I really wanted to push myself to finish this since I'd been anticipating it for quite a while. Halfway through, I felt like I was forcing myself to get through it, skimming through pages, so I decided I could spend my time reading other books that engaged me.

Like many other reviewers, I thought this would be more of a self-help book. However, I'm not opposed to Odell more so reflecting on the "attention economy."

But this book reads more like a collection of disjointed research papers. I kept having hope we'd get more introspection from her by the third essay, but by that point, it wasn't worth it for me to find her voice throughout the heavy, heavy research she did.

There's no doubt that she's highly intelligent, but her writing was really inaccessible. I felt myself needing to take a mental break after every 4-5 pages since I had to reread sentences, checking my reading position and feeling exhausted seeing there were still 20 pages left of this essay. The quotes and excerpts she included didn't add much for me and it would 85% research and 15% her thoughts, which I wanted more of.

I actually quite enjoyed the first essay because I liked the more personal element. But I can't get myself to push through the rest of it to try to find the pockets of goodness that pop up every once in a while.