Hanging Out by Sheila Liming blog tour

Today is my turn on the blog tour for Hanging Out by Sheila Liming, non fiction.

For my stop I have my review.

Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time by Sheila Liming
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 4 days

Pages - 224

Publisher - Melville House

Source - Review copy

Blurb from Goodreads

A smart and funny manifesto about the simple art of hanging out and how our collective social experiences can be transformed into acts of resistance and solidarity, from a brilliant young feminist critic.

Almost every day it seems that our 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 adult, 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 an intelligent 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.



My Review

A non fiction memoir style book centred around Liming's life stories centering around hanging out, socialising, social media, parties, the internet. I have taken to reading a bit more non fiction, celebs, mental health, healthcare stories and this one structures and reads different from them all.

Some of the chapters are almost essay like in the structure, approach or theme. She examines the way hanging out has changed, societal pressures - how not having say Facebook can find you excluded from parties/social events when they are advertised/invites via that medium. How it used to be, drop in notes at dookits and some of her own personal stories/experiences woven in.

We have some name dropping, dabbles with fame, philosophical chat. She also pulls reference from books/movies to back up or strengthen some of her own musing/findings.

Like I say its quite different to some of the non fictions I have read, some of the chapters I could read in one go, others I needed to dip in and out of. I have taken a few notes of some of the stories so I can check them out. She makes you reconsider how you hang about and ways to change your currents, putting the phone down, the online interactions and bringing back face to face. It is an interesting read, different.


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