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Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time
"Hide your phone, stop hustling for a second, and read this passionate argument for the importance of unstructured pre-digital hang." — People
Loneliness is an epidemic; it feels harder than ever to connect with others meaningfully. What can we do to remedy this? Sheila Liming has the we need to hang out more.
With the introduction of AI and constant Zoom meetings, our lives have become more fractured, digital and chaotic. Hanging The Radical Power of Killing Time shows us what we have lost to the frenetic pace of digital life and how to get it back.
Combining personal narrative with pungent analyses of books, movies, and TV shows, Sheila Liming shows us how the new social landscape deadens our connections with others — connections that are vital to both self-care and to a vibrant community. Whether drinking with strangers in a distant city or jamming with musician friends in an abandoned Pittsburgh row house, Liming demonstrates that unstructured social time is the key to a freer, happier sense of self.
Hanging Out shows how simple acts of casual connection are the glue that binds us together, and how community is the antidote to the disconnection and isolation that dominates contemporary life.
"The book conceives of hanging out as a way to reclaim time as something other than a raw ingredient to be converted into productivity." — New York Times
“Rich with illuminating stories.” — Slate
"We could all use more of that blissfully unstructured social time, posits Sheila Liming in the well-considered series of arguments found in Hanging Out." — Reader's Digest
"Opens with a simple and expansive account of what hanging out is … Liming dedicates much of the book to stories from her past. She has lived an interesting life, and she tells these stories well.” — Washington Post
"Sharp and vivid writing … a layered exploration of social dynamics that contains some textured literary criticism.” — Bookforum
"More books about hanging out, less about productivity please. Sheila Liming sees the gap in our thinking about time, and the true worth in spending it in an unstructured fashion with members of our community.” — LitHub
Loneliness is an epidemic; it feels harder than ever to connect with others meaningfully. What can we do to remedy this? Sheila Liming has the we need to hang out more.
With the introduction of AI and constant Zoom meetings, our lives have become more fractured, digital and chaotic. Hanging The Radical Power of Killing Time shows us what we have lost to the frenetic pace of digital life and how to get it back.
Combining personal narrative with pungent analyses of books, movies, and TV shows, Sheila Liming shows us how the new social landscape deadens our connections with others — connections that are vital to both self-care and to a vibrant community. Whether drinking with strangers in a distant city or jamming with musician friends in an abandoned Pittsburgh row house, Liming demonstrates that unstructured social time is the key to a freer, happier sense of self.
Hanging Out shows how simple acts of casual connection are the glue that binds us together, and how community is the antidote to the disconnection and isolation that dominates contemporary life.
"The book conceives of hanging out as a way to reclaim time as something other than a raw ingredient to be converted into productivity." — New York Times
“Rich with illuminating stories.” — Slate
"We could all use more of that blissfully unstructured social time, posits Sheila Liming in the well-considered series of arguments found in Hanging Out." — Reader's Digest
"Opens with a simple and expansive account of what hanging out is … Liming dedicates much of the book to stories from her past. She has lived an interesting life, and she tells these stories well.” — Washington Post
"Sharp and vivid writing … a layered exploration of social dynamics that contains some textured literary criticism.” — Bookforum
"More books about hanging out, less about productivity please. Sheila Liming sees the gap in our thinking about time, and the true worth in spending it in an unstructured fashion with members of our community.” — LitHub
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 2023
162 people are currently reading
5590 people want to read
About the author
Sheila Liming
5 books16 followersSheila Liming is the author of Office and What a Library Means to a Woman, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Lapham's Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Point, among others. She lives, teaches, and plays the accordion in Burlington, Vermont. Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time is her latest book.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
September 12, 2022
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 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.
January 30, 2023
Based on the title and concept, I wanted to love this book. Unfortunately it fell short. Lots of cringey name dropping (both explicit and the vague kind that begs you to Google), rambling synopses of movies and books, and an excess of frankly not very interesting stories from the author's life. It reads like a second draft or a diary, with some chapters much stronger than others.
October 19, 2023
I really wanted to like this book, but ended-up not being able to finish it. It's less analytical or prescriptive in justifying the act of maintaining unstructured social time, than it is a recount of different hang-outs the author had ...and who wants to read dozens of pages about someone's experience at a work conference‽‽‽ Though too vague and overly-detailed in the wrong ways, there are some thoughtful tidbits here and there but at almost 200 pages, not nearly enough. Your time is better spent hanging out.
