Book Review: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris

I can across this book in episode #420 of the Tim Ferriss Show – “Books I’ve Loved — Matt Mullenweg”. I ended up giving the book 3/5 stars, but that is not meant to mean it was a bad book – I don’t think this type of abstract thinking would be interesting to everyone. I borrow this book from the library, but am interested in re-reading it, as I don’t think I took all of it in. Although the book is really short, I think reading it in smaller chunks may have benefit, as you’ll be able to think about each section a bit more.

Below is the excerpt of the podcast interview that made me take the dive into this book in the event it might spark some interest with others.

The second, which is also a fairly fairly new book, is called Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. It’s by Annaka Harris, and this is what they call the hard problem. What is consciousness? Where does it come from? Who is… Who’s listening to me talk right now and who is it that listens to you talk to yourself? All of these questions I find endlessly fascinating and is an area of in some ways a lot of study and in some ways much less than you would expect. So this was a very short book. You can actually get through it in just an hour or two. So I feel actually even better recommending it because it packed a huge amount of information and value into a very kind of tidy package. I always love when books are just as long as they need to be and no longer. So, this will definitely give you lots to talk about at parties or with friends. And I find just, it’s good from a philosophical point of view to sometimes think about and ponder these bigger questions.

https://tim.blog/2020/05/13/matt-mullenweg-book-recommendations-transcript/