Publication Date: Out Today!!!
Formats: Hardback & Ebook
Price: Hb £20.00/ Ebook £7.59
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
I would like to say a huge thank you to Nikki Griffiths for organising such an intriguing and fascinating blog tour for this unique book. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Melville House Publishing for allowing me to read and review a physical proof copy of this book. I would also like to say thank you to the author for making me think about my social interactions with my friends and people in general and how hanging out has become put to the back burner a bit and that this break or a chance to connect and relax which would mean we gain something and make us feel ready to work, but instead we are losing out due to our work load becoming increasingly more overwhelming and that we have structured our time to do less relaxing or hanging out. Anyway before I basically summarise the whole book 😂, shall we head to the blurb and find out what it’s all about.
Almost every day it seems that out 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 a smart and funny 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.
This is one book that made me think about a lot of things with regarding “hanging out”. Finding time away from work, finding time to talk with one another. The author talks about her experiences with hanging out in different ways from her past, one in which I have never done and would be terrified in doing alone and well not really what I would call hanging out in a fun way, but that’s my personal point of view and I admire her strength in not only enjoying but actually realising the dangers in what she had been doing versus the reality in which there are nice people out there it’s just challenging what we assumed would happen.
I loved the little snippets we get of people the author has met and how through hanging out with them gained her a unique view on relationships that other people are missing out on. Covid really messed things up big time with socialising and it’s only relatively recently that people have become a bit more aware and more concerned about what used to be natural to us. With technology which is great in providing us the use of phones, laptops and computers in helping us find and locate friends who may not be in the same country or even connect us with people we wouldn’t normally connect with face to face. It has come up for some people some misgivings on whether tech development has caused more harm than good.
The author looks into families with phones and how the use of it has made dinner interactions with each other more dysfunctional and to her catastrophic for language and the use of talking which has impacts on how to proceed in later life in jobs and wanting to build a career. For me I at times found myself disagreeing but at others understanding where she comes from. I don’t have the answers and definitely know my opinion on the matter will be different to everyone else’s views. For me though tech has helped me be able to communicate more and be more social than I ever could, I find I can think about what I am saying rather than have someone be frustrated in front of me as I tangle myself up in knots trying to say what I mean.
I read this from cover to cover enthralled. It looks at how over time we have all become obsessed with working and leaving the hanging out part as a somewhat faded out part. Due to technological advances and the impact this has had on the younger generation especially the ones growing up now, there seems to be less communication between teenagers as in face to face, there’s now another language one that’s based online, on phones and text speak.
Also it asks us how families have changed over time from sitting round the table and discussing the day to separate eating times due to busy schedules as in parents working later and kids wanting time in their rooms. All this is interesting and fascinating and leaves you wondering what needs to change and how? I am not sure what is right but reading this book it’s made me look at my family and what we did and how that’s shaped my life and how I talk with other people.
What I am trying to say is that, though I do find some of the authors views not what I would agree with, I do admit that I loved and found her anecdotes about her life or her friends lives incredibly fascinating and interesting. I just think that socialising is a fluid thing and that people socialise in different ways. Personally I do love hanging out but I do and will find it hard to go out for more than say a couple of hours. I love spending time with my head in a book, or being out with my mates at a restaurant or at work during break. It’s not that I disagree with the author and I found the book incredibly interesting and fascinating and I did make some notes of what I could change to make my work life balance much more even, but I wasn’t convinced in some of the arguments or points she made. But this is just my opinion, and I would highly recommend this book to anyone. It definitely made me think and love the anecdotes and memories which the author uses to illustrate her points.
Rating: 4 🌟s with a large ☕️ and a large 🍰
Author’s Blurb:
Sheila Liming is an associate professor at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, where she teaches classes on literature, media, and writing. She is the author of two books, What a Library Means to a Woman and Office, and the editor of a new edition of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Her essays have appeared in venues like The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, and The Point.
I hope you have found my review of this interesting and fascinating book gripping enough that you want a copy for yourself. If you are interested you can find this in any independent store, Waterstones and of course on Amazon. I will leave you now to say Happy Reading and see you soon!!!
Zoe's Book Nook 