An odd little book. My reason for reading it was not terribly well aligned with its own purpose, so my relative indifference to it should not be taken too seriously. The author is an experimental composer, seemingly fairly well known in her particular niche, who has spent a lifetime thinking about listening. I heard about it because another book that I read quoted some of this author’s insights, and I decided to read it for myself. Rather less of the book than I had hoped is comprised of said insights, however, and rather more is devoted to outlining the listening-based meditative practice after which the book is named. It seems like it could be a useful practice, if you are in the market for such a thing, but I am not. I think the book would be improved if more space was devoted to explanation, and if the fragments out of which much of the book is built were brought together into a clearer whole. And, while I certainly hope that everyone is able to find paths to wisdom and solace and good living that work for them, I do find the sensibility that might broadly be labelled “New Age” to be a bit hard to take, and there were at least hints of that here in amidst the other spiritual and intellectual and meditative traditions that inform the book. Anyway, even if they did end up being a minority of the book, I still appreciate the author’s insights into listening and attention, and there were also a couple of short personal essays by other people towards the end of the book that weren’t necessarily relevant to my narrow purpose but were certainly interesting.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.