writing with little depth or insight. So Its a well intentioned book, but really not of great interest to anyone who is even somewhat well read.
October 17, 2024
In a sense, expectation is the lost cousin of attention: both serve to reduce what we need to process of the world "out there".
Out there. How many of us actually get "out there" nowadays, let alone take the time to perceive our surroundings? This book makes us think along new wavelengths of perception and challenges us to stop and eat the roses. Alexandra Horowitz does something very simple in that she starts with a core goal of walking around her local block to see if she can discover new sights, sounds, and smells. In essence, she becomes a micro explorer.
Sometimes we see least the things we see most.
After her initial foray, the author then partners with noted specialists to find out if they 'view' the same walk with a different perspective. They most certainly do. For instance, her jaunt with an urban traffic planner causes her to realize that the very safety measures put into place for city pedestrians (crosswalks, raised curbs, traffic lights) actually make it more dangerous for us because we assume they are there to guarantee our safety, causing us to spend less time taking responsibility for our own safety. Interesting.
She begins to notice items she never noticed before. Simple lettering on a building that a graphics expert states is a disaster of different fonts. Pipes sticking out from older buildings, lights that can be seen under the sidewalk. New York City suddenly looks like a new land. When she walks with her child, leaves and steps take on more relevance because smaller human beings see what is nearer to their height level. The walk she takes with her dog means a focus on smells and why that is so important to a canine, especially an urban doggy.
I became completely absorbed in this book, perhaps because I live in a land where the majority, and I do mean the majority, meander down sidewalks without looking because they spend their time reading a phone or a tablet. This has led to increased deaths, as cars hit urbanites who are too absorbed in their Facebook updates to realize the danger. To put the book to the test, I did my own lunchtime walk around Lake Merritt in Oakland. Immediately, I realized that my normal walk was against the grain in that nearly every other person was walking around the lake clockwise, while I always went counter-clockwise. I noticed benches I never saw before and even apartments that no longer looked like every other building.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in taking a break from their sphere of comfort to try a different outlook. Also, I have to say the book helped me change one of my work procedures, as I used its findings to improve the pipeline flow in a backend process. Sweet.
Book Season = Spring (fresh air, clear skies)
Out there. How many of us actually get "out there" nowadays, let alone take the time to perceive our surroundings? This book makes us think along new wavelengths of perception and challenges us to stop and eat the roses. Alexandra Horowitz does something very simple in that she starts with a core goal of walking around her local block to see if she can discover new sights, sounds, and smells. In essence, she becomes a micro explorer.
Sometimes we see least the things we see most.
After her initial foray, the author then partners with noted specialists to find out if they 'view' the same walk with a different perspective. They most certainly do. For instance, her jaunt with an urban traffic planner causes her to realize that the very safety measures put into place for city pedestrians (crosswalks, raised curbs, traffic lights) actually make it more dangerous for us because we assume they are there to guarantee our safety, causing us to spend less time taking responsibility for our own safety. Interesting.
She begins to notice items she never noticed before. Simple lettering on a building that a graphics expert states is a disaster of different fonts. Pipes sticking out from older buildings, lights that can be seen under the sidewalk. New York City suddenly looks like a new land. When she walks with her child, leaves and steps take on more relevance because smaller human beings see what is nearer to their height level. The walk she takes with her dog means a focus on smells and why that is so important to a canine, especially an urban doggy.
I became completely absorbed in this book, perhaps because I live in a land where the majority, and I do mean the majority, meander down sidewalks without looking because they spend their time reading a phone or a tablet. This has led to increased deaths, as cars hit urbanites who are too absorbed in their Facebook updates to realize the danger. To put the book to the test, I did my own lunchtime walk around Lake Merritt in Oakland. Immediately, I realized that my normal walk was against the grain in that nearly every other person was walking around the lake clockwise, while I always went counter-clockwise. I noticed benches I never saw before and even apartments that no longer looked like every other building.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in taking a break from their sphere of comfort to try a different outlook. Also, I have to say the book helped me change one of my work procedures, as I used its findings to improve the pipeline flow in a backend process. Sweet.
Book Season = Spring (fresh air, clear skies)
July 29, 2016
http://www.simonandschuster.com/books... - a video that will show you some of the things I wanted to see in the book. Is it because I read the large-print edition that I saw almost no useful illustrations? I already do know how to slow down and pay attention, how to look from the knee-high level of a dog, how to engage other senses... but what Horowitz could have done for me is shown me some of the specific things that her experts taught her to see. To be fair, she writes a decent word-picture, and some of the experts have published, so if I cared enough (especially, for instance, about Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates: A Guide to North American Species) I could do further reading.
I thought it ironic, too, when I ordered this book from my library system - the only copy in rural NV is the large-print. A book about Looking. Ok then. But Horowitz does devote a walk to each a blind woman (mostly sound and touch), a dog (for scent), and a sound engineer (for the science of sound). I think my favorite walk, besides the one with her son of course, was the one with the letterer. Oh the typefaces!
Well researched. Some shaky science. Fascinating. Some repetition; some obviousness. Source notes and index.
The main thing I learned though is that I am very grateful I do not live in a big city and do not have to remind myself to stop and smell the roses, nor even have to travel to a park to find some to smell. But as you can see by my rating of four stars, I'm still very glad I read it, and I do recommend it to interested readers.
Here's a sample of one thing that she learned, which also exemplifies her writing style:
"My mind boggled a small boggle. The strip of denuded leaf we were looking at was a path cleared by a young fly who was growing up sufficiently quickly that the path he left in his wake had widened over the course of his living on that one leaf."
I thought it ironic, too, when I ordered this book from my library system - the only copy in rural NV is the large-print. A book about Looking. Ok then. But Horowitz does devote a walk to each a blind woman (mostly sound and touch), a dog (for scent), and a sound engineer (for the science of sound). I think my favorite walk, besides the one with her son of course, was the one with the letterer. Oh the typefaces!
Well researched. Some shaky science. Fascinating. Some repetition; some obviousness. Source notes and index.
The main thing I learned though is that I am very grateful I do not live in a big city and do not have to remind myself to stop and smell the roses, nor even have to travel to a park to find some to smell. But as you can see by my rating of four stars, I'm still very glad I read it, and I do recommend it to interested readers.
