Thank you to NetGalley for the readers copy in exchange for a (late) review.
Let’s start with the strengths: On a technical level this book was well done.
I love the concept. Great title, good sources, and well written.
The rest: A bunch of cringey name dropping and a plethora of personal stories that felt way too long to the point I wondered if this should have just been a memoir?
Unfortunately it fell short and it required too much reading in between to find the few gems.

This book was well written and presented some interesting ideas on the subject of hanging out. As an introvert, some of the parts where the author waxed nostalgic about the joys of particular past experiences she has had while hanging out were not especially relatable to me. However, I did find the reading interesting, and expect this book will resonate more fully with many more extroverted readers out there.

I wholeheartedly agree with the premise of this book and enjoyed reading it, but it took me a very long time to get through. It felt like too much, like something I would have really enjoyed while locked in an English cottage during a harsh winter with no internet access, but not necessarily something I would put everything aside to read in my modern life. That is not to say I'm not better for reading it.

The phrase is ok is a surprisingly elusive term. McSweeney notes that Ok was first used in early 19th Century U.S. Terminology. A time when people played with alternative phrases and spellings. Ok, stood for All Correct. Newspapers would spread the expression and the spelling. The spread was easy with both English Language newspapers, colonization, and the invention of the internet by the United States. However, it is still hard to pinpoint its evolution, spread, and intention.

I enjoy reading these object lesson books. They read like writing prompts or, in this case, random musings. This one was a little thin but still an interesting read.

Delighted to highlighted this new release in “It’s About Time,” a longread about new titles that consider how best to spend our time outside of the hustle. In the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

“Hanging out is about daring to do nothing much and, even more than that, about daring to do it in the company of others”

Sheila Liming’s <i>Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time</i> deftly combines literary criticism, social commentary, and memoir to create a poignant reminder of what we’ve lost and the promise of what we can reclaim.

Our ability to hang out has been sharply curtailed by the pandemic. In each chapters, Liming reflects on a different form of hanging out—that is, spending time with others, often without a specific goal in mind—and offers insight into their social worth. At this point in the pandemic, when national “health” is calculated exclusively by economic productivity, Liming reminds us that the decidedly unproductive act of hanging out is just as, if not more, valuable a metric.

Liming’s read of texts from <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> to <i>Trainspotting</i> alongside her own experiences—like being an accordionist in an alt-country band or crashing a wedding—are engaging, insightful, and often very funny.

Sometimes nostalgic, <i>Hanging Out</i> still looks to the future and how hanging out can offer hope. I highly recommend finding time to hang out with <i>Hanging Out</i>. Liming reminds us both how to hang out and why we should.

Thanks to Melville House for the ARC!

The book takes on a rather wispy topic—the low-key ways that we spend time together—and manages to provide a fresh and introspective angle on the subject with each chapter: hanging out at parties, at work, and of course, on the internet. The book’s appearance, as the introduction acknowledges, comes at a time when our idea of what hanging out means has shifted, not necessarily pinned to the idea of occupying the same physical space. And time and capitalism and societal expectations have, especially in the U.S., elevated to the value of hanging out to a luxury not affordable by everyone, rather than as a common thread of being a human living a life.

The author relies on personal anecdotes to introduce most of these angles, though, which aren’t always relatable—she seems to have lived in or ventured to a lot more places than I have, know a lot more people in a lot more places that I do. There’s also a surprising lack of sociological theory in which she grounds her arguments. Robert Putman’s Bowling Alone seems like an obvious touchstone for any treatise on social circles, but it’s nowhere to be found here—nor, really, is any look at the dissolution of social structures, like churches and public schools, or even bowling leagues that Putnam mentions—that were once the arranged way we made hanging out possible.

But in spite of these absences I found the book to be an enjoyable read, mostly thanks to Liming’s grace with language. The book is nicely conversational, occasionally witty, and not laden with academic dryness. Liming has managed to create a book of substance out of a subject that hardly seems to merit it.

Thank you to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC!! ✨

This is a hard one to review. I love nonfiction. I especially love books that feed my favorite habits such as…hanging out.

Technically speaking, this book was well done. Great sources, informational, well written. I know that these kinds of books require a plethora of personal stories, and I have no problem with the logic of that.

For some reason, I just didn’t find her stories all that interesting. For example, her whole chapter on her famous friend and their “dinner parties” felt inevitable. I didn’t need 20-something pages to explain that true community probably doesn’t happen in front of a camera. Also, I’m not sure how many people struggle with friendships that are quite literally scripted.

I understand the intent of this book. Especially after the pandemic, we’ve all needed to relearn how to be together. It’s important to hang out in a meaningful, active way. Life is short; time is finite. I get it. But 200 pages dragged a bit.

This was an interesting read that made me want to invite a friend over to come hang. I enjoyed this book because it expanded my understanding of hanging out, leisure, and how to spend my time. It offered a lot of background and elements to reflect on.

A feminist writer and critic explores the idea of "hanging out" not just as aimless time-wasting but as an important act of community and resistance to our hyper-capitalized time. Mixing memoir, criticism, and sociology, Liming introduces a thoughtful framework for a generation who are re-evaluating basic assumptions about how we spend our time.