Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Odell is widely, eclectically read and weaves her reflections on everyone from Diogenes the Cynic to David Hockney's art together with vignettes from her own life in the Bay Area. Odell is a digital artist and also an avid watcher and friend of birds and nature. Both art and nature play a big role in her reflections. She makes a thoughtful, eloquent case for "standing apart" from the attention economy - neither retreating fully, nor succumbing. Standing apart as individuals, she hopes, may prepare the way for collective standing apart and then collective action. I may try to incorporate passages from this book into my current course on Media and Minds.