{
    "id": 340936,
    "slug": "art-of-the-wasted-day",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "Art of the wasted day",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "\"A sharp and unconventional book - a swirl of memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history's champion day-dreamers.\" -Maureen Corrigan, \"Fresh Air\"<br></br><br></br>A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream<br></br><br></br>The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of \"retirement\" in rural Wales.  Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne--the hero of this book--who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.  <br></br><br></br>Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love--and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry.  Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life. <br></br><br></br>The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.",
    "additional_content": null,
    "bestseller_60": null,
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 288,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2019-04-16",
    "publication_date_latest": "2019-04-16",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [
        {
            "isbn": "9780143132882",
            "product_form": "BC"
        }
    ],
    "ratings_count": 0,
    "read_count": 0,
    "review_count": 0,
    "favorite_count": 0,
    "reading_status_read_count": 0,
    "reading_status_reading_count": 0,
    "reading_status_want_to_read_count": 0,
    "rating_average": null,
    "ratings_distribution": {
        "1": 0,
        "2": 0,
        "3": 0,
        "4": 0,
        "5": 0
    },
    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:23:37+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-11-05T00:28:33+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4179,
        "slug": "penguin-us",
        "name": "Penguin US",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:08:37+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:10:59+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [
        {
            "scheme_identifier": "32",
            "scheme_version": null,
            "main_subject": false,
            "subject_code": "321",
            "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:23:37+00:00",
            "updated_at": "2025-09-19T13:23:37+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "tags": [],
    "campaigns": []
}