Here's a sample of one thing that she learned, which also exemplifies her writing style:
"My mind boggled a small boggle. The strip of denuded leaf we were looking at was a path cleared by a young fly who was growing up sufficiently quickly that the path he left in his wake had widened over the course of his living on that one leaf."
January 9, 2019
In 2019, I am setting 19 goals for myself. On Goodreads, that's 36 books. In real life, one goal is scheduling time for adventure, at least once a week. Alexandra Horowitz' nonfiction book, On Looking, encourages just that.
Sometimes, I get stuck. Horowitz, a cognitive psychologist and avid walker, suggests I need to go outside, sometimes with a companion, to get a fresh perspective. But she got 11. Though it's not quite 11 walks around the same block, it reads like a love letter to New York: tangents (and walks) are winding, and some stories feel more personal. The footnotes, clearly inspired by Oliver Sacks, often miss the clever mark. The so-called experts include her son, dog, and various professionals, in sound engineering, physical therapy, typography, and much more. I'm not sure how she found these folks, or why she chose them, but the richest material highlights their passions: on these walks, neglected couches are flipped over, letters on windows are "pregnant", and only certain spots are suitable for dog peeing.
Yet despite the promise of 11 consistent paths (and thus creating a constant variable), I loved the conversations between the author and her blind companion, thoughtful and reflective. The bookends, a walk with her toddler and pup, add depth by reminding me to pause, sniff, and laugh at the mundane. Horowitz wants to be perceived as an expert social scientist, but she is full of zest and curiosity, and that is her strength. I learn a mouse can fit into a dime-sized hole. That sometimes a bug's path grows larger as the bug himself does, too.
Life is all about one's perception, and On Looking reminds me to keep exploring.
Sometimes, I get stuck. Horowitz, a cognitive psychologist and avid walker, suggests I need to go outside, sometimes with a companion, to get a fresh perspective. But she got 11. Though it's not quite 11 walks around the same block, it reads like a love letter to New York: tangents (and walks) are winding, and some stories feel more personal. The footnotes, clearly inspired by Oliver Sacks, often miss the clever mark. The so-called experts include her son, dog, and various professionals, in sound engineering, physical therapy, typography, and much more. I'm not sure how she found these folks, or why she chose them, but the richest material highlights their passions: on these walks, neglected couches are flipped over, letters on windows are "pregnant", and only certain spots are suitable for dog peeing.
Yet despite the promise of 11 consistent paths (and thus creating a constant variable), I loved the conversations between the author and her blind companion, thoughtful and reflective. The bookends, a walk with her toddler and pup, add depth by reminding me to pause, sniff, and laugh at the mundane. Horowitz wants to be perceived as an expert social scientist, but she is full of zest and curiosity, and that is her strength. I learn a mouse can fit into a dime-sized hole. That sometimes a bug's path grows larger as the bug himself does, too.
Life is all about one's perception, and On Looking reminds me to keep exploring.
March 13, 2013
Like many others, I believed this book would look at the same walk in the same area from multiple perspectives. I kinda wish it had been. I liked how the author of In the Neighborhood looked at his street from different homes and families, from the trashman's perspective, the mailman's, etc and thought this would be similar. It wasn't and lost something for me by changing the locations.
This was somewhat interesting, but a slow read. I get what she was trying to do, but her toddler and dog hardly qualify as experts. I found I wasn't all that interested in what she would learn next, and I didn't see how much of it would be applied to my life. I won't distinguish the kearning or font of most signs I see, don't have the background nor desire to identify bug trails, nor types of rocks. It was mildly entertaining, but it was not the group of experts I was anticipating. The sight, smell, touch aspects were more like it. Most of what I got from this was the part about how studying things trains your brain to pick those things out easily...like the bug guy spotting evidence of bugs everywhere. I'm not going to do that without one of her experts beside me. Perhaps then I'd better appreciate what they were showing her. So while it was not a bad read, it also wasn't quite what I expected or hoped for.
This was somewhat interesting, but a slow read. I get what she was trying to do, but her toddler and dog hardly qualify as experts. I found I wasn't all that interested in what she would learn next, and I didn't see how much of it would be applied to my life. I won't distinguish the kearning or font of most signs I see, don't have the background nor desire to identify bug trails, nor types of rocks. It was mildly entertaining, but it was not the group of experts I was anticipating. The sight, smell, touch aspects were more like it. Most of what I got from this was the part about how studying things trains your brain to pick those things out easily...like the bug guy spotting evidence of bugs everywhere. I'm not going to do that without one of her experts beside me. Perhaps then I'd better appreciate what they were showing her. So while it was not a bad read, it also wasn't quite what I expected or hoped for.
June 18, 2016
Near the end of On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz says this about the walks she's taken over the course of writing the book, and how they've changed her: "I have become, I fear, a difficult walking companion, liable to slow down and point at things. I can turn this off, but I love to have it on: a sense of wonder that I, and we all, have a predisposition to but have forgotten to enjoy" (264-265). Which is great, but is maybe what also makes me not this book's ideal audience: I was already big on noticing-while-walking, already likely to point at things (the honeysuckle in a front garden, the way the ivy on a building's side is being rippled by the wind, graffiti, signs with old telephone exchanges, light). Which isn't to say I pay vivid attention to my surroundings all the time, and which isn't to say I didn't enjoy this book: just that maybe it'd be more interesting for people who aren't already quite as into city-walking-while-looking as I am.
Horowitz structures the book around the "eleven walks" of the subtitle, though there are really more walks than that: she starts and ends with a solitary walk, and one of the chapters actually has two experts, and, I'm pretty sure, two walks. But anyhow: she sets out to walk familiar city streets with an eye to things she either doesn't know about or doesn't normally attend to: with the help of experts, she intends to learn about her surroundings, but also to learn to move through her surroundings differently, to be awake to things she previously would have missed: she and her experts will be, as she puts it, "investigators of the ordinary" (3). The experts are varied, and include her nineteen-month-old son and the family dog, as well as a geologist, a typographer, an artist (Maira Kalman! Who is awesome!), a field naturalist (specialty: insects), an animal behavior researcher (specialty: urban wildlife), the president of the Project for Public Spaces, a doctor, a physical therapist, a blind person, and a sound designer/sound engineer.
