How To Do Nothing is one of the most important nonfiction releases of 2019, according to some reviews.
“An interesting and stimulating book that makes you reflect on the continuous inputs we are receiving from the attention economy,” said one of the reviews in goodreads.com.
In a review published in The New York Times, Jonah Engel Bromwich said author Jenny Odell “understands and acknowledges that doing nothing — by which she means taking time out of one’s day to engage in an activity without considering whether it’s productive — is not something that’s available to everyone.”
But her book “is least convincing when she suggests that meaningful political change would follow if the strategies she has adopted were taken up en masse. Though she acknowledges that she was lucky to be able to exercise the freedom to while away the hours in her favorite rose garden or to go bird-watching, Odell seems to disregard just how individualistic her strategies are,” said the review.
“She lives an artistic life, one that lends itself wonderfully to aesthetic expression but is less useful in the political realm,” it said.
