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Saving Time

Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

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Saving Time

Written by: Jenny Odell
Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
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About this listen

 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. Asian Creators Environment Management & Leadership Nature & Ecology Personal Success Popular Culture Science Social Sciences Conservation Business Socialism Capitalism
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There are some flashes of brilliant insight here and there but the majority of the book feels like Odell is overly reliant on quoting other people’s arguments.

Narration is solid enough, but this book feels cobbled together

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I couldn't figure this book out. I gave it about ½ way through chapter 4 and am going to return it after I write this review. It's possible that in print this is much better but as a listener I couldn't identify a theme. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I did try hard. Amongst more than a few quotes from dozens of random people I think the author was trying to make a point but the addition of so many "as noted by blah blah author in their 1973 article in the blah blah" I just couldn't figure out what she was trying to say. We're really going to quote people from Bloomberg or the Atlantic as is those are pinnacles of intelligent journalism and modern thought?

The narration was pretty good.

Stream of conscience

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