We discussed the Travel books we had read in June, which covered interesting places to visit in Derbyshire, Britain in general and a Bill Bryson – Down Under which covered Australia. Two other interesting books emerged; Notes on a Nervous Planet – Matt Haig – Looks at how to stay sane in an ever increasingly crazy, technological world. How our addiction to modern technology is making us anxious and affecting the quality of life we lead. There is a lot I agree with in this book, we spend too much time on computers and mobile phones, spend too much money on ‘stuff’ we don’t really need, spend too much time on social media, compare ourselves to others (enhanced digital retouched photos) which is totally unrealistic, spend too much time at work, we chase bigger and better goals, the latest holiday, a new car, a bigger house but for what? We are being propelled towards being a species of stressed and anxious humans but why? We are losing what it means to be human His book is a thought-provoking insight into present day life He is not anti-technology but looks at the ways in which it is harming us as a species and how we need, collectively to look at how we need to address this and change our behaviours. He predicts a very scary future if we continue the way we do.
Another book was Peter May’s LOCKDOWN – he wrote the book in 2005 but could not get it published until after he had his other books published. He predicted everything that has happened over the C19 pandemic. The difference was that the outbreak is confined to London and everyone is corralled behind the M25. However, he obviously could not predict the scale of what we are having to deal with today.
Because the Library was closed, we have not been able to pick up a set book to read during July so the suggestion was for another Classic book from our personal bookshelf. I will report on these in our August Reading Group notes which I will send out to members at the beginning of August.
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