jenny odell

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Finished: Jenny Odell’s How to do Nothing. 2/5⭐️

What an absolute shitshow of a book. I went in with great expectations. The first chapter gave me even greater expectations. So much so that even before I was done with that chapter, I had ordered a physical copy of the book from Half Price Books for future reference and rereading.

It went downhill from there.

I’ve often heard that if California were an independent economy, it would be the sixth or seventh largest in the world.

Now I understand why that statement makes a lot of sense. Just like all other economies in the world, the people who belong there are often so Nationalistic and narrow minded that their thinking starts and ends with that economy. It just so happens that that economy more often than not coincides with a country.

The same is true for California. The author wouldn’t be bothered to give an international example with a gun to their head. Yes, at the outset of the book there were references to European philosophers and places. But that’s all foil. Once you are invested in the book, the author can’t get their head out of California’s ass.

So much so that the grand idea – how to resist the attention economy and do something structured as a means of protest against it – is completely lost in example after example of how fucking amazing California’s people, ecology, redwoods, and birds are.

Oh. My. God. The fucking birding. We get it. You’re into birding. Shut up about it.

No, the author just keeps dragging you through tired metaphor after tired metaphor about birding and how fucking great it is.

Seriously Jenny, get a life.

Key takeaway from this rant – don’t waste your time, energy, mind, and effort on this book. If you are desperate to know what’s in it, read the article the author has based this book on. It’ll probably have just the same amount of drivel in a concise form.

2/5 ⭐️ because while the book is a waste of space, it’s got a nice set of references which can feed my TBR for a long time to come. Goes to show that you can take some really world class reading and churn out utter drivel from it. Also, the hardcover will form a nice and light doorstopper for me one day.

How to do Nothing Chapter 2

I mentioned before that I’m listening to Jenny Odell’s book “How to do Nothing” before. Well, slowly, I’ve inched towards closing Chapter 2. At first, I was irritated by the chapter. After a wonderful chapter 1 where she talked about the Ethics of Care and Deleuze and how she’s building a philosophy to inculcate instead writing a book that’s just meant to be read once, she then waded into a whole history of the 1960s in the US and the commune movement thereof. So boring. But I trudged along knowing that there must be some reason why she’s talking about this completely left-field topic. Towards the end of the chapter, she explains that she’s covered all these failed communes to talk about how the way to protest this attention economy is not to run away, since that rarely works, but to protest in place. She wants us to be a part of society and to find a middle path instead of diving in too deep or leave altogether (a concept I’m deeply familiar with).

I’ve also ordered the physical copy of the book, so I can potentially accept Jenny’s suggestion to make it a part of my digital life instead of a flash in the pan.