The Flaneur And His City

Download The Flaneur And His City full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Flaneur And His City ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

The Flaneur

Author : Edmund White
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1632866285
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (328 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Flaneur by : Edmund White

Download or read book The Flaneur written by Edmund White and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through city streets in search of adventure and fulfillment. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. In the hands of the learned White, a walk through Paris is both a tour of its lush, sometimes prurient history, and an evocation of the city's spirit. The Flaneur leads us to bookshops and boutiques, monuments and palaces, giving us a glimpse the inner human drama. Along the way we learn everything from the latest debates among French lawmakers to the juicy details of Colette's life. Originally published as part of Bloomsbury's Writer and the City series, this book has sold consistently over the years, and will find a whole new audience in paperback.

Flâneuse

Author : Lauren Elkin
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374715890
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Flâneuse by : Lauren Elkin

Download or read book Flâneuse written by Lauren Elkin and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a “determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.” Virginia Woolf called it “street haunting”; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s New York. Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis. Called “deliciously spiky and seditious” by The Guardian, Flâneuse will inspire you to light out for the great cities yourself.

The Flâneur and His City

Author : Richard D. E. Burton
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 79 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (23 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Flâneur and His City by : Richard D. E. Burton

Download or read book The Flâneur and His City written by Richard D. E. Burton and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Walking in Berlin

Author : Franz Hessel
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262539667
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Walking in Berlin by : Franz Hessel

Download or read book Walking in Berlin written by Franz Hessel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of a lost classic that reinvents the flaneur in Berlin. Franz Hessel (1880–1941), a German-born writer, grew up in Berlin, studied in Munich, and then lived in Paris, where he moved in artistic and literary circles. His relationship with the fashion journalist Helen Grund was the inspiration for Henri-Pierre Roche's novel Jules et Jim (made into a celebrated 1962 film by Francois Truffaut). In collaboration with Walter Benjamin, Hessel reinvented the Parisian figure of the flaneur. This 1929 book—here in its first English translation—offers Hessel's version of a flaneur in Berlin. In Walking in Berlin, Hessel captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin, recording the seismic shifts in German culture. Nearly all of the essays take the form of a walk or outing, focusing on either a theme or part of the city, and many end at a theater, cinema, or club. Hessel deftly weaves the past with the present, walking through the city's history as well as its neighborhoods. Even today, his walks in the city, from the Alexanderplatz to Kreuzberg, can guide would-be flaneurs. Walking in Berlin is a lost classic, known mainly because of Hessel's connection to Benjamin but now introduced to readers of English. Walking in Berlin was a central model for Benjamin's Arcades Project and remains a classic of “walking literature” that ranges from Surrealist perambulation to Situationist “psychogeography.” This MIT Press edition includes the complete text in translation as well as Benjamin's essay on Walking in Berlin, originally written as a review of the book's original edition. “An absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.” —Walter Benjamin

The Flaneur (RLE Social Theory)

Author : Keith Tester
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317657276
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Flaneur (RLE Social Theory) by : Keith Tester

Download or read book The Flaneur (RLE Social Theory) written by Keith Tester and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timely and original, this collection of essays from the leading figures in their fields throws new and valuable light on the significance and future of flânerie. The flâneur is usually identified as the ‘man of the crowd’ of Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Baudelaire, and as one of the heroes of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. The flâneur’s activities of strolling and loitering are mentioned increasingly frequently in sociology, cultural studies and art history, but rarely is the debate developed further. The Flâneur is the first book to develop the debate beyond Baudelaire and Benjamin, and to push it in unexpected and exciting directions.

Flâneur

Author : Federico Castigliano
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781546942092
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Flâneur by : Federico Castigliano

Download or read book Flâneur written by Federico Castigliano and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An inspiring book for fl�neurs and Paris lovers. It transforms your walk around Paris into an exciting and memorable experience." A man walks the streets of Paris, alone and without a destination. He travels long avenues of great buildings, loses himself in the crowds at the Grands Magasins. Wrapped up in a black overcoat, he wanders the city restlessly. But what is he looking for? Where is he going? This book teaches you how lose yourself in the city: it contains stories of promenades and urban adventures, stories of dandies and fl�neurs... It contains information regarding characters, authors and artists who have wandered the streets of Paris. By reading these pages you will discover the secrets of fl�nerie, the noble art of wandering without a destination. About the Author. Federico Castigliano holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (University of Turin) and is Associate Professor of Italian Studies. Having worked for several years in France, he currently teaches at Beijing International Studies University. His writing combines nonfiction and fiction and centers on the relationship between the individual and urban spaces, thus exploring the possibilities of today's city. Website: federicocastigliano.com TABLE OF CONTENTS: Itineraries of fl�nerie (map) Instructions for reading this book Prologue - Into the street How to be a true fl�neur A day in the life of a fl�neur Once there was the fl�neur Getting lost Where to wander in Paris Drifting along the boulevards The ruins of Paris A dangerous game The city of tomorrow Shopping as one of the fine arts Paris spleen Epilogue - At the gate Memorandum for fl�neurs Bibliography