In the course of the walks, Horowitz learns about some stuff I already knew about (Manhattan schist, the paths of glaciers and the "erratics" left behind) but also stuff I didn't know (like: I knew about limestone's aquatic origins, but didn't realize you can spot fossil crinoids or traces of sea worms in it; I had no idea about the galls inside which insect larvae live). She also writes about attention and cognition: how our brains filter and create the images and sensations we have of the world around us, how our expectations affect what we notice or don't. This sometimes makes for a narrative that doesn't quite flow: in most chapters, Horowitz is writing about the experience of a specific walk through a specific place and what she saw and learned, but also about these overarching issues of how we process information, and it sometimes feels like too much combined. I think the chapters featuring walks with her son and her dog were my favorites, and I think it's partly because they're more focused on recounting the actual walk: Horowitz learns things on these walks, and writes about what she learns, but her experts in these chapters aren't actually teaching her facts and figures, and it makes for better writing, I think.
Horowitz structures the book around the "eleven walks" of the subtitle, though there are really more walks than that: she starts and ends with a solitary walk, and one of the chapters actually has two experts, and, I'm pretty sure, two walks. But anyhow: she sets out to walk familiar city streets with an eye to things she either doesn't know about or doesn't normally attend to: with the help of experts, she intends to learn about her surroundings, but also to learn to move through her surroundings differently, to be awake to things she previously would have missed: she and her experts will be, as she puts it, "investigators of the ordinary" (3). The experts are varied, and include her nineteen-month-old son and the family dog, as well as a geologist, a typographer, an artist (Maira Kalman! Who is awesome!), a field naturalist (specialty: insects), an animal behavior researcher (specialty: urban wildlife), the president of the Project for Public Spaces, a doctor, a physical therapist, a blind person, and a sound designer/sound engineer.
In the course of the walks, Horowitz learns about some stuff I already knew about (Manhattan schist, the paths of glaciers and the "erratics" left behind) but also stuff I didn't know (like: I knew about limestone's aquatic origins, but didn't realize you can spot fossil crinoids or traces of sea worms in it; I had no idea about the galls inside which insect larvae live). She also writes about attention and cognition: how our brains filter and create the images and sensations we have of the world around us, how our expectations affect what we notice or don't. This sometimes makes for a narrative that doesn't quite flow: in most chapters, Horowitz is writing about the experience of a specific walk through a specific place and what she saw and learned, but also about these overarching issues of how we process information, and it sometimes feels like too much combined. I think the chapters featuring walks with her son and her dog were my favorites, and I think it's partly because they're more focused on recounting the actual walk: Horowitz learns things on these walks, and writes about what she learns, but her experts in these chapters aren't actually teaching her facts and figures, and it makes for better writing, I think.
Read
February 25, 2013NEW YORKER Alexandra Horowitz is a psychologist with a PhD in cognitive science. She's studied rhinoceroses, bonobos and humans, but it was when she turned her attention to dogs, specifically to her own dog Pumpernickel, that she found her niche.
The result was the international bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know (2009), which combined Horowitz's observations of her pet with current research.
Her intriguing followup is about what humans see - and what we miss and why - when out in the world.
Horowitz begins On Looking by walking around her own block and describing what she sees. She then retraces her steps with a variety of experts, including a geologist, a sound designer and a blind person, as well as with her dog and infant son.
One of the problems with the book is that the conceit she sells early on - to the extent that she uses quotes from her initial essay as epigraphs for the essays that follow - is flabby.
While three of the chapters stay close to home, literally walking the walk, other chapters adapt themselves to Horowitz's companions' areas of interest. So we loiter downtown for our walk with the font nerd and experience the crowds of Broadway with the urban sociologist but also travel to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
And so readers lose the baseline of the original itinerary, trading the intimacy of Horowitz's block for Anytown, U.S.A.
And while Horowitz is an eloquent and affable host on these walks, she sometimes veers towards the precious, confiding in a footnote, for instance, that her footnotes are nowhere near as surprising and original as those of Oliver Sacks.
More troubling is her apology for using technical terms in this excerpt from her walk with Sidney Horenstein of the American Museum of Natural History: "One risks, in writing about geology, numbing one's readership with the terminology. Schist, gneiss, phyllite; metamorphic, sedimentary, siliciclastic, schistosity. It can be dizzying. I sympathize. I hear 'Paleozoic' and I nearly drop right into a deep sleep."
It is counter-intuitive, almost bewildering, to hear a scientist apologize for talking science. Isn't that why we read books of popular science?
In addition, U.S. publisher Scribner has chosen to include some of the Horowitz's line drawings with the text, but their postage-stamp size means that they're too small to be of any real use as illustrations. And while it is lovely to see the paintings that came from Horowitz's walk with artist Maira Kalman, the two colour plates seem somehow out of place.
These quibbles aside, On Looking is a quietly illuminating study of how human beings process all the information available to them when doing something like going for a walk. Particularly interesting is Horowitz's analysis of how expertise changes the brain.
Of course, the answer to the question "How do I keep myself from missing things?" is "You have to spend time looking!"
But just as being able to guess the murderer halfway through a mystery isn't always fatal, it doesn't matter here either, because Horowitz reminds us of the specific wealth of what there is to see: animals and rocks and buildings and people, smells and sounds and textures.
Finally, as non-fiction devotees know, one of the pleasures of the genre is that even though you might not be wholly persuaded by the main thesis, you're certain to pick up nuggets of useful and novel information.
Like the notion that typhoid is supposed to smell like "freshly baked brown bread," and that rats produce a particular sound "to accompany pain or social defeat, and oddly, ejaculation."
(This review was published in the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section on February 23, 2013.)
The result was the international bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know (2009), which combined Horowitz's observations of her pet with current research.
Her intriguing followup is about what humans see - and what we miss and why - when out in the world.
Horowitz begins On Looking by walking around her own block and describing what she sees. She then retraces her steps with a variety of experts, including a geologist, a sound designer and a blind person, as well as with her dog and infant son.
One of the problems with the book is that the conceit she sells early on - to the extent that she uses quotes from her initial essay as epigraphs for the essays that follow - is flabby.
While three of the chapters stay close to home, literally walking the walk, other chapters adapt themselves to Horowitz's companions' areas of interest. So we loiter downtown for our walk with the font nerd and experience the crowds of Broadway with the urban sociologist but also travel to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
And so readers lose the baseline of the original itinerary, trading the intimacy of Horowitz's block for Anytown, U.S.A.
