Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

Ever wonder why we are all so obsessed with productivity even as the planet feels like it’s ending? Odell provides a fantastic meditation on how our rigid clock-time is a tool of colonial domination rather than a natural law. I found the sections on 'moss time' and 'geological time' deeply moving and strangely comforting in an era of constant climate anxiety. Truth be told, it’s not an easy read and the academic depth might alienate some, but the payoff is a radical reimagining of the future. She successfully argues that time isn't just money; it's a shared social fabric we can actually re-weave if we try. This is a vital, hopeful assault on modern nihilism.

Wow. This is probably the most important thing I’ve read this year regarding my own mental well-being and climate dread. Odell doesn't just diagnose the problem of late-stage capitalism; she offers a different way to inhabit the world. By looking at 'moss time' and the rhythms of the natural world, she reminds us that the future isn't deterministic. I love the idea of 'gardening' time rather than hoarding it like a resource. Personally, I didn't find the structure messy; it felt more like the very rhizomatic growth she describes throughout the chapters. It’s a dense, beautiful, and deeply sincere work of art that demands your full attention.

Picked this up expecting a self-help guide on time management, but what I got was a dense intellectual exercise on the nature of existence. Odell deconstructs the 'work and refreshment' cycle of capitalism with surgical precision. I loved the way she connected the Protestant work ethic to our current burnout culture. To be fair, the book is quite sprawling and could have benefited from a much tighter edit to keep the momentum going. Still, the core message about stepping down from the ambition ladder is something I’ll be thinking about for a long time. It’s a challenging read that rewards patience with genuine shifts in perspective.

Finally got around to this, and it’s basically my exact aesthetic in book form. Who else is going to reference a Tim Robinson sketch and the climate crisis in the same breath? The way she explores alternative perceptions of time in marginalized communities is exactly the kind of radical hope we need right now. I’ll admit the structure is a bit elliptical and some of the points feel a little tired if you’ve been on 'Left Twitter' lately. But as a panoramic look at how we might reclaim our lives from the clock, it’s undeniably powerful. It’s a book that asks you to be more alive in the present moment.

As someone who struggles with the constant pressure to optimize every waking second, this was the balm I needed. Odell’s critique of the 'experience economy' hit me right where it hurts. We’ve turned even our leisure into a form of work, and this book is a loud, poetic 'no' to that trend. The connections she draws between colonial history and modern time management are eye-opening and deeply researched. Look, it’s a heavy lift and you’ll probably need your notes app open the whole time. But if you want to understand why you feel so tired and how we might start to fix it, buy this book. It’s a masterpiece of modern social critique.

To be blunt, this is not an easy book to get through, but it is worth the effort. It’s a collage of quotes that occasionally makes your brain feel like it’s short-circuiting from the sheer volume of information. Reading it feels like scrolling through the library of a very anxious, very brilliant philosopher who is trying to save the world. While there is no traditional narrative, the sea of references creates a vivid picture of our broken relationship with the clock. I wanted a book that challenged me, and this delivered, even if the lack of a cohesive thesis made the experience feel like a chore at times. It’s a dense, necessary dive into why we are so burned out.

After hearing so much buzz about this follow-up, I found myself stuck in a bit of a love-hate relationship with the text. There is no denying that Odell is brilliant, but the book suffers from a serious lack of a central thesis. You’re essentially swimming through a sea of references to art, philosophy, and ecology without a life jacket. Some parts, like the discussion of 'crip time' and the history of plantation accounting, are absolutely mind-blowing. However, other sections feel like a rambling stream of consciousness that goes nowhere slowly. It’s thought-provoking, sure, but the readability is a major hurdle for anyone not already steeped in leftist theory.

The chapter on the history of the clock was fascinating, but the rest of the book felt like a series of disparate thoughts. As someone who enjoyed her previous work, I was disappointed by how unfocused this felt. The writing is beautiful at times, yet the 'temporal weirdness' she describes often bleeds too much into the narrative structure itself. You end up with a lot of interesting quotes from better books without a strong enough thread to pull them all together. It’s a good time capsule for the pandemic era, but maybe not the definitive work on time I was hoping for. It’s an okay read if you have the patience for academic wandering.

This book felt more like a curated Twitter thread than a cohesive piece of non-fiction. While I appreciated the anti-capitalist sentiment, the structure is essentially a collage of other people's brilliance without much original synthesis to hold it together. Odell relies so heavily on quotes that it becomes an exhausting, too-rich experience that left my mind feeling cluttered. Frankly, the constant privilege-checking and 'please don't cancel me' tone felt defensive and distracting from the actual message about time. I loved her first book, but this one lacks that same grounding and clarity. It’s a 400-page bibliography disguised as a manifesto.

Not what I expected after the relative accessibility of 'How to Do Nothing.' This book is an absolute mess of intellectual fodder that feels performative rather than insightful. Odell seems paralyzed by a fear of being misunderstood, leading to constant, clunky interruptions to check her own privilege. The anecdote about the dead bird and the 'stinging sight' was where she truly lost me. It’s okay to feel things without a five-page disclaimer about your social standing! I agree with her politics, but the delivery is so fragmented and exhausted that it’s hard to stay engaged. Just read the bibliography and skip the actual commentary.