Saving Time by Jenny Odell

Saving Time by Jenny Odell

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The visionary author of How to Do Nothing returns to challenge the notion that 'time is money.' . . . Expect to feel changed by this radical way of seeing.--Esquire

One of the most important books I've read in my life.--Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Chicago Public Library, Electric Lit

In her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the attention economy to spend time in quiet contemplation. But how can we reclaim our time?

In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism.

This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time--inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales--that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility.

Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it--the way we experience time itself--and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can save time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.

Jenny Odell is an artist and writer who teaches at Stanford. She has worked as an artist-in-residence at sites like the San Francisco landfill, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department, and her work has been displayed all around the world.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593242704
ISBN 10	059324270X
Title	Saving Time
Author	Jenny Odell
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2023-03-07
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.