And while Horowitz is an eloquent and affable host on these walks, she sometimes veers towards the precious, confiding in a footnote, for instance, that her footnotes are nowhere near as surprising and original as those of Oliver Sacks.
More troubling is her apology for using technical terms in this excerpt from her walk with Sidney Horenstein of the American Museum of Natural History: "One risks, in writing about geology, numbing one's readership with the terminology. Schist, gneiss, phyllite; metamorphic, sedimentary, siliciclastic, schistosity. It can be dizzying. I sympathize. I hear 'Paleozoic' and I nearly drop right into a deep sleep."
It is counter-intuitive, almost bewildering, to hear a scientist apologize for talking science. Isn't that why we read books of popular science?
In addition, U.S. publisher Scribner has chosen to include some of the Horowitz's line drawings with the text, but their postage-stamp size means that they're too small to be of any real use as illustrations. And while it is lovely to see the paintings that came from Horowitz's walk with artist Maira Kalman, the two colour plates seem somehow out of place.
These quibbles aside, On Looking is a quietly illuminating study of how human beings process all the information available to them when doing something like going for a walk. Particularly interesting is Horowitz's analysis of how expertise changes the brain.
Of course, the answer to the question "How do I keep myself from missing things?" is "You have to spend time looking!"
But just as being able to guess the murderer halfway through a mystery isn't always fatal, it doesn't matter here either, because Horowitz reminds us of the specific wealth of what there is to see: animals and rocks and buildings and people, smells and sounds and textures.
Finally, as non-fiction devotees know, one of the pleasures of the genre is that even though you might not be wholly persuaded by the main thesis, you're certain to pick up nuggets of useful and novel information.
Like the notion that typhoid is supposed to smell like "freshly baked brown bread," and that rats produce a particular sound "to accompany pain or social defeat, and oddly, ejaculation."
(This review was published in the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section on February 23, 2013.)
December 27, 2024
Do you like to listen to your best friend or partner talk about something that they are really interested in? That's this book except you don't know anyone and without the "I love you and like listening to you being passionate" and with the additional lense of another person narrorating who isn't an expert.
This book is about one lady who takes walks in her neighborhood with several "experts" on various topics. It's supposed to help you understand more about how we all miss things every day and we all have a lot to learn. Here are my individual ratings for each walk.
1. Herself ⭐
2. Her toddler ⭐⭐⭐
3. A geologist ⭐⭐⭐⭐
4. Letters expert ⭐⭐
5. Artist ⭐⭐
6. Field naturalist (aka Insect expert) ⭐⭐⭐
7. Animal expert ⭐⭐
8. People in city planning ⭐
9. Doctor ⭐⭐
10. A blind traveler ⭐⭐⭐⭐
11. Sound designer ⭐⭐⭐
12. Her dog ⭐⭐⭐⭐
13. Herself pt 2 ⭐⭐
Average: 2.53
I don't like the writing style very much. It feels a little "try hard". The author tries to word things artistically but it comes off as pretentious. But then she also writes things like "my mind boggled a small boggle." 😭 mAm wtf. Followed by later exclaiming she was probably the only not-expert/normie to ever take a photo of ___ phenomenon. She makes everything about herself. Her walk with the doctor starts with 'o no what could be wrong with me maybe my nail bed'???? Your nail bed????? And then half of the chapter was her trying to diagnose or guess things about people. Please. Stop.
I would have preferred to listen to these experts themselves and not listen to the author talk about her experience listening to the experts. She goes on tangents about things unrelated to the chapter theme. For example, four pages in the insect chapter discuss why the expert has a mental "search image" for insects and spots them when others don't. The next chapter has four more pages on how we look for things. Horowitz just really wants you to think about how we view the world differently. That's what this book is about, but with thousands of unnecessary words. It's not just "a bunch of experts on the same walk point out cool things that others don't notice"... Which is what I had signed up for. I think if I knew it was the former, I would have enjoyed it more and not been disappointed.
This book is about one lady who takes walks in her neighborhood with several "experts" on various topics. It's supposed to help you understand more about how we all miss things every day and we all have a lot to learn. Here are my individual ratings for each walk.
1. Herself ⭐
2. Her toddler ⭐⭐⭐
3. A geologist ⭐⭐⭐⭐
4. Letters expert ⭐⭐
5. Artist ⭐⭐
6. Field naturalist (aka Insect expert) ⭐⭐⭐
7. Animal expert ⭐⭐
8. People in city planning ⭐
9. Doctor ⭐⭐
10. A blind traveler ⭐⭐⭐⭐
11. Sound designer ⭐⭐⭐
12. Her dog ⭐⭐⭐⭐
13. Herself pt 2 ⭐⭐
Average: 2.53
I don't like the writing style very much. It feels a little "try hard". The author tries to word things artistically but it comes off as pretentious. But then she also writes things like "my mind boggled a small boggle." 😭 mAm wtf. Followed by later exclaiming she was probably the only not-expert/normie to ever take a photo of ___ phenomenon. She makes everything about herself. Her walk with the doctor starts with 'o no what could be wrong with me maybe my nail bed'???? Your nail bed????? And then half of the chapter was her trying to diagnose or guess things about people. Please. Stop.
I would have preferred to listen to these experts themselves and not listen to the author talk about her experience listening to the experts. She goes on tangents about things unrelated to the chapter theme. For example, four pages in the insect chapter discuss why the expert has a mental "search image" for insects and spots them when others don't. The next chapter has four more pages on how we look for things. Horowitz just really wants you to think about how we view the world differently. That's what this book is about, but with thousands of unnecessary words. It's not just "a bunch of experts on the same walk point out cool things that others don't notice"... Which is what I had signed up for. I think if I knew it was the former, I would have enjoyed it more and not been disappointed.
July 31, 2021
Pretentious, verbose, meandering, repetitive, DELIGHTFUL. Reading this was like raptly listening to someone who has a passion for something I don’t. The depth and the fire I sense when someone waxes poetic about something completely foreign. I find joy in the joy of that person, not in the information itself. But I do pick things up. Learning about the interconnectedness of seemingly unconnected things. Fascinating little tidbits of information that will never make me an expert, but that pique my curiosity and delight the magpie-like nature of my brain. Each little factoid a shiny bauble to treasure.
Even the writing style that many other reviewers found obnoxious was a pleasure for me. Too many words. Too many sidetracks. Too much over-explaining. And I adored all of it.
