Kate Bradshaw

From I-880 to Pescadero State Beach, Odell dissects different ways of grokking time.

Jenny Odell, author of “Saving Time” and “How to Do Nothing,” lives in Oakland and draws inspiration for her writing from Bay Area landscapes. (Courtesy Chani Bockwinkel.)

By Kate Bradshaw

This story was first published in The Mercury News on Sept. 11, 2023.

Oakland author, artist and former Stanford instructor Jenny Odell is perhaps best known for her 2019 best seller, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” which was named one of the best books of the year by Time, The New Yorker, NPR and more.

Her newest, “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock” (Random House, $29), delivers its messages as a series of Bay Area road trip vignettes peppered with historical, contemporary and pop culture references. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from Aristotle to Netflix’s “I Think You Should Leave,” she traces how we came to think of time as money and how to find new ways of experiencing time — and what’s at stake if we don’t.

Full story here.