January 1, 2025
Shallow and vapid. Book consistently acts like basic things are profound and wastes the readers time as a result.
This is almost a genre, I felt a kinship (not in a good way) to Jenny Odell, but it strikes me as a book from somebody who really wants to “write a book“ but
doesn’t actually have anything to say and so writes and write until they’ve essentially written 200 some pages of flowery nothing about a topic that everyone knows. It’s a waste of time and not a very good use of paper, or in my case tablet space.
This is almost a genre, I felt a kinship (not in a good way) to Jenny Odell, but it strikes me as a book from somebody who really wants to “write a book“ but
doesn’t actually have anything to say and so writes and write until they’ve essentially written 200 some pages of flowery nothing about a topic that everyone knows. It’s a waste of time and not a very good use of paper, or in my case tablet space.
February 3, 2023
Like many people, I’ve spent a good deal of the past few years socialising from home via the medium of the internet. Once the whole global pandemic thing begun to recede, I thought I’d be itching to get back to socialising but was instead surprised to find that, like many of my friends, I was nervous about getting back to hanging out in the real world of restaurants, cafes, cinemas, bars and the like. So Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out, which considers the power of basic social interaction and the importance of making space for it in our lives, is a timely read.
Subtitled ‘The Radical Power of Killing Time’, Hanging Out sees Liming using a mixture of anecdotal narrative, literary criticism, scientific studies, and philosophical enquiry to examine the role of hanging out within our personal lives, professional spaces, and wider culture. The result is a thoughtful and wide-ranging consideration of such topics as parties, work social events, water-cooler moments, and shared hobbies. Liming also looks at the depiction of ‘hanging out’ on reality TV, the important ways in which in-person and internet socialising differ (and why both have something to offer) and the conflicting feelings that can arise from being required to hang out with strangers.
Liming – an associate professor of literature, media, and writing as well as author of two previous essay collections – is a smart and engaging narrator and Hanging Out combines a mixture of accessible anecdotal narrative and more reflective social commentary. This can, on occasion, result in a slightly jarring switch in narrative style but, for the most part, the balance between the two modes is complimentary rather than confusing or conflicted.
There were, however, some chapters where I felt that I wanted a little more analysis and slightly less anecdote. The chapter on ‘Hanging Out on TV’, for example, contains some interesting ruminations – primarily drawn from Liming’s own life – on the way that reality TV (and related filming of real-world socialising) can impact upon the dynamics of hanging out with friends. But I would have liked to see this extended to consider how ‘hanging out’ is depicted more widely on television, in fictional shows such as Friends or Sex in the City, for example.
Similarly there is no getting away from the fact that Liming herself engages in very specific forms of ‘hanging out’ that, depending on how you personally choose to socialise, may not be wholly relatable – or indeed all that interesting – to some readers. Dinner parties, for example, are clearly an important means of socialising within Liming’s circle but, apart from hosting a small gathering of family at Christmas, are my personal idea of the seventh circle of Hell. Similarly her consideration of ‘Hanging Out on the Internet’ doesn’t touch upon many of the shared social activities that I find deeply engaging: live chatting with my blogger friends in our Twitter group, connecting with my cousin in Japan for a shared gaming session, or playing virtual board games with my friends who live in Wales, to name but a few. For anyone younger than a millennial, I suspect Liming’s version of ‘hanging out’ might feel a bit old-school. Or, maybe that's just me!
That is, however, kind of Liming’s point. ‘Hanging out’, however we choose to do it, is an important part of our lives and, crucially, one of the few parts of our lives that has not been colonised by ideas of value and productivity. As such, she argues, hanging out – in all its multitudes – is both a simple act of community and a powerful act of resistance.
Overall, Hanging Out was an interesting and engaging examination of the power of social connection and a reminder of the reasons why we all need to make time in our lives for what can, from the outside, appear to be an aimless and unstructured activity. Combining wry and light-hearted anecdotes with thoughtful and reflective examinations of what such incidents tell us about ourselves, Hanging Out provided a great deal of food for thought. Although I’m still not going to be sharing any of those insights at a dinner party any time soon!
NB: This review also appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpre... as part of the blog tour for the book. My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.
