Tuesday 19 February 2008

Books can always be a small pleasure


Unless you are like me and like really expensive books! Long live Half Price Books. There's nothing I loved- notice the past tense here- than spending a nice Sunday afternoon looking for gorgeous coffee table books at the Salvation Army or Half Price. Those days are sadly over for now. Living in London has reduced this once highly pleasurable and might I add educational hobby to well.....nothing. So sad. I think I've only purchased one book the entire time I have been here. Due to my deterministic spirit I have not let this get in my way completely. I've just had to get a bit creative and bit less picky about what I read.

There was one Sunday afternoon where I was feeling particularly homesick for my book purchasing ritual and decided to poke around my flat to see what I could find for a good read. The results were pretty dismal. Believe it or not I wasn't very interested in David Hasselholff's autobiography or a book about Cricket.

True confession... I ended up reading that David Hasselholff book in sheer desperation, but the book goes down easier once you've had a few bottles of wine and have decided that you just don't care anymore.

This leads me to a book that I would like to recommend. However I haven't read it and I can't say if it is any good and while I was searching for a bit of information about this book I came across another blogger who wrote about it much better than I could ever dream to- or want to. Check it out here at this other guy's blog.


I was leafing through the Economist, an excellent periodical and I highly suggest that you all get a subscription. It is one of those brilliant magazines that can make the big idiot look like they know what's going on in the world. Trust me I am living proof.

So, I was leafing through the Economist and I saw a little blurb about a book that was suggesting that all this hype about being happy and the art of happiness was maybe a bit rubbish. The book "
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy" is the name, looks like a delightful read.

How is this a small pleasure, lest I forget to come full circle. It's pretty cheap, 13.00 dollars isn't bad for a book that has been mentioned in the Economist.

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