Hanging out is to be in the moment, to become engaged with our less-than-perfect, or maybe just-perfect lives, without feeling constrained by the demands of work. Hanging out is discouraged by a constant engagement with social media and the digital world.

Sheila Liming frames her enjoyable book through a series of personal experiences interspersed with examples and relevant comments from literature, philosophy and cultural studies writing. She encourages us to see hanging out as giving ourselves over to whatever may happen, and that may involve challenging, awkward, and messy moments. Importantly, there is also the opportunity to move beyond those moments to a better understanding of ourselves and others. She shares experiences of loneliness in crowds, arguments between old friends, the pleasures of hanging out with the like-minded (in her case, musicians), and times when she’s had an awareness that she’s hanging out with someone who either actually doesn’t like her, or is no longer a friend. There is no disappearing into perfect Instagrammable moments or busy-busy work emails: hanging out is experiencing life with the challenges and pleasures of reality.

The author’s experience of Covid and lockdowns will resonate with the majority, but interestingly, it made me aware that I am of an older generation, and I hung out a lot before social media. I reflected that in my young adulthood, the values and ways of being that much social media promotes would have been regarded as highly uncool.

I continued to hang out during Covid – with my partner, with myself, with nature and, yes, a little bit online. I need to hang out to stay sane, to stay grounded, to stay connected to things and people in ways that can never be supplied by anything other than being in the moment – I feel we all do, so I highly recommend this book.