Review by Booklist Review
In 2015, Zomorodi challenged listeners to her podcast and radio show, Note to Self, to rediscover the lost art of boredom by assessing and altering their relationship to technology and devices which mostly meant unplugging them to spark creativity. Unexpectedly, thousands of listeners took the challenge, and although they didn't all instantly turn into creative geniuses, the majority of them felt a resulting positive impact. Bored and Brilliant relates many of the challenge-takers' experiences and instructs readers in completing the challenge themselves. Each section presents a task, like deleting your biggest time-suck app, and includes Zamorodi's interviews with experts in related fields, like psychology and gaming. Thus Zamorodi shows the importance of each task while also making the case for doing nothing. It all adds up to a breezy and engaging book that is a little philosophy and a lot self-help. This could do for unplugging what Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014) did for decluttering.--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Zomorodi, host of the WNYC podcast Note to Self, issues a paradoxically lively treatise on the benefits of boredom. In 2015 she asked her listeners to rethink their relationship to their digital devices, issuing a week-long challenge to reclaim time to "space out" and embrace boredom as a productive state of mind. Feedback from the 20,000 participants in the challenge is featured here, as well as Zomorodi's illuminating discussion of boredom's history as a concept. She cites research by social scientists and psychologists throughout in support of her belief that unplugging, disconnecting, and getting "bored" fosters creativity. Zomorodi outlines a reasonable, easily implemented program for improving "your capacity for boredom," consisisting of seven steps. The first six are: (1) track your digital habits, (2) eschew media while walking or driving, (3) have a day when you don't take any pictures, (4) delete the app you think you can't live without, (5) take a "fakecation" (go to the office but do not reply to electronic messages), and (6) choose one thing in your environment to observe in depth. Step seven consists of advice on putting your newfound sense of boredom to work. Zomorodi's engaging and provocative presentation will appeal to her established fans and also draw new ones. Agent: Stuart Krichevsky, Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
