thus ends one of my longest reading journeys in goodreads. i started this in july of 2020 and ended it only today, this 4th of april 2021. i am almost sad that such a long voyage is now finished.

still, there are highlights. as befits all types of books of this calibre, there is a breadth of opinions and perspectives here. it would not be amiss if i say that some essays are more interesting than others and i have no doubt that it is from my own deficiencies that i took this long to even finish it. this book is a collection of a wide variety of intellectuals coming from separate fields coming together to talk about that one experience common to us all: consciousness. we have here physicists discoursing with philosophers and cognitive scientists debating with phenomenologists. it is a tour de force and an achievement of the human intellect to try and understand that which remains murky to us. as expected, some of the finer nuances escape my amateur mind—especially whenever those physicists draw out their formulas, of which there are quite more than i expected when i started this books—yet that does not detract from the effort altogether.