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A reading resolution for 2024: More hangout books!
A friend and I are both writing our first novels. When we were first discussing our ideas, I said, “I just wanna write a hangout book, you know? The kind of book that you love because it’s a world that you want to hang out in for a while, and that you go back to whenever you want that feeling.” Then we spent like the next 15 minutes talking about our favorite hangout books.
If you’re not clear on the concept, think about your favorite comfort TV shows. Mine currently are Ted Lasso, Parks and Recreation, and the HGTV series Home Town. Not because I’m fascinated by Premier League football, local bureaucracy, or home renovations in small-town Mississippi. I just really love the world those shows create, a mixture of comforting familiarity, entertaining characters, and — most importantly but most underappreciated — a sense of just…general competence. As Rebecca Makkai (author of I Have Some Questions For You, which is great but way too creepy to be a hangout book) said in an interview with the New York Times last year, “I want to read about people who like their work, people whose work isn’t a grind holding them back from self-actualization.”
Hangout books are basically the same thing, just in that more immersive way that a good book pulls you into its world. Like my comfort TV shows, these don’t even have to be worlds I’d really want…
