This was an interesting book and I liked the exercises you can do and it explains the level of effort required for each one. It has certainly made me look out of the window more when on the train as opposed to reading or looking at my phone.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a honest review.

In our busy world, this book caught my eye....how much do people notice now? Most of the time people are on their phones, headphones on, looking down. Why do we no longer look around and notice what we have?

This book challenges modern society to put down their phones, stop looking at their feet and look up, look around, notice new things.

I really enjoyed browsing through this book- I admit I didn't read every challenge but I did read the headings and chose ones I thought I could do- the handy difficulty levels at the beginning help to guide you. I figured I would start with one eye challenges and move up through 2 and 3 eye challenges. I could then graduate to the 4 eye challenges.

These are thought provoking challenges asking you to notice things, pay attention or look for new things. It starts simply with a scavenger hunt and progresses to writing letters to strangers and sitting silently on your own.

The layout of the book is easy to use and you can flip between chapters and challenges quite easily.
I will be trying some more throughout the year and will hopefully become better at the art of noticing!

I wouldn't buy this for my library as it is a primary school but I do think I would add it to a gift list for a couple of friends who could really benefit from slowing down and taking time for the world around them.

I should really avoid self-improvement books because they often state the obvious and just annoy me. This was no exception. Written by a city dwelling American man with a busy lifestyle, it had little relevance to me and my life. Unfortunately, I do not have close access to art galleries, museums, etc, not living near a big city. Not many of the exercises took my interest, and some of them were phrased in an annoyingly vague way, e.g. make an inventory of - things you touch; / all your possessions"! and were not always relevant to the examples he gives. "Noticing things" is just another way of saying mindfulness, and there are better books out there on this subject.
Finally, I do not think you can go around photographing or filming people without permission!

I didn't know I needed this book until I experienced it.

One of the quotes cited at the start of the book from economist Herb Simon warns: "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". Given that quote is from 1971, imagine what Herb must be thinking now.

The 130 exercises given in the book (I have so far completed approximately 20 of these and look forward to the remainder) aim to provide "an escape from the cult of productivity and efficiency" by encouraging the reader to be more curious without the need to be so eternally (and often unnecessarily) busy. It makes the point that as individuals we might want to look back on a life of discovery, rather than an existence that requires items to be ticked off a list. The exercises are ranked in terms of difficulty, with one eye representing a fairly straightforward task that anyone can do anytime and at the other end of the spectrum, four eyes indicate an advanced noticing task that might take a bit of planning. The tasks are not given in that order in the book, so you can dip in and out as you please without the need to be too linear about it.

Following discussions in our house about the constant use of technology and the corresponding lack of focus we tend to have in relation to our immediate surroundings (checking the phone while walking, allowing Google to remember things for us, etc) this book allowed me to think about some ways of managing those issues, or at least taking a time-out from them. It was a breath of fresh air.

The book is one I will certainly be purchasing for friends.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Random House, Ebury Publishing and Rob Walker for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.