HOW TO BE IDLE

There are few literary pleasures that can top sitting idly in a comfortable chair reading HOW TO BE IDLE. With chapter titles like "Sleeping In," "The Hangover," "The Idle Home," "Sex and Idleness," and "Sleep," Tom Hodgkinson writes eloquently in defense of idleness, which he sees not as a vice but as a much-needed antidote to the addiction to work that, he claims, plagues Western cultures. In his supremely English way, Hodgkinson argues for the joy of doing nothing, and marshals other writers in his noble cause, among them Oscar Wilde and Samuel Johnson. Complete with line drawings of people in various stages of idleness, HOW TO BE IDLE can be a valuable tool for the overworked, overscheduled, and overstressed.