How to Be Idle

<p><strong>Yearning for a life of leisure? In 24 chapters representing each hour of a typical working day this book will coax out the loafer in even the most diligent and schedule-obsessed worker.</strong></p> <p>From the founding editor of the celebrated magazine about the freedom and fine art of doing nothing <em>The Idler</em> comes not simply a book but an antidote to our work-obsessed culture. In <em>How to Be Idle</em> Hodgkinson presents his learned yet whimsical argument for a new universal standard of living: being happy doing nothing. He covers a whole spectrum of issues affecting the modern idler--sleep work pleasure relationships--bemoaning the cultural skepticism of idleness while reflecting on the writing of such famous apologists for it as Oscar Wilde Robert Louis Stevenson Dr. Johnson and Nietzsche--all of whom have admitted to doing their very best work in bed. </p><p> It's a well-known fact that Europeans spend fewer hours at work a week than Americans. So it's only befitting that one of them--the very clever extremely engaging and quite hilarious Tom Hodgkinson--should have the wittiest and most useful insights into the fun and nature of being idle. Following on the quirky call-to-arms heels of the bestselling<em> Eat Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation</em> by Lynne Truss <em>How to Be Idle</em> rallies us to an equally just and no less worthy cause: reclaiming our right to be idle.</p>