I can ABSOLUTELY see why people found this tedious. I found it wonderful. If, like me, you delight in finding wonder in the mundane (or would like to learn how to) give this a read.
Even the writing style that many other reviewers found obnoxious was a pleasure for me. Too many words. Too many sidetracks. Too much over-explaining. And I adored all of it.
I can ABSOLUTELY see why people found this tedious. I found it wonderful. If, like me, you delight in finding wonder in the mundane (or would like to learn how to) give this a read.
November 1, 2020
An excellent premise. I am truly saddened by how little I enjoyed this book.
July 16, 2023
Did not finish.
At what point should I just give up on a book because I'm BORED OUT OF MY WITS?!
I really wanted to learn something and love this book, but it was just blah.
At what point should I just give up on a book because I'm BORED OUT OF MY WITS?!
I really wanted to learn something and love this book, but it was just blah.
May 11, 2013
In ‘On Looking’, Alexandra Horowitz takes the reader on a walk around many city blocks to consider what we see, and don’t see, and why our experience and understanding of our physical and social environment is often limited.
At first, Horowitz sets out on what she’d regard as a normal walk around her block in New York City by herself. She likes to think of herself as an attentive person, yet the walks she takes subsequently with eleven ‘experts’ show how much she has missed in what she sees, hears and understands.
She walks first with her young son, then a geologist, a typographer, a sociable illustrator, an entomologist, a wildlife scientist, an expert on public spaces, a doctor, a blind person, a sound designer and her dog. Each ‘expert’ offers a different perspective on experiencing the (urban) world, what to pay attention to and how to ‘read’ the landscape. The walks also present varying ideas about what a walk is and how to take one. Finally, Horowitz sets out on her own again to test how her experience of walking in New York City had changed as a result of all she’s learned. She finds that she is more curious about her social and physical environment; she does see, hear and notice more. She is more engaged with her world and has regained a sense of wonder about it.
The book is quite technical in parts. I’m not sure how much I’ll remember about what a hertz measures or what schist is, but Horowitz attempts to convey difficult information and concepts in a palatable form.
Pay attention, be curious, look! The themes of ‘On Looking’ seem obvious and yet, clearly, we need the reminder to switch on to our surroundings, to live fully. Our environment is far more fascinating and complex than most of us realise.
May 18, 2018
This book was completely different than anything I would normally read. It caught my attention because I take regular walks. I listened to this book as an audio book so i did not actually read it. I would never have made it thru it reading, the book would not have held my attention. It was a little dry. On the other hand I found some parts of the book and the concept very interesting. Taking with walks with 10 different people and one dog, it was interesting to see what each person saw or heard. The chapters that have impacted me the most and I find myself thinking about and trying to notice on my own travels were the letters, the stone, the blind woman, the sounds and of course the dog walk (all my walks are with my dog). I did not enjoy the chapter about bugs, it was fascinating, but it did not make me want to go out in search of insects.
I think the book is worth a listen to just to help you heighten your senses no matter where you are city or park. For me that is what this book did, it has caused me to slow down be aware of my surrounding and really look and listen.
Because I am a dog person I plan to check out the authors other books about dogs.
I think the book is worth a listen to just to help you heighten your senses no matter where you are city or park. For me that is what this book did, it has caused me to slow down be aware of my surrounding and really look and listen.
Because I am a dog person I plan to check out the authors other books about dogs.
January 19, 2013
The premise for this book, walking around the same city path with several different people to get their view on what they see or hear, is fascinating. The interpretation and explanation of psychological theories to those walks was interesting. However, to me this read a bit more like a psychological study rather than the stories of the people and their views. I would have enjoyed this book more with less theory and more focus on the viewers' experiences.
January 11, 2019
Very good book about a woman who goes for walks with various experts (geologist, doctor, architect, etc) and experiences the various lens different people use to see the world.
May 14, 2025
An absolutely delightful book that has made daily life… sweeter.
Having said that factually incorrect terms and talking down to the reader did have it’s toll.
The read was intresting in terms of noticing different perspectives- a better rewrite of the title would’ve been ‘11 walks from different perspectives’ over expert eyes.
As a dentistry student, I’ve also had some experience in medicine, a doctor who only specializes in physiology would focus on gait, however that is also dependent on different specialties if doctors. An endocrinologist or heck even a dentist would notice different facial abnormalities of the people on the street.
If anything this book has pushed me to be more insightful on my daily walks. For that I thank you Alexandra.
Having said that factually incorrect terms and talking down to the reader did have it’s toll.
The read was intresting in terms of noticing different perspectives- a better rewrite of the title would’ve been ‘11 walks from different perspectives’ over expert eyes.
As a dentistry student, I’ve also had some experience in medicine, a doctor who only specializes in physiology would focus on gait, however that is also dependent on different specialties if doctors. An endocrinologist or heck even a dentist would notice different facial abnormalities of the people on the street.
If anything this book has pushed me to be more insightful on my daily walks. For that I thank you Alexandra.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2013
Het bezit van een hond, zal zelfs de meest verknochte kattenliefhebber moeten bekennen, heeft zo zijn voordelen. Je bent bijvoorbeeld nooit meer alleen thuis en wanneer het een flink uit de kluiten gewassen exemplaar is, waan je je ook een stuk veiliger. Maar er is nog een ander pluspunt aan een hond, aldus de Amerikaanse ethologe en psychologe Alexandra Horowitz: wanneer je ermee op stap gaat, even een blokje om, merk je dat hij de wereld heel anders ziet, van op een andere hoogte natuurlijk, maar ook met zijn neus in plaats van met zijn ogen, en zo realiseer je je als mens dat je blik op de wereld misschien wel heel persoonlijk gekleurd is.
Verder denkend vanuit dit hondenverhaal - Horowitz heeft iets met die huisdieren; ze debuteerde ooit met De wereld van de hond. Wat honden zien, ruiken en weten - realiseerde ze zich dat ze het niet eens zo ver hoefde te zoeken en dat verschillende mensen de wereld ook met heel andere ogen zien. De blik van een dierenarts is bijvoorbeeld heel anders dan die van een slager, en gelukkig maar ook. Hier moet ik iets mee, dacht ze, en zo kwam ze op het schitterende idee om met tien heel verschillende mensen een stadswandeling te maken en te luisteren naar hun verhalen.
