Download or read book Seven Pleasures written by Willard Spiegelman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiegelman takes a look at the possibilities for achieving ordinary happiness without recourse to either religion or drugs. In this erudite and frequently hilarious book of essays, he discusses seven activities that lead naturally and easily to a sense of well-being.
Download or read book Seven Pleasures written by Willard Spiegelman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be happy? Americans have had an obsession with "the pursuit of happiness" ever since the Founding Fathers enshrined it—along with life and liberty—as our national birthright. Whether it means the accumulation of wealth or a more vaguely understood notion of self-fulfillment or self-actualization, happiness has been an inevitable, though elusive, goal. But it is hard to separate "real" happiness from the banal self-help version that embraces mindless positive thinking. And though we have two booming "happiness industries"—religion, with its promise of salvation, and psychopharmacology, with its promise of better living through chemistry—each comes with its own problems and complications. In Seven Pleasures, Willard Spiegelman takes a look at the possibilities for achieving ordinary secular happiness without recourse to either religion or drugs. In this erudite and frequently hilarious book of essays, he discusses seven activities that lead naturally and easily to a sense of well-being. One of these—dancing—requires a partner, and therefore provides a lesson in civility, or good citizenship, as one of its benefits. The other six—reading, walking, looking, listening, swimming, and writing—are things one performs alone. Seven Pleasures is a marvelously engaging guide to the pursuit of happiness, and all its accompanying delights.
Download or read book Wicked Pleasures written by Robert C. Solomon and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000-12-20 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seven deadly sins have provided gossip, amusement, and the plots of morality plays for nearly fifteen hundred years. In Wicked Pleasures, well-known philosopher, business ethicist, and admitted sinner Robert C. Solomon brings together a varied group of contributors for a new look at the old catalogue of sins. Solomon introduces the sins as a group, noting their popularity and pervasiveness. From the formation of the canon by Pope Gregory the Great, the seven have survived the sermonizing of the Reformation, the Inquisition, the Enlightenment, the brief French reign of supreme reason, the apotheoses of capitalism, communism, secular humanism and postmodernism, the writings of numerous rabbis and evangelical moralists, two series in the New York Times, and several bad movies. Taking their cue from this remarkable history, the contributors, including Thomas Pynchon, allowed one sin apiece, provide a non-sermonizing and relatively light-hearted romp through the domain of the deadly seven.
Download or read book Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living written by Roger Housden and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2005-12-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Conventional wisdom,” says Roger Housden, “tells us that nobody goes to heaven for having a good time.” Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living, then, is a refreshing, liberating, and decidedly welcome dose of unconventional wisdom that awakens us to the simple delights and transformative joys of the world around us. With elegance, gentle humor, and remarkable openness, Housden takes us along as he recalls his personal journey toward an appreciation of what he calls the Seven Pleasures: The Pleasure of All Five Senses, The Pleasure of Being Foolish,The Pleasure of Not Knowing, The Pleasure of Not Being Perfect, The Pleasure of Doing Nothing Useful, The Pleasure of Being Ordinary, and The Pleasure of Coming Home. Housden writes, for instance, of submitting to the ultimate folly of falling in love, of celebrating our imperfections, of coming to understand the virtues of the Slow Food movement while enjoying an all-afternoon lunch in a small French village, and of discovering in a Saharan cave that, however extraordinary our surroundings, “we are human, a glorious nothing much to speak of”—and learning to be at peace with the notion. Such pleasures may be suspect in today’s achievement-driven, tightly scheduled, relent-lessly self-improving, conspicuously consumptive culture, but surely the greater sin lies in letting them slip away moment by precious moment. “The purpose of this book,” says Housden, “is to inspire you to lighten up and fall in love with the world and all that is in it.” Reading it is a pleasure indeed. “When you die,God and the angels will hold you accountablefor all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.” Roger Housden, author of the bestselling Ten Poems series, presents a joyously affirmative, warmly personal, and spiritually illuminating meditation on the virtues of opening ourselves up to pleasures like being foolish, not being perfect, and doing nothing useful, the pleasure of not knowing, and even (would you believe it?) the pleasure of being ordinary.
Download or read book Small Pleasures written by Clare Chambers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. "With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape. That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life. Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences. Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.
Download or read book The Seven Sources of Pleasure in Life written by Luciano L'Abate and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prolific author Luciano L'Abate, PhD, ABEPP, examines at all kinds of pleasures, investigating where we find them, why they appeal to us, and what benefits they provide in terms of both mental and physical health."--Publisher description.