Subtitled ‘The Radical Power of Killing Time’, Hanging Out sees Liming using a mixture of anecdotal narrative, literary criticism, scientific studies, and philosophical enquiry to examine the role of hanging out within our personal lives, professional spaces, and wider culture. The result is a thoughtful and wide-ranging consideration of such topics as parties, work social events, water-cooler moments, and shared hobbies. Liming also looks at the depiction of ‘hanging out’ on reality TV, the important ways in which in-person and internet socialising differ (and why both have something to offer) and the conflicting feelings that can arise from being required to hang out with strangers.
Liming – an associate professor of literature, media, and writing as well as author of two previous essay collections – is a smart and engaging narrator and Hanging Out combines a mixture of accessible anecdotal narrative and more reflective social commentary. This can, on occasion, result in a slightly jarring switch in narrative style but, for the most part, the balance between the two modes is complimentary rather than confusing or conflicted.
There were, however, some chapters where I felt that I wanted a little more analysis and slightly less anecdote. The chapter on ‘Hanging Out on TV’, for example, contains some interesting ruminations – primarily drawn from Liming’s own life – on the way that reality TV (and related filming of real-world socialising) can impact upon the dynamics of hanging out with friends. But I would have liked to see this extended to consider how ‘hanging out’ is depicted more widely on television, in fictional shows such as Friends or Sex in the City, for example.
Similarly there is no getting away from the fact that Liming herself engages in very specific forms of ‘hanging out’ that, depending on how you personally choose to socialise, may not be wholly relatable – or indeed all that interesting – to some readers. Dinner parties, for example, are clearly an important means of socialising within Liming’s circle but, apart from hosting a small gathering of family at Christmas, are my personal idea of the seventh circle of Hell. Similarly her consideration of ‘Hanging Out on the Internet’ doesn’t touch upon many of the shared social activities that I find deeply engaging: live chatting with my blogger friends in our Twitter group, connecting with my cousin in Japan for a shared gaming session, or playing virtual board games with my friends who live in Wales, to name but a few. For anyone younger than a millennial, I suspect Liming’s version of ‘hanging out’ might feel a bit old-school. Or, maybe that's just me!
That is, however, kind of Liming’s point. ‘Hanging out’, however we choose to do it, is an important part of our lives and, crucially, one of the few parts of our lives that has not been colonised by ideas of value and productivity. As such, she argues, hanging out – in all its multitudes – is both a simple act of community and a powerful act of resistance.
Overall, Hanging Out was an interesting and engaging examination of the power of social connection and a reminder of the reasons why we all need to make time in our lives for what can, from the outside, appear to be an aimless and unstructured activity. Combining wry and light-hearted anecdotes with thoughtful and reflective examinations of what such incidents tell us about ourselves, Hanging Out provided a great deal of food for thought. Although I’m still not going to be sharing any of those insights at a dinner party any time soon!
NB: This review also appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpre... as part of the blog tour for the book. My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.
January 30, 2023
Je ne suis pas sociable. Je peux passer des semaines sans parler à qui que ce soit, sauf à Madame et peut-être à un livreur de pizza s'il ne me tend pas le terminal de paiement assez vite quand je grogne. Non seulement la plupart de mes amis Facebook ne sont jamais venus chez nous, mais ils ne savent même pas où j'habite. J'ai même déjà feint une laryngite pour m'éviter une conversation téléphonique, dix ans avant que Dieu n'invente les textos et que plus personne ne se parle de vive voix. Et si vous croyez que les trois dernières années ont arrangé les choses, j'ai de bien mauvaises nouvelles à vous annoncer.
Alors quand j'ai entendu parler de Hanging Out, je me suis dit: tiens, un livre qui expliquera comment les gens normaux vont essayer de rebâtir leurs réseaux après les ravages de Vous-Savez-Quoi. Intéressant... J'ai sûrement des choses à apprendre.
Erreur. Les "leçons" de ce livre sont minces, elles tiennent de l'opinion personnelle beaucoup plus que de la science et elles n'apparaissent que dans la deuxième moitié de la conclusion. Le corps du bouquin, lui, consiste en un mélange de mémoires et de commentaires littéraires, cinématographiques, musicaux, philosophiques et sociaux qui partent dans tous les sens et qui touchent de peine et de misère à une définition étriquée du "hanging out". Le résultat n'est pas inintéressant; chacun des sept chapitres constitue un essai indépendant des autres et vous en trouverez sûrement un ou deux qui vous toucheront. Mais on a trop souvent l'impression d'être en train d'écouter la conversation de la table d'à côté, dans un restaurant jouxté à un campus universitaire, quand les occupants de ladite table sont rendus à leur quatrième bouteille de rouge.