Walking on the Ceiling

Author : Aysegül Savas
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0525537430
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Walking on the Ceiling by : Aysegül Savas

Download or read book Walking on the Ceiling written by Aysegül Savas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Savaş] writes with both sensuality and coolness, as if determined to find a rational explanation for the irrationality of existence..." -- The New York Times "I fell in love with this book." -- Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation A mesmerizing novel set in Paris and a changing Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past and her complicated relationship with a famous British writer. After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother's silence and anger, her father's death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu's fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she's told to protect herself from her memories. A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman's coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can't escape.

The Art of Flaneuring

Author : Erika Owen
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1668012251
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (68 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Art of Flaneuring by : Erika Owen

Download or read book The Art of Flaneuring written by Erika Owen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun and practical guide to cultivating a more mindful and fulfilling everyday life by tapping into your inner flaneur—perfect for fans of Marie Kondo and The Little Book of Hygge. Have you ever been walking home from work and unexpectedly took a different path just to learn more about your neighborhood? Or have you been on a vacation and walked around a new city just to take it all in? Then chances are, you’re a flaneur and you didn’t even know it! Originally used to describe well-to-do French men who would stroll city streets in the nineteenth century, flaneur has evolved to generally mean someone who wanders with intention. Even if you’ve already embraced being a flaneur, did you know that flaneuring has benefits beyond satisfying your craving for wanderlust? In The Art of Flaneuring, discover the many ways flaneuring can spark creativity, support a more mindful mentality, and improve your overall well-being, including: -How flaneuring your mundane daily routine can boost your mental health -Why flaneuring isn’t just for jet-setters—you can flaneur anywhere! -How to manage your stress at the office by doing fun flaneur-inspired activities -How to use flaneuring to connect on a deeper level with your friends and partner -And so much more! With this practical and engaging guide, you can learn how to channel your inner flaneur and cultivate a more creative, fulfilling, and mindful everyday life.

To Walk Alone in the Crowd

Author : Antonio Muñoz Molina
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374720282
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis To Walk Alone in the Crowd by : Antonio Muñoz Molina

Download or read book To Walk Alone in the Crowd written by Antonio Muñoz Molina and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 Medici Prize for Foreign Novel From the award-winning author of the Man Booker Prize finalist Like a Fading Shadow, Antonio Muñoz Molina presents a flâneur-novel tracing the path of a nameless wanderer as he walks the length of Manhattan, and his mind. De Quincey, Baudelaire, Poe, Joyce, Benjamin, Melville, Lorca, Whitman . . . walkers and city dwellers all, collagists and chroniclers, picking the detritus of their eras off the filthy streets and assembling it into something new, shocking, and beautiful. In To Walk Alone in the Crowd, Antonio Muñoz Molina emulates these classic inspirations, following their peregrinations and telling their stories in a book that is part memoir, part novel, part chronicle of urban wandering. A skilled collagist himself, Muñoz Molina here assembles overheard conversations, subway ads, commercials blazing away on public screens, snatches from books hurriedly packed into bags or shoved under one’s arm, mundane anxieties, and the occasional true flash of insight—struggling to announce itself amid this barrage of data—into a poem of contemporary life: an invitation to let oneself be carried along by the sheer energy of the digital metropolis. A denunciation of the harsh noise of capitalism, of the conversion of everything into either merchandise or garbage (or both), To Walk Alone in the Crowd is also a celebration of the beauty and variety of our world, of the ecological and aesthetic gaze that can, even now, recycle waste into art, and provide an opportunity for rebirth.

AngloModern

Author : Janet Wolff
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801487422
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (874 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis AngloModern by : Janet Wolff

Download or read book AngloModern written by Janet Wolff and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a masterly book on the sociology of modernism, Janet Wolff explores work that was primarily realist and figurative and investigates the processes by which art fell by the wayside in the post-war period.

Paris

Author : William Albert Allard
Publisher : Whalen Studios Editions
ISBN 13 : 9781951511425
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (114 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Paris by : William Albert Allard

