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  • Notes on a Nervous Planet

  • By: Matt Haig
  • Narrated by: Matt Haig
  • Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,826 ratings)
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Notes on a Nervous Planet

By: Matt Haig
Narrated by: Matt Haig
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Summary

The world is messing with our minds. Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected yet feel more alone. And we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index.

  • How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad?
  • How do we stay human in a technological world?
  • How do we feel happy when we are encouraged to be anxious?

After experiencing years of anxiety and panic attacks, these questions became urgent matters of life and death for Matt Haig. And he began to look for the link between what he felt and the world around him.

Notes on a Nervous Planet is a personal and vital look at how to feel happy, human and whole in the 21st century.

©2018 Matt Haig (P)2018 Canongate Books Ltd

Critic reviews

"Warm and wise. If the modern world is making you anxious, this is the perfect book for you." (Claudia Hammond, BBC Radio 4)

"Examines how the world infiltrates our minds, and how to cope with its manifold distractions." (Anita Sethi)

"Is the modern world doing our heads in? Matt Haig shares our fears and gives answers to the question from many different angles. An enthralling book." (Jo Brand)

What listeners say about Notes on a Nervous Planet

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Reasons looked inward, Notes looks back out again.

Honest and applicable life lessons from one of my favourite contemporary writers and thinkers.

I'd call Matt Haig 'a thinker'. As well as enjoying almost every adult and children's novel he's brought out, I can recognise my own life, thought processes and faults in his two non-fiction 'guides to life' as I think of them.

Reasons To Stay Alive was a bare-all look at one man's breakdown and recovery/lessons learned. Now Haig puts himself and us in the context of the wider world, society, the universe itself as he has us contemplate the meaning we give our modern lives, our obsessions with technology and social media, how we allow the influence of others to affect our own self-esteem and value.

Utterly relatable, I think most people would find value in reading this. Just to have someone tell you (in my case literally as the author narrates the Audible version I listened to) that I need to go to bed earlier, turn away from the phone more, see the bigger picture of my place as a rather small cog in a very much larger machine - it's that kick you need sometimes to look at your life and appreciate just what you really have.

As with the previous book, the short chapters and flitting from subject to subject worked for me. There is a connecting theme and flow, but it also feels very human and stream-of-consciousness, with lists (as a listener, I could hear them, rather than see them on a page, and would have liked to see them written down to savour a little more).

Haig says what we all need to hear, and I imagine many will nod along, as I did. He makes an affable reader, his material highly relevant to his audience, and teens through to pensioners will find something enlightening and emboldening here to unite us all.

With thanks to Nudge Books for providing a sample Audible copy.

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48 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

It doesn't get better!

I seldom write bad reviews since I buy books that I think I might like, but this one surprised me. I thought it would be about overcoming the challenges of the modern world but it turned out to be just an expose of those challenges. I sticked to the end since I've listened to books that were tedious in the beginning but got a lot better afterwards, but not this one! It just keep going and going in the same depressing monotonous tone with the same depressing monotonous thoughts. For a guy that suffered depression, for which I wholeheartedly sympathise, you'd think that he would not want to spread it, but this book was more depressing than any I have listened before, and the one I listened before that one was by Cormac McCarthy... It was full of misunderstood, misrepresented, or at best half true "facts" and theories. Very unscientific for all the works he quotes and refers to. Basically, it was 95% of ranting what's wrong with the modern world and about 5% (at the end of the rants, usually) about ways to try to minimize the damage. What I really didn't liked was that he made it look like everyone had his problems, which is completely untrue. He represent a miniscule portion of the populace, but his words will make you hypochondriac on his ideas that this and that is wrong with you. And, as a personal quirk, I hate when a chapter starts with a quote... It just bothers me for some reason, but I'd forgive it if the rest of the book's content was good. But in this case it just exacerbated my frustration.