J'imagine que c'est volontaire. Dans un ouvrage dont le message consiste à dire qu'il faut prendre le temps de ne pas se poser trop de questions pour laisser les interactions sociales évoluer comme elles le veulent, peut-être que "pointlessness is the point", comme diraient les Klingons. Mais ce message aurait pu être résumé en un article de magazine de cinq pages.
Alors quand j'ai entendu parler de Hanging Out, je me suis dit: tiens, un livre qui expliquera comment les gens normaux vont essayer de rebâtir leurs réseaux après les ravages de Vous-Savez-Quoi. Intéressant... J'ai sûrement des choses à apprendre.
Erreur. Les "leçons" de ce livre sont minces, elles tiennent de l'opinion personnelle beaucoup plus que de la science et elles n'apparaissent que dans la deuxième moitié de la conclusion. Le corps du bouquin, lui, consiste en un mélange de mémoires et de commentaires littéraires, cinématographiques, musicaux, philosophiques et sociaux qui partent dans tous les sens et qui touchent de peine et de misère à une définition étriquée du "hanging out". Le résultat n'est pas inintéressant; chacun des sept chapitres constitue un essai indépendant des autres et vous en trouverez sûrement un ou deux qui vous toucheront. Mais on a trop souvent l'impression d'être en train d'écouter la conversation de la table d'à côté, dans un restaurant jouxté à un campus universitaire, quand les occupants de ladite table sont rendus à leur quatrième bouteille de rouge.
J'imagine que c'est volontaire. Dans un ouvrage dont le message consiste à dire qu'il faut prendre le temps de ne pas se poser trop de questions pour laisser les interactions sociales évoluer comme elles le veulent, peut-être que "pointlessness is the point", comme diraient les Klingons. Mais ce message aurait pu être résumé en un article de magazine de cinq pages.
February 8, 2024
DNF @ 15%. Preachy as heck, also it is TREMENDOUSLY ableist to wholly discount virtual interactions as valueless. This whole book gave me the ick.
May 25, 2025
i celebrated this book by immediately talking to a stranger. i loved it—it felt like the conversations ive been having for years and reaffirmed my commitment to community and care
February 12, 2023
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, 3/5.
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, 3/5.
May 20, 2023
A few gems but wish I hadn’t needed to read so much to get them.
August 27, 2023
This book is a giant thesis paper
October 16, 2023
This book is great! I loved it. I am somewhat of an expert at hanging out, but I still learned a lot and now think about the concept differently. Work less! Hang out more!
January 15, 2024
Suffers from a lack of clarity in defining its terms (she seems to be talking mostly about “doing activities” with other people; not sure climbing a glacier, attending an academic conference, and celebrating new year’s eve are what I’d call “hanging out,”) and the intrusion of confusingly bland moments of memoir and, like, 101-level engagement with Kant and Adorno & etc…..comes across as unserious and low effort
Bafflingly incurious about why people make communities online, or looking into habits or lifestyles where people are “hanging out” outside of norms in any meaningful way—the “radicality” in the title is wholly unearned. And I was already so on board for the thesis of “hanging out is a positive good…..”
Bafflingly incurious about why people make communities online, or looking into habits or lifestyles where people are “hanging out” outside of norms in any meaningful way—the “radicality” in the title is wholly unearned. And I was already so on board for the thesis of “hanging out is a positive good…..”
June 6, 2023
Sheila Liming writes about herself hanging out with famous people and a few who are not. Tedious and lengthy (fluff for length?) explanations of books and movies to add significance to her own experiences. I never felt the radical power and wonder if this should have been a memoir?
abandoned
August 18, 2023Read the introduction and a few pages of the first chapter and quickly realized this was not a book for me.
August 20, 2023
I really enjoyed Liming's book, it reminded me of a period of time I spent with my friends in my twenties during an unemployment phase (great recession era) where I "hung out" a lot with friends in Western Mass, volunteered in WOOFing programs and traveled solo with very little money.
January 6, 2024
Practical, helpful, interesting.
