Figuring - Maria Papova

A tough listen, would have probably been easier if I read. I am not great at listening and the back and forth I did on Audible with this book, starkly highlighted how bad I was at listening.

The book itself is an ode to the brain, hers especially. The connects she makes is insanely widespread and large and completely relevant. Keeping up with her was a task, even for a seasoned (in years) over-reader and over-thinker like me.

She does three things really well in the book:

1. I had no idea that the people we read about as separate famous entities in recent history (anything that is not pre-history is recent to me) were deeply connected to each other in many ways. Hawthorne & Melville; Barrett & Browning; Emerson & Fuller and many more.

2. The life of many of the brilliant people (science and literature) were so much out of the ordinary, well, most of the time anyway. Like Kepler while trying to establish some incredible scientific truths was fighting a battle to save his mother from being tried as a witch! It was all because he wrote a science fiction book (Somnium), today he is known as the father of science fiction writing. Because of his brave battle with the courts, burning 'witches' was banned.

3. The way science and literature blended and how the greats learned and took giant leaps off each other's work/thinking was just mesmerising to listen to - 'elevating rather than catering to the existing thought'.

Every single person she talks and writes about were ahead of their times and just did not fit into mainstream thought or action. When you look at it from today's lens, the struggle seems so unnecessary - being a woman, being gay, going against the tenets of religion/existing beliefs of science and the world, etc. We are more tolerant today, aren't we? Joke.

if you are like me, unless you take copious amount of notes you will not be able to process all the data and the insights in one read. I stopped after a while and just listened not worrying about retaining or remembering the fascinating connections she made.

Her blog apparently does what this book did, so maybe that would be something you might want to try first. I dove into the deep end and came out mad impressed.

It took her 12 years.