Download or read book ENYA written by Chilly Gonzales and published by Rough Trade Books. This book was released on 2020-11-18 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chilly Gonzales is one of the most exciting, original, hard-to-pin-down musicians of our time. Filling halls worldwide at the piano in his slippers and a bathrobe—in any one night he can be dissecting the musicology of an Oasis hit, giving a sublime solo recital, and displaying his lyrical dexterity as a rapper. In his book about Enya, he asks: Does music have to be smart or does it just have to go to the heart? In dazzling, erudite prose Gonzales delves beyond her innumerable gold discs and millions of fans to excavate his own enthusiasm for Enya's singular music as well as the mysterious musician herself, and along the way uncovers new truths about the nature of music, fame, success and the artistic endeavour.
Download or read book The Seven Sources of Pleasure in Life written by Luciano L'Abate and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a seemingly simple and absolutely essential topic: learning how to enjoy every aspect of your life on a daily basis. All of us look for happiness, well-being, and positivity throughout our lives, but for most people these goals are abstract and the processes established to achieve them ambiguous. The Seven Sources of Pleasure in Life: Making Way for the Upside in the Midst of Modern Demands focuses attention upon the concrete, specific, and everyday sources of pleasure that are within the grasp of almost everyone. Prolific author Luciano L'Abate, PhD, ABEPP, examines at all kinds of pleasures, investigating where we find them, why they appeal to us, and what benefits they provide in terms of both mental and physical health. He explains how to increase our sensitivity to everyday opportunities for pleasure, and then gives tangible techniques to focus upon these moments in order to fully experience them. The author employs personal memories from his childhood in Italy, more recent stories from his travels abroad, and the findings of most recent scientific research on the benefits of pleasure-seeking to further illustrate his points.
Download or read book Automatic Pleasures written by Nic Costa and published by D'Aleman Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has stood the test of time. Copies of the first edition have over the years regularly sold for many times the cover price. The full color book is once more in print. Since its original publication it has been cited in many academic papers and has since become the definitive work on the subject. It caused embarrassment to the huge American coin machine industry when it was first published in 1988- they were busy celebrating the centenary of the Juke Box in that year as an American invention whereas the book revealed that it was actually an earlier British invention. It awoke huge interest in Japan by giving them long sought answers as to the origins of the Pachinko machine (which at the time was consuming as much as a quarter of the gross domestic product in Japan). As a direct result of the book a new museum was established in the Japanese city of Kobe and for a short while the author became a national celebrity there. The book established many new facts and destroyed many of the myths that had arisen in the gaming industry during the 20th century. Originally an ancient Greek invention, the advent of the coin machine in the 19th century heralded a Victorian revolution which sought to establish a fully automated society. The visionaries of the past are the direct forbears of the all pervasive computer industries -without the gaming and coin machine industries it is doubtful as to whether today's computer dominated age would have ever happened. Most important of all, it is fun to read!
Download or read book Thrilled to Death written by Archibald D. Hart and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2007-09-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the profound loss of pleasure in our daily lives and the seven steps for restoring it. Pleasure. We know what it feels like and many of us spend our days trying to experience it. But can too much pleasure actually be bad for us? Yes, says Dr. Archibald Hart, clinical psychologist and expert in behavorial psychology. Backed by recent brain-imaging research, Dr. Hart shares that to some extent, our pursuit of extreme and overstimulating thrills hijacks our pleasure system and robs us of our ability to experience pleasure in simple things. We are literally being thrilled to death. In this insightful book, Dr. Hart explores the stark rise in a phenomenon known as anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure or happiness. Previously linked only to serious emotional disorders, anhedonia is now seen as a contributing factor in depression (specifically nonsadness depression) and in the growing number of people who complain of profound boredom. This emotional numbness and loss of joy are results of the overuse of our brain's pleasure circuits. In Thrilled to Death, Dr. Hart explains the processes of the brain's pleasure center, the damaging trends of overindulgence and overstimulation, the signs and problems of anhedonia, and the seven important steps we must take to recover our wonderful joy in living.
Download or read book Midnight Pleasures written by Eloisa James and published by Dell Publishing Company. This book was released on 2009 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in these specially priced editions, these two classic romances by "New York Times"-bestselling author James are sure to delight her legions of devoted fans. Reissue.