Hoe relatief het concept wandeling wel is leerde ze al meteen door met haar negentien maanden oude zoontje op stap te gaan, wat ongetwijfeld het grappigste en vertederendste hoofdstuk uit het boek oplevert. Hij zal haar leiden, beslist ze, en daardoor maken ze hun eerste stop aan de voordeur, waar het jochie op het trapje gaat zitten. Voor haar moest de wandeling nog beginnen, terwijl ze voor haar zoon al lang bezig was. Voor een kind is wandelen vooral ontdekken en verzamelen ondervindt Horowitz en samen rapen ze steentjes, huppelen ze op en af een muurtje en staan ze verwonderd en vol opwinding te kijken naar een grote kiepauto, want vrachtwagens kunnen bij het jongetje op extra veel aandacht rekenen. Er zijn grote en kleine, vertelt hij, brandweerwagens en afvalophalers, en dan is er die hele grote restcategorie: rare vrachtwagens.
Met andere ogen wil meer zijn dan een reeks verhalen over al dan niet innemende mensen en hun gedachten. Horowitz doceert aan Columbia University en is eerst en vooral een wetenschapster. Daarom combineert ze haar uit het leven gegrepen verhalen met een zoektocht naar de redenen waarom mensen iets zien zoals ze het zien. Met andere ogen is dus eerst en vooral een psychologisch boek en in het hoofdstuk over haar zoon heeft ze het daarom meermaals over de emotionele en cognitieve ontwikkeling van kinderen en de manier waarop zij - en hier haalt ze de Zwitserse psycholoog Jean Piaget aan - aanvankelijk over een animistische ingesteldheid beschikken. Het zoontje is bijvoorbeeld ontdaan bij het zien van een ‘eenzame’ schoen die bovenop een vuilniszak ligt.
Horowitz heeft de figuren waarmee ze een blokje om loopt heel zorgvuldig gekozen. Het zijn niet zomaar John, Jack en Diane, maar wel geologen, ethologen en zelfs stadsplanners die vanuit hun specifieke opleiding en beroep naar New York kijken. Waarom wordt die geoloog wild van een muurtje gebouwd met uit Indiana afkomstige kalksteen vol wormgaten, vraagt ze zich af, terwijl zij er gewoon over had gekeken? En ze geeft meteen het antwoord: omdat die steenstructuren zowat in zijn hersenen ingebakken zitten, terwijl zij voor haar nieuw en dus onbekend zijn. Een mens ziet wat hij verwacht, maar er is meer aan de hand. De een is immers beter in het out of the box denken dan de ander, en daar is een neurologische verklaring voor. Sommigen onder ons hebben een kleinere hoeveelheid bepaalde dopaminereceptoren in de grijze stof van de hersenen, waardoor ze beter zijn in divergent denken. Horowitz geeft een goede vriendin als voorbeeld die wanneer ze zich verveelt een half uurtje op een kruispunt gaat staan en daar het ene avontuur na het andere beleeft, terwijl zij zelf nog nooit iets spannends in het verkeer heeft ontdekt.
Horowitz gaat op zoek naar sporen van insecten en zoogdieren, dompelt zich als een echte Sherlock Holmes samen met een typograaf onder in het geheim achter een rare Q op de gevel van een huis en leert van de directeur van het Project for Public Spaces dat er al vierduizend jaar trottoirs zijn maar dat die pas in de negentiende eeuw echt populair zijn geworden. In 1822 was er in Parijs bijvoorbeeld slechts 267 meter stoep. 25 jaar later was dat 259 kilometer. Het is echter niet in de zuiver cognitieve hoofdstukken dat de schrijfster je weet te raken, maar wel in de meer emotionele en menselijke. Heel knap is bijvoorbeeld haar verslag over een wandeling met een blinde en de manier waarop deze haar andere zintuigen ter compensatie gebruikt. Zij hoort waar ze is aan het weergalmen van het tikken van haar stok en voelt aan de veranderende wind wanneer ze de hoek van de straat heeft bereikt. Het is bij het lezen van zulke passages dat je denkt: dat zou ik ook eens willen doen. En wanneer je er dieper op ingaat besef je ook wat het precies is wat je ook zou willen doen, iets wat zeldzaam is geworden vandaag: de tijd nemen om echt te kijken naar de wereld om je heen in plaats van er snel doorheen te hollen.
Verder denkend vanuit dit hondenverhaal - Horowitz heeft iets met die huisdieren; ze debuteerde ooit met De wereld van de hond. Wat honden zien, ruiken en weten - realiseerde ze zich dat ze het niet eens zo ver hoefde te zoeken en dat verschillende mensen de wereld ook met heel andere ogen zien. De blik van een dierenarts is bijvoorbeeld heel anders dan die van een slager, en gelukkig maar ook. Hier moet ik iets mee, dacht ze, en zo kwam ze op het schitterende idee om met tien heel verschillende mensen een stadswandeling te maken en te luisteren naar hun verhalen.
Hoe relatief het concept wandeling wel is leerde ze al meteen door met haar negentien maanden oude zoontje op stap te gaan, wat ongetwijfeld het grappigste en vertederendste hoofdstuk uit het boek oplevert. Hij zal haar leiden, beslist ze, en daardoor maken ze hun eerste stop aan de voordeur, waar het jochie op het trapje gaat zitten. Voor haar moest de wandeling nog beginnen, terwijl ze voor haar zoon al lang bezig was. Voor een kind is wandelen vooral ontdekken en verzamelen ondervindt Horowitz en samen rapen ze steentjes, huppelen ze op en af een muurtje en staan ze verwonderd en vol opwinding te kijken naar een grote kiepauto, want vrachtwagens kunnen bij het jongetje op extra veel aandacht rekenen. Er zijn grote en kleine, vertelt hij, brandweerwagens en afvalophalers, en dan is er die hele grote restcategorie: rare vrachtwagens.
Met andere ogen wil meer zijn dan een reeks verhalen over al dan niet innemende mensen en hun gedachten. Horowitz doceert aan Columbia University en is eerst en vooral een wetenschapster. Daarom combineert ze haar uit het leven gegrepen verhalen met een zoektocht naar de redenen waarom mensen iets zien zoals ze het zien. Met andere ogen is dus eerst en vooral een psychologisch boek en in het hoofdstuk over haar zoon heeft ze het daarom meermaals over de emotionele en cognitieve ontwikkeling van kinderen en de manier waarop zij - en hier haalt ze de Zwitserse psycholoog Jean Piaget aan - aanvankelijk over een animistische ingesteldheid beschikken. Het zoontje is bijvoorbeeld ontdaan bij het zien van een ‘eenzame’ schoen die bovenop een vuilniszak ligt.
