Reviews

A Sideways Look at Time by Jay Griffiths

conny_b's review against another edition

2.0

Fascinating topic, poorly handled. For someone who is angry about modern time, this book sure is fast and jam-packed with thousands of factoids. I wish the author had picked a handful of representative examples and had written slower-paced chapters around them, drawing conclusions as the book progresses. I would have really enjoyed that.

rimestock's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

The ideas argued in this book was thought-provoking and interesting, but I don't think I really vibed with the writing style much.

toniapeckover's review against another edition

3.0

A bit of a screed at times, and Griffiths has a chip about Western Christianity about a mile wide (understandable, but sometimes much), but I've also got four pages of notes from this book. Griffiths agility with words is pretty amazing. Nearly every page has some kind of witty wordplay on it and there are an equal amount of valuable insights about the nature of time and how our perception of it is rooted in culture. One I'll keep on the shelves.

"Would society be different if its profoundist models of time were not structured in past-to-future narrative at all, but if time were seen as an *unarrowed* thing - if, for example, the Bible began with the rhapsody of a psalm and ended with the sashay of the song of Solomon?"

ckeeve's review

3.0

Unique balance of incisive critical research and creative liberties. Griffiths analyzes Time as a socio-cultural construct, involving histories of the various methods through which time has been conceptualized and measured. There's a consistent thesis theorizing the ways in which Time has functioned as a tool of colonialism and Western modernity.