Making Friends Fast

The event was full and the audience mostly female. The male loneliness epidemic was briefly mentioned and discussed. In her book, Bad Friend, Tiffany Watt Smith writes about friendship from a fascinating female historic perspective. In The Radical Power of Killing Time, Sheila Liming writes more generally about friendship and its power and importance in all of our lives.

During a recent addition to their Salon Series, at the Toronto Reference Library, Toronto Public Library asked you to ponder the question of “how to make and keep friends”? Watt Smith and Liming, were interviewed by Canadian culture writer, and hilarious, Scaachi Koul. If you got there early you even had the chance to engage in some radical acts of making friends yourself through a pre-event of games and crafting.

Through humour, examples and references to their work the discussion focused on modern friendships. There were no easy answers and the final takeaway was that friendships are important aspects of our lives that require some effort on all of our parts. Liming suggested that we “take some time” and Watt Smith suggested that we shouldn’t be afraid to “be first” and take the initiative when wanting to make a new friend.

The discussion will be posted online on the Toronto Public Library’s YouTube channel and both books are available at the library.