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27 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Great Read

This is a stand alone book to read, but even better if read after reading Reasons to Stay Alive! I really enjoy books that are read by the authors, it somehow gives the book more credence, I would recommend both of these books, especially if you have suffered depression yourself or someone close to you has or has episodes of depression!

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26 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

not novel, not well structured

Reasonable food for thought, but only because collecting these ideas is always worthwhile. However, there was scarcely one idea in the book that I have not independently concluded in my own time, and I'm no expert. It is full of baseless armchair psychology. The focus on social media is tiresome. The quotes are meh. The sources seem to be just things the author googled, plus Sapiens and Why We Sleep. The concepts are structured in a chaotic fashion (not improved by the author saying this was deliberate in order to mirror chaos in the world...). It felt like eavesdropping on the author's therapeutic thought journal, and no doubt it was therapeutic to write. It just wasn't especially enjoyable to listen to. Performance was fine

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23 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic food for thought

I personally find Matt Haig's philosophy on life one that I can really get on board with. I have enjoyed listening to this book whilst working and it's a gentle reminder to just "be", to enjoy life and let go of the guilt and stress associated with modern life. 5*

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14 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Helpful

Matt Haig is a Wonderful writer who have had the bravery to potrtray anxiety and deppression, in a way that doesnt give you anxiety nor make you Sad. Its eye opening, it helps to calm you in days that are overfilled with things. It helps you see the Worth in small things. Important things.

I Just really loved this book

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10 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Kind hearted but flimsy self-help

Like a book made of Facebook memes or instagram inspirational quotes. Well meaning, certainly, but lacks depth, analysis or criticality. Matt Haig is most definitely invested and cares very much about his subject - I took a lot from ‘reasons to stay alive’ - but this is all surface and all well trodden ground in the social media age.

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8 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Some nice things we all know we need to hear

A good read. Not exactly a page turner. But a good, nice, and short book.

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7 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Like lists? Lists of things and more lists...

There is some great information in this book but it is, unfortunately, interspersed between annoying lists. At one point I skipped through a Fight Club style repitition of the same rule.
1. Do not compare yourself to other people.
2. Do not compare yourself to other people.
3. Do not compare yourself to other people.
4. Do not...

Oh dear. Seriously?
He could have stopped at 3 and made his point. after hearing "Six..." I just gave up and skipped along a bit until I could hear he'd finished.

As a book about anxiety, repeating very long lists of things he does online that make him anxious (in an anxious voice) doesn't do much to help the situation. I already know that the news makes me anxious so providing lists upon lists just makes it worse.

If you're happy to use your skip button as you listen then you may find some very helpful advice and an experienced perspective. But I think a lot of this book is filler around some basic advice for unplugging from the internet and getting back to earth with the way you live your life.

I have finished it but the stupidly long and annoyingly repetitive lists left me frustrated and not sure I wanted to continue.

It only gets tougher.
'Imagine if we called people human beings instead of Nationality...'
Not French. Not English. Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that. Get the point? But wait... he hasn't finished yet...
Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that....
Yes I know you've grasped the wider point about not labelling people but he needs to give all the labels... He's not done yet.

Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that. Not... good grief. skip 20 seconds and he's still going. Why would anyone write so much superfluous fluff? The bottom two thirds of this extensive list don't add anything to the point.

Oddly, some of the later. numbered lists are useful but he quickly goes back to this odd listing and has you twitching nervously for the skip button at every 'and...or". He mentions in the book that he was behind his deadline so I suspect that a lot of this is deliberate filler to increase the word count for what would have been an excellent couple of blog posts rather than a full book.

Why say 'Interested in sports, maths, arts and science' for example, when you can say 'Interested in sports. Interested in maths. Interested in arts. Interested in science...' and bump up the word count for the expectant publisher at the expense of the poor sod who bought the book.

Not this. Not that. Not this. Not that...

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6 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable, real and informative.

I certainly feel I've gained something from listening to Matt's book. Not all of it was relevant to me because I'm not hugely into social media. However the tips of how to keep yourself well are brilliant.

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6 people found this helpful