Jenny Odell: Saving Time (2023, Random House Children's Books)
English language
Published Oct. 5, 2023 by Random House Children's Books.
Nach ihrem ersten Buch "Hot to Do Nothing" hatte ich mir von "Saving Time" eigentlich weitere spannende Gedanken über den individuellen Umgang mit Zeit erwartet. Stattdessen will Odell nicht und persönlich helfen, unsere Zeit zu "sparen", sondern eine grundsätzlich andere Herangehensweise an Zeit vorstellen - "saving" im Sinne von "retten", nicht von "sparen".
Less revelatory than her How To Do Nothing or Bridle's Ways of Being, the intent is there to re-examine the colonial capitalist and puritan influences on time's central role in living - our drive for efficiency, self-improvement, fixed hours and seasons - but even if the message is to de-focus, this is a scattered book. "The point isn't to live more, to but to be more alive in any given moment."
How to Do Nothing is a tough act to follow in terms of its impact on my thinking and experiencing of the world around me. Saving Time won't be quite as profound, I think, but that's also because 1) it's more an expansion than a revelation, and 2) I'm reading it at a time that doesn't feel as unsettled and open to new ways of being. Neither is a criticism of the book itself, which asks necessary questions about how we measure and value time, and whose interests those measurements and values serve.
Two concepts that I should hold onto: the question of the fungibility of time, and the notion of time as something that grows when shared (the metaphor of sharing lettuce that you grew in your garden so the plant can produce more, that giving is necessary to flourishing).
