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Noticing

How we Attend to the World and Each Other

Noticing cover

Description

What does it mean to 'notice' something? To really see it. In his exhilarating quest to help us notice better, Ziyad Marar poses a deceptively simple question: 'what are you good at noticing?' In the process of 'noticing what we notice' we re-attune to questions of perception, orientation, and above all, attention: How do we walk the wrong way down the street without being aware of it? What is happening in us when our eyes pass unseeing over a familiar face in a crowded restaurant? Are we looking up into the sky, or down at the ground? And when we notice what we notice, and what we overlook, what do we learn about ourselves?

In a triple corkscrew of philosophy, psychology and art, particularly literature, Marar unwinds the impenetrable tangles of noticing in a world replete with distractions, interruptions and, at times, horror. Invisible gorillas, con artists and magicians are among the unlikely assistants enlisted in the task of trying to work out not just what noticing is, but what it could be; a practice of deeply minded attention, of thoughtful witnessing. In the end, our noticing is tied up with the very core of our humanity – the capacity to connect, to care, to attend to others and the world.

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Table of Contents

Preamble
Chapter 1 – What is noticing?
Chapter 2 – What are you good at noticing?
Chapter 3 – On mixed motives and self-deception
Chapter 4 – The attention merchants
Chapter 5 – The morality and politics of noticing
Chapter 6 – Learning from Literature – Nabokov vs Eliot
Chapter 7 – Opening your mind

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 04 Sep 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Pages 264
ISBN 9781350376250
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Ziyad Marar

Ziyad Marar is the author of Intimacy (2014), Dece…

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