Hanging Out
The Radical Power of Killing Time
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A smart and empowering book about the simple art of hanging out ... and of taking back our social lives from the deadening while of contemporary life
‘Hanging out is about daring to do nothing much and, even more than that, about daring to do it in the company of others.’
Almost every day it seems that our world becomes more fractured, more digital, and more chaotic. Sheila Liming has the answer: we need to hang out more.
Starting with the assumption that play is to children as hanging out is to adults, Liming makes a brilliant case for the necessity of unstructured social time as a key element of our cultural vitality. The book asks questions like what is hanging out? why is it important? why do we do it? how do we do it? and examines the various ways we hang out – in groups, online, at parties, at work.
Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time makes an intelligent case for the importance of this most casual of social structures, and shows us how just getting together can be a potent act of resistance all on its own.
For fans of Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.
‘More books about hanging out, less about productivity please. Sheila Liming sees the gap in our thinking about time, and the true worth in spending it in an unstructured fashion with members of our community…’ —Literary Hub
‘A meditation on the value of spending idle time with friends, family, and strangers.’ —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Champlain College writing professor Liming (What a Library Means to a Woman) surveys in this erudite if meandering meditation "the many ways in which hanging out happens in contemporary culture" and encourages readers to do more of it in real life. Drawing largely from her own personal experiences with a smattering of references to literature, psychology, neuroscience, and sociology, Liming documents various places where people get together—such as dinner parties, academic conferences, musical jam sessions, and on social media—and discusses the degree to which they foster "connection, intimacy, and meaning." Though Liming's observational and storytelling skills shine, her examples often undermine the book's prescriptive message by dwelling on awkward and unsatisfactory experiences; for example, the chapter on dinner parties opens with an account of the time the chancellor of North Dakota's university system ruined Liming's "dream dinner party" by eating filet mignon in front of a vegan guest of honor and leaving Liming and her husband to pay his $200 bill. Elsewhere, a chapter about television and contemporary social life gets sidetracked by an anecdote about filming episodes of a friend's reality TV show. This is a mixed bag.