Download or read book Lust written by Simon Blackburn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-02-12 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lust, says Simon Blackburn, is furtive, headlong, always sizing up opportunities. It is a trail of clothing in the hallway, the trashy cousin of love. But be that as it may, the aim of this delightful book is to rescue lust "from the denunciations of old men of the deserts, to deliver it from the pallid and envious confessor and the stocks and pillories of the Puritans, to drag it from the category of sin to that of virtue." Blackburn, author of such popular philosophy books as Think and Being Good, here offers a sharp-edged probe into the heart of lust, blending together insight from some of the world's greatest thinkers on sex, human nature, and our common cultural foibles. Blackburn takes a wide ranging, historical approach, discussing lust as viewed by Aristophanes and Plato, lust in the light of the Stoic mistrust of emotion, and the Christian fear of the flesh that catapulted lust to the level of deadly sin. He describes how philosophical pessimists like Schopenhauer and Sartre contributed to our thinking about lust and explores the false starts in understanding lust represented by Freud, Kinsey, and modern "evolutionary psychology." But most important, Blackburn reminds us that lust is also life-affirming, invigorating, fun. He points to the work of David Hume (Blackburn's favorite philosopher) who saw lust not only as a sensual delight but also "a joy of the mind." Written by one of the most eminent living philosophers, attractively illustrated and colorfully packaged, Lust is a book that anyone would lust over.
Download or read book The Ultimate Happiness Prescription written by Deepak Chopra, M.D. and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2009-11-17 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Deepak Chopra shares the spiritual practices that will help us to uncover the true secrets of joy in the most difficult times. Happiness is something everyone desires. Yet how to find happiness—or even if we deserve to—remains a mystery. The goal of life is the expansion of happiness, but today’s society reinforces the belief that fulfillment comes from achieving success, wealth, and good relationships. Chopra tells us that the opposite is true: All success in life is the by-product of happiness, not the cause. In this book, Chopra shows us seven keys for a life based on a sense of your “true self” lying beyond the ebb and flow of daily living. Simple daily exercises can lead to eliminating the root causes of unhappiness and help you to: • Recognize real happiness and not settle for less • Find true self-esteem, which doesn’t depend on anything outside you • Return to the state of joy, peace, and spontaneous fulfillment that is your natural birthright • Focus on the present and learn to live it fully • Experience enlightenment After all avenues to happiness have been explored, only one path is left: the journey to enlightenment. In The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, we are taken on an inspiring journey to learn the secrets for living mindfully and with effortless spontaneity for the true self, the only place untouched by trouble and misfortune.
Download or read book Deadly Pleasures written by Martin Edwards and published by Severn House Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To celebrate the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Jubilee, a collection of original stories from distinguished members of the CWA especially commissioned for this volume An eclectic collection of short stories from the following members of the CWA: SIMON BRETT ANN CLEEVES LIZA CODY LINDSEY DAVIS MARTIN EDWARDS RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS CHRISTOPHER FOWLER JOHN HARVEY DAVID HEWSON ALISON JOSEPH PETER LOVESEY CLAIRE McGOWAN MICHAEL RIDPATH PETER ROBINSON CATH STAINCLIFFE ANDREW TAYLOR CHARLES TODD MARGARET YORKE
Download or read book The Pleasures of Counting written by Thomas William Körner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-12-05 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the connection between the outbreak of cholera in Victorian Soho, the Battle of the Atlantic, African Eve and the design of anchors? One answer is that they are all examples chosen by Dr Tom Körner to show how a little mathematics can shed light on the world around us, and deepen our understanding of it. Dr Körner, an experienced author, describes a variety of topics which continue to interest professional mathematicians, like him. He does this using relatively simple terms and ideas, yet confronting difficulties (which are often the starting point for new discoveries) and avoiding condescension. If you have ever wondered what it is that mathematicians do, and how they go about it, then read on. If you are a mathematician wanting to explain to others how you spend your working days (and nights), then seek inspiration here.
Download or read book Nicomachean Ethics written by Aristotle and published by SDE Classics. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Big Seven written by Jim Harrison and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Great Leader and Legends of the Fall: a retired detective confronts the sins of man in rural Michigan. In The Great Leader, Mark Twain Award–winning author Jim Harrison introduced readers to the hard-drinking, nearly-retired Detective Sunderson. In this darkly comic follow-up, Sunderson takes stock of his past, while his outlaw neighbors bring new havoc to his doorstep. To flee his troubles, Detective Sunderson buys a hunting cabin in a remote area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But with neighbors like the Ames family, there is no peace to be found. Armed to the teeth, the Ameses have local law enforcement too intimidated to take them on. Then Sunderson’s cleaning lady, a comely young Ames woman, is murdered, and black sheep brother Lemuel Ames seeks Sunderson’s advice on a crime novel he’s writing which may not be fiction. In a story shot through with wit, bedlam, and Sunderson’s contemplation of the seven deadly sins, The Big Seven is a superb reminder of why Jim Harrison is “one of the finest writers of the past half-century” (The Washington Times).
