Figuring
Reviews
One of my favorite books I’ve ever read. Absolutely beautifully written — I had to have a dictionary next to me for the first quarter of the book, looking up words every page — but you eventually develop an understanding of the way Popova writes and get in a groove. She says simple sentiments in the most beautifully convoluted ways that can take a minute to decode and digest but are so rich and can be heart wrenching. It hurt my brain in the best way. It was an absolutely vivid history book chronicling the lives of scientists, writers, artists, way-pavers from the 1600’s all the way through the 1960’s. It showed how they pushed boundaries or were radicals in their fields, showed how their lives intersected and their special and intimate friendships / relationships with each other. It was such a special book and as soon as I finished it, I started it again (on audio book this time, free on Spotify if you have it ;) )
this book will continue to change my life for the foreseeable future
this one was a long one, but way more captivating than i anticipated. had no idea what the book was gonna be about or the premise of it but was not upset by it. made me want to continue writing and putting more effort into letters and also reaffirmed my belief that everything is connected, which i'll welcome any day. there were some parts that got a bit too descriptive, off the tracks, to the point of irrelevancy and for that i'm docking a star.
read this book!!!!
incredibly and beautifully written, and quite informative. the history compelled and combined in this book, opened my eyes to so many outlets.
This book has my heart. Maria has my heart. I read about 20-30 books a year only, and this one was so deep and worth it, that ive stopped caring about my target, by the sheer depth of and beauty of the words that took me to the lives of all these exemplary men and mostly women!!! Wow. Wish i could give it 100 stars.
Maria Popova is the deity of meaning—in all its guises. She is a true guiding light of our time (and of all times?) Nothing I’ve read before has so well synthesised mathematics, poetry, cosmology, invention, nature, creativity and love. She dives deep into it all and helps us to understand how it all fits together, how we’re all connected. Brilliant, and needed.
This was a really nice read. I actually have little background with Fuller, Dickinson, Thoreau, and the other cast of characters in this book, so I found it pleasant to dive into their lives. What I love most about Popova's writing is how she dips in and out of different strands of time, making a cohesive whole that was great to read.
Highlights
the journey of inquiry is not linear; it involves failures, revisions, and collaborations
We navigate the unknown frontiers of the social universe through a sextant of existing relationships-nearly every new person we meet is within only a few degrees of separation from someone we already know. But every once in a while, pure chance intercedes to remind us that whatever structures of control we may put into place, however much we may mistake the illusion of choice for the |fact of choice, randomness is the reigning monarch of the universe.
No one ever knows, nor therefore has grounds to judge, what goes on between two people, often not even the people themselves, half-opaque as we are to ourselves. One thing is certain: The quotient of inti- macy cannot be contained in a label like “Uranian”—or “queer,” or whatever comes next. The human heart is an ancient beast that oars and purrs with the same passions, whatever labels we may give them. We are so anxious to classify and categorize, both nature and human nature. It is a beautiful impulse—to contain the infinite in the finite, to wrest order from the chaos, to construct a foothold so we may climb toward higher truth. It is also a limiting one, for in naming things we often come to mistake the names for the things themselves. The labels we give to the loves of which we are capable—varied and vigorously transfigured from one kind into another and back again—can't begin to contain the complexity of feeling that can flow between two hearts and the bodies that contain them.
This book appears on the shelf acquired
This book appears on the shelf Wishlist
This book appears on the shelf Tbr no fiction
