tonyreadsbooks 's review for:

How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

2.0

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In theory I should’ve enjoyed this book. I am always interested by critiques of capitalism and culture. This book does deliver a little bit of these critiques. However it also has a lot of long passages that are dedicated to birdwatching as well as analyzing contemporary art. I find it difficult to categorize this book because it is part self-help, part social critique, part memoir, and part art analysis. This book doesn’t know what it wants to be and while you could argue that this is the entire point of the book, it doesn’t make it any less annoying to read. Many sections of this book show promise but are quickly ruined by birdwatching passages. I wish that the author would’ve written a much more focused book on this topic rather than a collection of essays that are vaguely related. Additionally, the self-help aspects of this book are shallow and do not provide systemic solutions. Taking a step back and paying attention to the world around us is all fun and stuff except not everyone has the privilege to do so. Funnily enough, the author acknowledges this but just moves on from this potential critique without properly countering it. Despite all of my frustration I did not hate this book. I quite enjoyed the history/social studies aspects of it and I wish the entire book was like that. Instead, I got a book that’s 20% about birds. If I wanted a degree in ornithology, I would’ve went to college. Final rating: 2/5.