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    The Art of the Wasted Day
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    The Art of the Wasted Day
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    The Art of the Wasted Day
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Art of the Wasted Day

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream

    The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.

    Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love—and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry. Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life.

    The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.

    Cover Illustration © 2018 Peter Sis

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 17, 2018
    ISBN9780525529750
    Unavailable
    The Art of the Wasted Day

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    Reviews for The Art of the Wasted Day

    3.5/5

    25 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      The perfect book to read while sick - I may have lost patience with both the pace and the subject had I not been forced to be sedentary.
    • 3/5
      This book is hypnotic. I can tell you very little in the way of specifics. But I have a strong sense of what the book is about. I imagine I will recall the themes of this book more than a few times, perhaps enough to re-read it in a few years.

      This topic is actually something I have been contemplating over the last year, as I have effectively "retired". Do I want to spend my time doing stuff (volunteering, gardening, etc), or do I want to spend most of my time just hanging out with the dogs, going on walks and reading? The former is how I have always defined myself, but I find the latter very attractive.

      This book would suggest the latter. I think I'll give it a shot for a while and see how it goes.
    • 4/5
      This is one I read some time ago, know I enjoyed it, but cannot recall enough about to review.
    • 4/5
      A lovely, rambling (in space, time, and topic) elegy to leisure, writing, solitude, and passing time. I enjoyed reading the book, and found many passages intensely quotable. Whenever she speaks to "you," she is talking to her husband, who has died, and I often envied her the intimacy she seemed to share with him (and I am married 43 years myself), but those moments are scattered throughout long narratives of historical characters like the Ladies of Llangollen, Gregor Mendel, and Michel de Montaigne, and visits to their neighborhoods. It ends with a boat trip she took down the river with her partner.

      I was ultimately unsatisfied by the book, which at times took digression to improbable heights and asserted equivalences I could not follow, whether because they were too densely rich or because they partook of some correspondence visible only within the author's universe.
    • 3/5
      The author had a nice way with words, and some interesting observations at times. However, I guess I'm just not a fan of meandering essays. I'd assumed this would be about "wasting time" in life generally, but the subjects ranged all over the map, from previous travels to relationships to all sorts of things I've already forgotten. I prefer more of a purposeful topic in my books. Recommended for fans of Montaigne or maybe philosophy generally.