Saving Time

One of President Barack Obama's 'Favourite books of 2019'

President Barack Obama on How To Do Nothing

A revealing exploration of the forces that keep us locked in a shallow, commodified and adversarial relationship with time. But it is also a portal to a far richer alternative. To read it is to slip through the bars of our modern temporal prison and experience how freedom might feel

Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks

Saving Time is an exposé of our past, an antidote to our present, and a manifesto for the future. It is rigorous, compassionate, profound, and hopeful. It is one of the most important books I've read in my life

Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

The rarest kind of intervention: it alters you immediately, and then it lasts ... Saving Time is an inimitable gift

Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

Odell has gifted us a way to move through this intertidal moment by reclaiming our more intuitive, felt experience of the passage of time. ... A beautiful, clarifying, and surprisingly reassuring literary triumph

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock

Saving Time is about what it means to be on the clock, personally, politically and existentially. The book's writing glows. Reading this book is like being in the company of a particularly thoughtful friend: Odell shows you the truths of the structures you inhabit and then, warmly, attempts to protect you from your own nihilism

Alissa Quart, author of Bootstrapped

Fiercely generous ... invites us to exit the superhighways and explore the scenic detours, byways, rebel camps, the other visions of who we can be while reminding us that slowness can yield more than speed

Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell's Roses

From the vast sweep of geological time to incremental seasonal changes observed on a single branch in a local park, this potently mysterious book explores the ways in which we might begin to challenge the cramped temporal confines of our modern lives

Helen Gordon, author of Landfall

A penetrating, provocative investigation into the subject of time - how to understand and live with it - on both an individual and societal level ... impressive

Shelf Awareness

A rare book that does more than meet the current moment, it defines it

Booklist

By now a legend thanks to the simple but impactful wisdom of her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell furthers her argument for escaping the so-called attention economy. ... This follow-up promises to be as satisfying, optimistic, and enrapturing as Odell's original bestseller

Elle

The bestselling author of How to Do Nothing ... returns with another urgent examination of modern life

i-D

Odell's journey to find the best way to use our limited time on earth is an eye-opening look at what it really means to be alive

TIME

A moving and provocative game changer

Publishers Weekly

Temporal structure has its comforts, particularly following a tumultuous three years ... That yo-you effect [of the last few years] drew me to Saving Time, Jenny Odell's sharp book tracing the cultural forces that shape our conception of time

Laura Regensdorf, Vanity Fair

Odell fights to provide us with an alternative way to experience the time we have

i Paper

It is in the gap between present and future, where outcomes are not yet determined, that Jenny Odell enters with her paradigm-destroying new book ... [A] grand, eclectic, wide-ranging work

New York Times

A powerful critique of the way we conceive of time in the modern, industrial world ... striking ... Odell calls for a way of living that is less extractive, less dependent on domination, and less about the human self

Guardian

Ambitious ... a pleasure to read ... thought-provoking

New Scientist

An intriguing look into our attitudes to time ... striking

Guardian

Stunning ... Odell approaches time in a way I've only seen previously in science fiction [and] this expansiveness, both thematic and formal, is what makes Odell's writing so valuable and unique. ... It is, ultimately, an extraordinarily good thing that Odell's work exists in the world

Irish Times

A sweeping yet personal challenge to assumptions Western society makes about the relationships between individuals and the finite hours in a given day

Time Magazine

A scintillating and important meditation on the notion of time

Times Literary Supplement

Odell argues convincingly that our daily experience is dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside

Irish Independent

The best beach read of the year ... Read it, and then think deeply about how you are reading your own time

The Media Leader

Odell's latest book, Saving Time, is great at analysing where a lot of our notions about how to use our time came from (hint: capitalism).

RTE Ireland

In a work both magisterial and elliptical, Odell takes on the concept of 'time' from every conceivable angle ... This is both an irresistible big-idea book an a guide to rethinking a burning world

LA Times