January 29, 2024
I have to brag and tell you that this author is my professor and she’s just as amazing as you think. I loved this book. A guide, a friend, a comfort, and a challenge. This book let me rest while reading it, I recommend to anyone who is feeling restless.
September 17, 2023
This non-fiction book is about rethinking the value you place on time spent “hanging out”. In other words, maybe hanging out is NOT wasting time, but instead has intrinsic and important value for the world. I love the concept, and there were some great vignettes, however there were many places in which the book lagged for me. I think the message of this book could have been delivered with about 1/3 less content.
March 13, 2023
I’m giving this three stars instead of two because I like the essence of what this book explores, rather than the content that Liming puts forth. As a concept, I agree that hanging out is an essential form of building intimacy in a friendship, but as is common with this sort of academic take on it (see my response to Jenny Odell and Devon Price, I suppose), it’s easy to assume that every person has the same approach to these sorts of activities.
Liming divides the book into chapters about types of hangouts - jam sessions, dinner parties, work as a bartender or work as an academic conference, etc. - and I confess to skimming some that were of less interest (see: jam sessions). She has the tone of an academic extrovert who has felt comfortable in her ability to access other spaces. This is sort of fascinating to me because I have had an extremely unadventurous life in part due to shyness and I part due to the structure of how I grew up, so I’m obviously not her target audience here. I do think her judginess of hanging out in online spaces is a bit unfortunate, and her tone towards her students who prefer it, especially in the context of Covid, seems kind of… out of touch, maybe. This could be my own frustrations with academia shining through, especially since as a librarian I don’t really hold with a lot of that “pure life of the mind/constant dialog” sort of thing. Sometime you just have to think of hanging out as a type of service to your community, not a service to yourself. I think Lining does get that, especially in her chapter on hanging out at work as a bartender, but it’s at times hard to read through those lines in this book. Which makes sense! I’m sure the publication is important for her CV. It just felt sort of hollow to me, and a bit too cerebral/self-congratulatory to feel true or applicable to the lives of others. YMMV, I’m a killjoy and a lot of my friends live far away.
Liming divides the book into chapters about types of hangouts - jam sessions, dinner parties, work as a bartender or work as an academic conference, etc. - and I confess to skimming some that were of less interest (see: jam sessions). She has the tone of an academic extrovert who has felt comfortable in her ability to access other spaces. This is sort of fascinating to me because I have had an extremely unadventurous life in part due to shyness and I part due to the structure of how I grew up, so I’m obviously not her target audience here. I do think her judginess of hanging out in online spaces is a bit unfortunate, and her tone towards her students who prefer it, especially in the context of Covid, seems kind of… out of touch, maybe. This could be my own frustrations with academia shining through, especially since as a librarian I don’t really hold with a lot of that “pure life of the mind/constant dialog” sort of thing. Sometime you just have to think of hanging out as a type of service to your community, not a service to yourself. I think Lining does get that, especially in her chapter on hanging out at work as a bartender, but it’s at times hard to read through those lines in this book. Which makes sense! I’m sure the publication is important for her CV. It just felt sort of hollow to me, and a bit too cerebral/self-congratulatory to feel true or applicable to the lives of others. YMMV, I’m a killjoy and a lot of my friends live far away.
April 28, 2023
Read about this one out in a Slate article and was really excited about it but found ultimately a little lacking in the depth I’d hope I find. Perhaps that’s intentional, as it is a “manifesto” rather than a true academic or theory text, but felt myself constantly wanting more from her as she skipped from surface sub tangent to surface sub tangent. If you’re gonna namedrop Adorno and Jameson and Benjamin, I just expect a little more. The balance of personal anecdotes to analysis skews a tad too far in the direction of personal anecdotes for my taste.
That being said, as a manifesto for how cool hanging out is (it’s one of my favorite things), it could do far less and be far less deep and as a primer on subjects like alienation and communal dissolution it works! There are even some interesting directions that I didn’t expect for a work like this, such as citing Kant’s idea of the sublime as something awe-inspiring outside human invention and creation as an explanation for why hanging out online can’t replicate in person living, a human invention only capable of delivering human pleasures, as well as expanding on reality television as an uncanny simulacrum of hanging out that we experience vicariously, the heightened and over the top dramas giving the easy drama and pleasure and interesting friends and places that the often more banal, drama free hard work of maintaining friendships and relationships in the normal places we live do not. There’s some obligatory citations (third places! How to Do Nothing!) That felt obligatory too, but that may be just my overexposure to literature around the subject. For the genre of hip contemporary book diagnosing our current problems, it’s pretty good! I just wanted a little more.
