Saturday, November 14 | 1:30 PM | Pallas Studio | 833 W Webster Ave
What if the answer to a fuller life isn’t doing more—but becoming a little less useful?
Join the Chicago Literary Salon for a special Saturday afternoon at Pallas Studio with writer Priyanka Mattoo, celebrating her delightfully funny and deeply perceptive new book, How to Be Less Useful.
Described by Samantha Irby as “a hilarious chillout manual for cool people who want to be more than their appointments and obligations,” How to Be Less Useful begins with a realization that may feel uncomfortably familiar:
“I have done everything right, and I have missed everything.”
Somewhere in the deep end of adulthood, life can become an endless exercise in efficiency. We optimize our schedules, answer the texts, make the appointments, perform the invisible labor, and keep everything moving—while the things that once made life feel expansive and fun quietly fall away. Naps. Dessert. Sweaty dancing. Pretty underwear. Lingering with friends for no particular reason at all.
In How to Be Less Useful, Mattoo asks what might happen if we stopped treating every hour as something that needs to be productive. Blending memoir, humor, and an unconventional kind of self-help, she explores pleasure, friendship, partnership, parenthood, and the small acts of rebellion that can make us feel more present in our own lives.
Over an intimate afternoon at Pallas Studio, we’ll talk with Priyanka about stepping out of the grind without burning your life down, why pleasure deserves a place on the calendar, the strange ways adulthood drains the fun out of things we once loved, and what it means to choose joy simply because it feels good—not because it accomplishes anything.
And because an event about being less useful shouldn’t feel like another obligation, expect an afternoon designed for lingering: good conversation, delicious food and drinks, and the particular pleasure of spending a few hours with other readers without needing to accomplish a thing.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A delightful book about reclaiming pleasure in mid-life—a potent mix of self-help and memoir, from one of today’s wittiest, wisest voices.
With self-deprecating humor, devastating insight, and bracing honesty, Priyanka Mattoo considers where pleasure begins, what it serves, and why so many of us gradually edit it out of our lives. From karaoke and Paddington Bear to pointless hangs and unnecessary acts of labor, How to Be Less Useful makes a sparkling case for becoming happier, lighter, more present, and more engaged.
Your ticket includes:
An intimate conversation with Priyanka Mattoo
A copy of How to Be Less Useful from Three Avenues Bookshop
Tea, pastries, and cookies at Pallas Studio
Time to mingle, connect, and linger
Book signing with Priyanka following the conversation
Come spend a Saturday afternoon doing something wonderfully inefficient.
No optimizing. No multitasking. No making yourself useful. Just good food, good conversation, a very good book—and a few hours devoted entirely to pleasure.