Horowitz heeft de figuren waarmee ze een blokje om loopt heel zorgvuldig gekozen. Het zijn niet zomaar John, Jack en Diane, maar wel geologen, ethologen en zelfs stadsplanners die vanuit hun specifieke opleiding en beroep naar New York kijken. Waarom wordt die geoloog wild van een muurtje gebouwd met uit Indiana afkomstige kalksteen vol wormgaten, vraagt ze zich af, terwijl zij er gewoon over had gekeken? En ze geeft meteen het antwoord: omdat die steenstructuren zowat in zijn hersenen ingebakken zitten, terwijl zij voor haar nieuw en dus onbekend zijn. Een mens ziet wat hij verwacht, maar er is meer aan de hand. De een is immers beter in het out of the box denken dan de ander, en daar is een neurologische verklaring voor. Sommigen onder ons hebben een kleinere hoeveelheid bepaalde dopaminereceptoren in de grijze stof van de hersenen, waardoor ze beter zijn in divergent denken. Horowitz geeft een goede vriendin als voorbeeld die wanneer ze zich verveelt een half uurtje op een kruispunt gaat staan en daar het ene avontuur na het andere beleeft, terwijl zij zelf nog nooit iets spannends in het verkeer heeft ontdekt.
Horowitz gaat op zoek naar sporen van insecten en zoogdieren, dompelt zich als een echte Sherlock Holmes samen met een typograaf onder in het geheim achter een rare Q op de gevel van een huis en leert van de directeur van het Project for Public Spaces dat er al vierduizend jaar trottoirs zijn maar dat die pas in de negentiende eeuw echt populair zijn geworden. In 1822 was er in Parijs bijvoorbeeld slechts 267 meter stoep. 25 jaar later was dat 259 kilometer. Het is echter niet in de zuiver cognitieve hoofdstukken dat de schrijfster je weet te raken, maar wel in de meer emotionele en menselijke. Heel knap is bijvoorbeeld haar verslag over een wandeling met een blinde en de manier waarop deze haar andere zintuigen ter compensatie gebruikt. Zij hoort waar ze is aan het weergalmen van het tikken van haar stok en voelt aan de veranderende wind wanneer ze de hoek van de straat heeft bereikt. Het is bij het lezen van zulke passages dat je denkt: dat zou ik ook eens willen doen. En wanneer je er dieper op ingaat besef je ook wat het precies is wat je ook zou willen doen, iets wat zeldzaam is geworden vandaag: de tijd nemen om echt te kijken naar de wereld om je heen in plaats van er snel doorheen te hollen.
September 16, 2013
Sometimes I have problems deciding how many stars to give a book, and this was one of those times. In terms of the fascinating stories and knowledge of the people the author walks with, it is a solid 5 stars. In terms of the author herself and her writing ... maybe 3? I didn't exactly dislike her and at times I really enjoyed her writing but I found myself being annoyed with the twee-ness that kept popping up. I think if I had skipped the first chapter where she walked with her son I might not have noticed it so much in the following chapters, but I did and so there I am. This annoyance with people who write like this seems to be a problem that I don't share with too many if the legions of fans of so many blogs written in this style are to be believed. I don't claim to be any sort of expert on writing but I guess I just get tired of bullshit. (This is possibly because I am so full of it myself?? Not sure.)
Anyhow, there is so much good about this book that I really shouldn't have gotten on any sort of rant of it being otherwise. I loved reading about the geology of NYC and the fossils that can be seen in the stone of any random building (even that concrete isn't such a terrible thing viewed in the right way), how Maira Kalman actually *sees* so many things (and the great illustrations that depict her uniqueness of seeing) and the huge variety of birds and animals and insects and the clues they leave (or don't) to indicate they are living very near us.
I love this reminder of how much there is to see if we just take the time to actually do so. One of my favorite memories is of the time I was parked on a bench in San Diego, just across the water from North Island Naval Station and by just staying put I saw so many interesting things: actual seals and their Navy trainers; dogs and their walkers who were more than willing to tell me where to get the best fish tacos; and the USS Nimitz moving out.
Recommended.
*Steps and ramps and overhangs and decorative finials. "Every rock has distinctive characteristics: minerals, grain size, the overall look," Horenstein said. "And so you come to know them like friends. When I walk with people, I don't pay much attention to [the rocks}; it's not courteous. When I walk by myself, I pass these places and they greet me."*
*I was beginning to see what Kalman saw. She did not see a space as defined by an edge, but as an infinitely explorable openness.*
*A tall raincoat hurried a small raincoat along, all but their connected hand hidden under waterproof clothing."
Anyhow, there is so much good about this book that I really shouldn't have gotten on any sort of rant of it being otherwise. I loved reading about the geology of NYC and the fossils that can be seen in the stone of any random building (even that concrete isn't such a terrible thing viewed in the right way), how Maira Kalman actually *sees* so many things (and the great illustrations that depict her uniqueness of seeing) and the huge variety of birds and animals and insects and the clues they leave (or don't) to indicate they are living very near us.
I love this reminder of how much there is to see if we just take the time to actually do so. One of my favorite memories is of the time I was parked on a bench in San Diego, just across the water from North Island Naval Station and by just staying put I saw so many interesting things: actual seals and their Navy trainers; dogs and their walkers who were more than willing to tell me where to get the best fish tacos; and the USS Nimitz moving out.
Recommended.
*Steps and ramps and overhangs and decorative finials. "Every rock has distinctive characteristics: minerals, grain size, the overall look," Horenstein said. "And so you come to know them like friends. When I walk with people, I don't pay much attention to [the rocks}; it's not courteous. When I walk by myself, I pass these places and they greet me."*
*I was beginning to see what Kalman saw. She did not see a space as defined by an edge, but as an infinitely explorable openness.*
*A tall raincoat hurried a small raincoat along, all but their connected hand hidden under waterproof clothing."