That being said, as a manifesto for how cool hanging out is (it’s one of my favorite things), it could do far less and be far less deep and as a primer on subjects like alienation and communal dissolution it works! There are even some interesting directions that I didn’t expect for a work like this, such as citing Kant’s idea of the sublime as something awe-inspiring outside human invention and creation as an explanation for why hanging out online can’t replicate in person living, a human invention only capable of delivering human pleasures, as well as expanding on reality television as an uncanny simulacrum of hanging out that we experience vicariously, the heightened and over the top dramas giving the easy drama and pleasure and interesting friends and places that the often more banal, drama free hard work of maintaining friendships and relationships in the normal places we live do not. There’s some obligatory citations (third places! How to Do Nothing!) That felt obligatory too, but that may be just my overexposure to literature around the subject. For the genre of hip contemporary book diagnosing our current problems, it’s pretty good! I just wanted a little more.
January 8, 2024
I really wanted to love this book, but it fell a bit short for me.
While there are some thoughtful ideas expressed throughout each chapter, I struggled to feel invested in the very autobiographical (and not very relatable) lens that this book relies upon.
While there are some thoughtful ideas expressed throughout each chapter, I struggled to feel invested in the very autobiographical (and not very relatable) lens that this book relies upon.
December 10, 2023
Good concepts and good intentions…too wordy and too long.
October 26, 2023
A very 2023 book that should catch you up to the "vibe" as we polish off the first quarter of this century. A sort of spiritual nibling of Putnam's "Bowling Alone"--and one unsatisfyingly divorced from the deeper histo-political roots of social alienation outlined in Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets"--"Hanging Out" combines memoir and literary references to make points in support of socializing that fall short of sparking revolution.
Still, I read it cover-to-cover because Liming validates the dispirited conclusions I've come to, myself. So she's certainly onto something, and introduces the reader to several worthwhile yet vaguely obscure sources. I was extremely satisfied to find a passage citing Adorno--whom I've been meaning to read for years--that seemed to articulate exactly what I'd struggled to put words to at, aptly, the closest thing to a dinner party I've been to in a year.
So, over all, I wasn't in love with this book, but it's a really vital topic and--as far as I know--nobody covers it better.
Still, I read it cover-to-cover because Liming validates the dispirited conclusions I've come to, myself. So she's certainly onto something, and introduces the reader to several worthwhile yet vaguely obscure sources. I was extremely satisfied to find a passage citing Adorno--whom I've been meaning to read for years--that seemed to articulate exactly what I'd struggled to put words to at, aptly, the closest thing to a dinner party I've been to in a year.
So, over all, I wasn't in love with this book, but it's a really vital topic and--as far as I know--nobody covers it better.
August 11, 2025
Finally, academic justification for my insistence to my friends that we have to hang out right now.
Ever since I had control over my social schedule, I've been obsessed with hanging out, doing something; after I had the language to describe it, I called it creating community. Not sure if the functions lived up to this lofty goal, but I knew I liked what I was doing and that I was creating bonds and connections that sustained me. After reading this book, I am affirmed in this vision: hanging out does matter and is vital to a functioning community, always. Parties did not stop in the Great Depression-and why would they? When else did people need to search for things to celebrate and reasons to be together? I don't know what the future holds, but I will continue to search for those things and reasons.
"To care requires making a sincere effort. Care is the soil from which all actions that actually matter have to grow, because the opposite, disinterest, is barren ground."
"I'm interested in what it means to party in difficult times."
Ever since I had control over my social schedule, I've been obsessed with hanging out, doing something; after I had the language to describe it, I called it creating community. Not sure if the functions lived up to this lofty goal, but I knew I liked what I was doing and that I was creating bonds and connections that sustained me. After reading this book, I am affirmed in this vision: hanging out does matter and is vital to a functioning community, always. Parties did not stop in the Great Depression-and why would they? When else did people need to search for things to celebrate and reasons to be together? I don't know what the future holds, but I will continue to search for those things and reasons.
"To care requires making a sincere effort. Care is the soil from which all actions that actually matter have to grow, because the opposite, disinterest, is barren ground."
