Silence: In the Age of Noise Hardcover – November 21, 2017

Erling Kagge may be the ultimate challenge-seeker. According to the book’s jacket, Kagge is the first man to have completed the Three Poles Challenge on foot—the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Mount Everest. Wow! I would submit that his greatest challenge however, was the decision to write a book about silence.He obviously experienced a lot of silence when he trekked across Antarctica alone for 50 days. But this isn’t a book about the exploration of remote places. This is a book about the silence within, the kind of silence that is found on a crowded subway or a barren mountaintop. In fact, according to Kagge, you have to find it on the crowded subway. That is life. And that is when you need it most.I completely agree. I lived in China for nine years. Having grown up in a small town in rural America and lived most of my adult life in a house that sat a few thousand meters from its nearest neighbor, I moved to Beijing, a city of 22 million, where personal space is, by necessity, simply non-existent. If you can’t get used to the idea of your face being mere inches away from the face of the stranger standing next to you on a crowded subway, you won’t survive.Looking back, however, learning to live without personal space was more a process of personal liberation than an accommodation to my new reality. Never in my sixty-three years have I learned more about myself or become more comfortable in my own skin.The book is a chronicle of philosophy on the topic of silence. But rather than just summarizing that discussion, Kagge applies it to everything from exploring the underground world of New York City to the appreciation of art and music.Which is pretty bold, when you think about it. He could sell a lot of books merely sharing some of his unusual and exotic tales of adventure. But he doesn’t do that here. He is wagering this book on his ability to share himself at the most intimate level.And I think he is successful. This is a very good book by a very intriguing individual. Silence, as Kagge points out, is all about listening-to self, the people you love, and the world around you. That’s where you find joy and purpose.

This book begins for me at chapter two. Continues through chapter four and then picks up again in a couple of times later. Except for these rewarding places, it's rarely about silence. It's about quietness, or breaks in noise, or pauses, or an awe in some experience. This is a remarkable man. To walk alone to the south pole, and reach the north pole too and the top of Everest, and to walk across the under of New York as well as on top of it presents a rich and driving and hungry spirit that wants to get it all, and in his exploration has been blessed with subtle and spiritually infinite experiences.In this book, aside from those chapters that describe his experiences, in which you can imagine you sense what he experienced as silence, there are random visits with philosophers and artists and others who've left references to silence. He says in the beginning that he decided to write a book about silence. There is some writing like that here but much of it comes as an intellectual effort more than the touch of serenity a book with this title appears to offer. As if this is carried by the decision to write a book as much as by what was in him needing to get out. Still, those chapters, and I would add numbers 17 and 19, are well worth reading.Obviously, these remarks are not a book review, only one person's experience with a worthwhile effort by an extraordinary man. Perhaps any effort such as this is limited. As he said, he's never experienced absolute silence. Any creature with ears cannot. But the deep need for peace draws us to the idea of, the wish for tranquility. Which can be visited. Perhaps stillness is closer to what can be tasted.It's the experiencing of it that best carries it, not the literary or philosophical references on the subject. They come as filler. For me, A Book Of Silence, by Sara Maitland was the real book about silence. And when she departs from her thrilling transfiguring experiences on the moor into literature, she too, makes too long a book. But I highly recommend her work for anyone yearning for stillness.I think shorter books on this could leave us with more of silence. "Only simple and quiet words will ripen of themselves." From the Tau, a very short book.

We live in a busy world. It's loud, it's chaotic, and it's a non-stop race in one of a million different ways. Everything is connected--and while that proves convenient at times, other times that connectivity thanks to technology creates a huge gap in our lives. I'm a hiker--and I adore the opportunities to go on remote hikes and not encounter other people... as a people person that may seem odd, but it was my way to "get away" and really clear my head. Ironically, I used to hike with any of a number of playlists going, letting the music motivate me. I haven't listened to music on a hike in years.Around the time I gave up on music during hikes and walks, I was turned onto minimalism. While minimalism and silence may not go hand-in-hand, they are both ideas and concepts that have come on with a maturity and better understanding of what is important in the world. I find myself now teaching my daughters about the importance of little things, and how big they can seem and how much we can learn. Looking at two blades of grass on the surface sounds boring, but when you get down to the details it is fascinating. Silence is the same.This book was recommended by my father who is a wise 68. He is one of the wisest people I know--so I bought the book and read it last week. It's a potentially quick read, but that's dangerous. A book like this needs to be taken slowly and digested. Philosophical at it's core, you need to allow yourself the time to really soak up what Kagge is saying... if you can do that, you'll be better for it. You'll appreciate things you never considered before, and life will be richer.

This book, disappointingly, reads like a bound collection of not-hugely-insightful blog posts that is filled out, even at its brief length, with the inessential. It does have its moments, and in particular some of the photography is quite evocative, but let's face it: it's not at all deep, and you didn't buy this book for the pictures anyway."Silence" arrives alongside a glut of miniature volumes that would be Profound, offered by the likes of Alain de Botton, and generally stashed by the checkout counter in physical bookstores to afford impulse purchase. I'm afraid it won't help you think about silence, solitude and emptiness any more than, say, Werner Herzog's journal of a walk across snowbound Europe, and left me at least with the slightly soiled feeling of having been successfully taken in by a marketing machine consecrated to substituting the superficial appearance of profundity for the real thing.

This book is a series of short essays around the theme of silence. Pascal once said, and the quote is to be found in this book, “the problem with man is that his inability to sit in a room in silence for more than 15 minutes“ or something along those lines. What I liked about this book is it it made me think about how much I sometimes crave silence, particularly in the world that is becoming more obsessed by sound and noise all the time. Once upon a time your grandparents might hear Beethoven‘s fifth once in their life, now I can access it every day on a YouTube video on my phone for free. And perhaps in that we lose something. One of the things I truly love is going for a walk, perhaps not to the South Pole like the author, but you can still find your own silence and peace in nature which allows your mind to become free and untethered. And that’s what I got from this book, this book is short but quite profound and philosophical look at why we should strive for more silence in our lives. The audiobook also features sound effects that play on your ears. It made the listen even more rewarding. I also liked the description that sound is movement in air, that obviously we detect with our ears.

An absolute gift ... literally - I bought it for myself the day after Christmas . A much needed gem of thought provoking ideas . I crave silence , I think we all do , subliminally . So re-assuring to read thoughts which so echo my own. Read and re- read .. often.

I wanted to read about other peoples opinion on and experience of the power of silence. This book is not about this, it’s more to do with the authors extensive adventures around the world.The book itself is well written, but I was reading it for the wrong reasons, it’s more to do with adventure than silence.

This book is so simple - and yet so profound.What we seek in busyness can only be found in silence. In silence we face the ultimate truth about ourselves, God and the universeI will re-read this many times