January 26, 2021
This book sounded like it was going to teach me about different modes of looking and attention through a series of walks with "experts" taken by the author. Unfortunately, the voice of the author so overshadowed those of her companions, that it was difficult to parse what insights were theirs and what were hers. I suspect there are readers who will like Horowitz's voice, but I found her cloying and self-involved. Knowing that she has written extensively on dogs and their consciousness, I wonder if she is simply out of practice in writing about beings who have readily distinct personalities and characters, thus creating in her the need to filter everything they say and do through her own consciousness. There were some charming factoids and a few genuinely interesting crumbs, but generally, I longed to hear more from the author's walking companions, and I very quickly grew tired of the way she bulldozed them, flattening them out into a silly-putty reflection of themselves. I read this with a book club, and except for one person, this book was unilaterally panned by everyone in the group.
February 28, 2013
This book is quite simply about trying to slow down, look around and see live differently. This is a real issue with so-called modern life. People are rushing, all frenzied, distracted by cell phones, over-scheduling, drama, etc. and they don't see life anymore, unless it's an app for life. When I won this from the Goodreads First Reads Program I thought sure, sounds interesting, but it was more than that, it eye-opening, on many levels. To some extend I already look at things, places, people in a very detailed way, but this book made me rethink even how I do that. You don't have to do it with expert eyes, just go for walk and look at your neighbourhood, note the people, the structures, the trees, etc. Do this in a store or at work, while driving (do also pay attention to the road), in a theater, park, or at the gym. Put down your cell phones and come back into the real world, your brain will thank you for it, in more ways than one.
August 5, 2021
Walking the city with a toddler, an entomologist, geologist, naturalist, sound engineer, blind person, graphic designer obsessed with fonts, or physiotherapist can reveal things about the city that you might find worth noticing. At the very least they will be interesting. If you really love just listening to music or planning the rest of your day in your head as you travel around the city, you may not get much out of this book. But if you are sometimes bored in your wanderings, or are naturally curious, you may enjoy this book. The sound engineer's perception of noises as interesting is a perspective that could improve our mental health, as could connecting with nature while we have nothing better to do as we walk or bicycle along.
June 21, 2023
Interesting concept. The walkers are interesting. I found the storyteller’s lack of knowledge about some of the themes did not stop her from writing about them or making assumptions, which I found all the more annoying because she was supposed to be learning. That was the point.
Also, the way the reader of the audiobook said the word raccoon was inexplicably grating. I almost gave up right then.
Also, the way the reader of the audiobook said the word raccoon was inexplicably grating. I almost gave up right then.
February 19, 2014
I found this to be such an amazing book. It completely changed the way I see and think of the things around me as well as helping me understand how we can have such different perspectives from others and yet there is no right or wrong. This book is about enjoying each moment to the fullest and being mindful.
March 19, 2022
Gratuitous esoteric verbiage. Not a big fan -bit of a slog to read through. I like the general idea of the book - slowing down to pay attention and be present in the mundane aspects of life, but this book was a little much.
December 30, 2021
I came very close to giving this just two stars, but thought some of my reasons for that were too idiosyncratic, so I barely tipped it to 3.
This was a book club choice, and the premise intrigued me. Central idea: We see and sense so much less of the world than we could or ought to. To put flesh on those bones, Horowitz decided to invite various experts to take walks with her, either in her NYC home or where they lived, and show what we've been missing because we don't have their expertise. Among others, she chose a geologist, a typeface expert, a sound engineer, a blind woman, and insect and animal experts.
Her first chapter, on going around the block with her toddler son; and her last chapter, on going around with her dog, were actually the best. The rest suffered from varying quality and other problems, to wit:
1) This would have made an admirable longer article in a publication like The New Yorker. It suffered from having been expanded into a book.
2) I have read and written a lot about brain science, so much of this was well-traveled ground for me, and in some cases, I had read better explanations of such things as our ability to focus on a conversation in a noisy room, or inattention to objects we aren't expecting to see and our poor use of cues from hearing and smell.
3) As I said, the chapters varied widely in quality. The animal chapter should have been one of the most interesting, but wasn't. The typeface chapter could have been skipped altogether.
4) There were plenty of factoids of the kind you like to lift out and post on social media. But when you strung all that together, along with her essay prose, the sum was not as great as the parts.
This was a book club choice, and the premise intrigued me. Central idea: We see and sense so much less of the world than we could or ought to. To put flesh on those bones, Horowitz decided to invite various experts to take walks with her, either in her NYC home or where they lived, and show what we've been missing because we don't have their expertise. Among others, she chose a geologist, a typeface expert, a sound engineer, a blind woman, and insect and animal experts.
Her first chapter, on going around the block with her toddler son; and her last chapter, on going around with her dog, were actually the best. The rest suffered from varying quality and other problems, to wit:
1) This would have made an admirable longer article in a publication like The New Yorker. It suffered from having been expanded into a book.
2) I have read and written a lot about brain science, so much of this was well-traveled ground for me, and in some cases, I had read better explanations of such things as our ability to focus on a conversation in a noisy room, or inattention to objects we aren't expecting to see and our poor use of cues from hearing and smell.
3) As I said, the chapters varied widely in quality. The animal chapter should have been one of the most interesting, but wasn't. The typeface chapter could have been skipped altogether.
4) There were plenty of factoids of the kind you like to lift out and post on social media. But when you strung all that together, along with her essay prose, the sum was not as great as the parts.
August 17, 2024
I definitely found myself reading this one just to be finished with it. Not to say I didn’t enjoy the book; it was wholesome, packed with eclectic information, and encouraged a new way of experiencing the world by really attending to it. Horowitz weaved scientific information—sometimes too much of it—into the narrative of each of her walks with experts in typography, geology, urban sociology, insects, mammals, touch, sound and smell.
I, like many other readers, was disappointed to find out it wasn’t the same walk with different companions, but different walks sometimes in completely different cities. I was excited to see how the same space could be viewed as completely different over and over again, and unfortunately only the introduction and conclusion did so.
My favorite chapters by far were her walks with her son and Arlene Gordon, a blind resident of New York City.
I, like many other readers, was disappointed to find out it wasn’t the same walk with different companions, but different walks sometimes in completely different cities. I was excited to see how the same space could be viewed as completely different over and over again, and unfortunately only the introduction and conclusion did so.
My favorite chapters by far were her walks with her son and Arlene Gordon, a blind resident of New York City.
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