"I'm interested in what it means to party in difficult times."
March 26, 2024
Equal parts entertaining and thought-provoking, I found this to be a great study of how we use our time and the subtle ways it impacts our existence. I had been a touch disappointed that the introduction promised a polemic or manifesto, but most of the body of the work were anecdotes and personal essays as case-study. Don't get me wrong, said anecdotes and essays were insightful and enjoyable (some of the music stuff was personally unrelatable, but overall it was strong), but then the book closed on the call to action and argument, which sealed 5 stars and left me feeling aligned with the whole presentation. Strongly recommended to anyone who came out of the pandemic feeling more isolated or less in control of one's intentions (read: all of us).
August 8, 2023
turning expression as « hanging out » that I associate with lost time into something positive, into a psychological resource, is like I’m getting a permission slip to enjoy people’s company more. With it’s wonderful intellectuality the book almost reminded me of The Lonely City by Vivian Gornick. I really liked the intention and many of the ideas resonate with the loneliness crises I see around.
What didn’t quite male it for me was the feeling of a personal crusade or vendetta of the author towards their former friends and acquaintances. The stories weren’t very interesting and the conclusion was a bit bland and formulaic. But it still works well.
Overall, I’m looking for future novels by this curious, interesting and interested author
What didn’t quite male it for me was the feeling of a personal crusade or vendetta of the author towards their former friends and acquaintances. The stories weren’t very interesting and the conclusion was a bit bland and formulaic. But it still works well.
Overall, I’m looking for future novels by this curious, interesting and interested author
February 13, 2023
I love hanging out with people. And yet, since Covid the concept of being around a lot of people does sometimes feel less appealing than sitting on my sofa with a book. Across the globe, companies are adopting hybrid models as people are choosing to work remotely, rather than in an office. We’re told we need to connect and collaborate with colleagues face to face, but being at home is easy, it’s flexible and – with the cost of living crisis – cheaper. But without social interactions, can we survive?
In Hanging Out, Sheila Liming explains why hanging out is so powerful. There doesn’t have to be an agenda to ‘hang out’, so it’s casual, easy and there’s no need to feel overwhelmed. Liming combines theory with personal stories to showcase examples of how we hang out in different situations.
These anecdotes are interesting, but feel too much at times. Shorter excerpts, mixed with more theory and others’ insights would have made for a well-rounded analysis, as a lot of the topics needed further explanation.
However, I did enjoy the literary quotes and book references (including Mrs Dalloway and – surprisingly – Trainspotting), which gave it a thoughtful slant. Although some of Liming’s stories are amusing, I was expecting more humour from the book, and at times it felt quite dry and even a little dull.
An interesting concept for sure, but perhaps not executed as well as it could have been.
In Hanging Out, Sheila Liming explains why hanging out is so powerful. There doesn’t have to be an agenda to ‘hang out’, so it’s casual, easy and there’s no need to feel overwhelmed. Liming combines theory with personal stories to showcase examples of how we hang out in different situations.
These anecdotes are interesting, but feel too much at times. Shorter excerpts, mixed with more theory and others’ insights would have made for a well-rounded analysis, as a lot of the topics needed further explanation.
However, I did enjoy the literary quotes and book references (including Mrs Dalloway and – surprisingly – Trainspotting), which gave it a thoughtful slant. Although some of Liming’s stories are amusing, I was expecting more humour from the book, and at times it felt quite dry and even a little dull.
An interesting concept for sure, but perhaps not executed as well as it could have been.
June 17, 2024
structured like a series of essays centered around different forms and varieties of hanging out, liming weaves together personal anecdote, social theory, and literary criticism in a delightful read. as is only natural, i found some chapters more appealing than others but each was compelling and insightful in its own right. dragged on at times and the internet chapter seemed a bit lost and confused by it's own goal. some of her points were obvious, others mildly revelatory, but i rarely felt truly frustrated with the book. idk i need to stop reading other peoples reviews before writing mine.
December 4, 2022
I wasn't sure at first what to expect from this non-fiction read, but soon settled into it. This has a smart blend of anecdotal stories, to well researched films and everything in between. At times points felt a tad laboured but I think overall this book is a welcome reminder of how post pandemic we have adapted, can adapt and reminds us of the importance of interactions in its various guises- even speaking to strangers!
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