How to Be Idle

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.

From the founding editor of the celebrated magazine about the freedom and fine art of doing nothing, The Idler, comes not simply a book, but an antidote to our work-obsessed culture. In How to Be Idle, 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.

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 Eat, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, How to Be Idle rallies us to an equally just and no less worthy cause: reclaiming our right to be idle.