Download or read book Paris written by William Albert Allard and published by Whalen Studios Editions. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its historical grandeur to its metropolitan grit and stunning glamor, experience Paris through the lens of acclaimed photographer William Albert Allard, considered one of color photography’s most celebrated pioneers. Over the course of three decades, former Magnum photographer William Albert Allard has been returning to Paris and embodying the idea of the flâneur, the idle yet keen wandering observer. Paris is the stunning culmination of Allard walking through the City of Light in search of nothing and everything, those gloriously unexpected scenes that unknowingly carry the weight of the world, if only for a moment. Visit backstage at music events and fashion shows, admire the cavernous rooms of fine museums, stroll the meandering streets of the city’s neighborhoods, walk along the Seine, and spot lounging sunbathers, café patrons, and laborers with this masterful portraitist. Allard brings his personal voice and wonderful talent to this legendary city, revealing Paris in a personal, intimate way through the lens of his camera. Vibrant with color and rich with the details of human nature, this long out-of-print collection is now available again so viewers can marvel at both the work of a master photographer and the myriad poses struck by one of the world’s greatest cities. “To walk in Paris is to stroll through a never-ending series of one-act plays with ever changing, often beautiful, sets, populated by sometimes equally attractive characters on display.”—William Albert Allard Starting in 1964, Allard contributed to National Geographic magazine for 50 years, longer than any other single contributor. A pioneer of color documentary photography and a superb portraitist, Allard was credited early in his career with changing the look of National Geographic through his intimate work on the American subcultures of the Amish of Pennsylvania and the Hutterites of Montana. Allard has previously published six critically acclaimed books. His first, Vanishing Breed, photographs and writing about the American cowboy, published in 1981, was nominated for The American Book Award. Paris is the winner of the 5th edition of the Federation of European Professional Photographers (FEP) Book Prize Award.

The Dialectics of Seeing

Author : Susan Buck-Morss
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262521642
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (216 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Dialectics of Seeing by : Susan Buck-Morss

Download or read book The Dialectics of Seeing written by Susan Buck-Morss and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991-07-01 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Benjamin's magnum opus was a book he did not live to write. In The Dialectics of Seeing, Susan Buck-Morss offers an inventive reconstruction of the Passagen Werk, or Arcades Project, as it might have taken form. Working with Benjamin's vast files of citations and commentary which contain a myriad of historical details from the dawn of consumer culture, Buck-Morss makes visible the conceptual structure that gives these fragments philosophical coherence. She uses images throughout the book to demonstrate that Benjamin took the debris of mass culture seriously as the source of philosophical truth. The Paris Arcades that so fascinated Benjamin (as they did the Surrealists whose "materialist metaphysics" he admired) were the prototype, the 19th century "ur-form" of the modern shopping mall. Benjamin's dialectics of seeing demonstrate how to read these consumer dream houses and so many other material objects of the time—from air balloons to women's fashions, from Baudelaire's poetry to Grandville's cartoons—as anticipations of social utopia and, simultaneously, as clues for a radical political critique. Buck-Morss plots Benjamin's intellectual orientation on axes running east and west, north and south—Moscow Paris, Berlin-Naples—and shows how such thinking in coordinates can explain his understanding of "dialectics at a standstill." She argues for the continuing relevance of Benjamin's insights but then allows a set of "afterimages" to have the last word.

Urban Walking –The Flâneur as an Icon of Metropolitan Culture in Literature and Film

Author : Isabel Vila-Cabanes
Publisher : Vernon Press
ISBN 13 : 1648890563
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (488 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Urban Walking –The Flâneur as an Icon of Metropolitan Culture in Literature and Film by : Isabel Vila-Cabanes

Download or read book Urban Walking –The Flâneur as an Icon of Metropolitan Culture in Literature and Film written by Isabel Vila-Cabanes and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume assembles fresh treatments on the flâneur in literature, film and culture from a variety of angles. Its individual contributions cover established as well as previously unnoticed textual and filmic source materials in a historical perspective ranging from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The range of topics covered demonstrates the ongoing productivity of flânerie as a viable paradigm for the artistic approach to urban culture and the continuing suitability of flânerie as an analytic category for the scholarly examination of urban representation in the arts. This productiveness also extends to the questioning, re-evaluation, and enhancement of flânerie’s theoretical foundations as they were laid down by Walter Benjamin and others. The work will be particularly relevant for students and scholars of literary studies, film studies and gender studies, as well as for theoretical approaches to flânerie as an important aspect of urban culture.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Author : Kathleen Rooney
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1250113334
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by : Kathleen Rooney

Download or read book Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk written by Kathleen Rooney and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop. “In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,” Lillian Boxfish writes, “I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street...” She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, “in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.” Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now—her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl—but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed—and has not. Lillian figures she might as well take her time. For now, after all, the night is still young. “Transporting...witty, poignant and sparkling.” —People (People Picks Book of the Week)

Streetwalking the Metropolis : Women, the City and Modernity

Author : Deborah L. Parsons
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019158410X
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Streetwalking the Metropolis : Women, the City and Modernity by : Deborah L. Parsons

Download or read book Streetwalking the Metropolis : Women, the City and Modernity written by Deborah L. Parsons and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-03-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can there be a flaneuse, and what form might she take? This is the central question of Streetwalking the Metropolis, an important contribution to ongoing debates on the city and modernity in which Deborah Parsons re-draws the gendered map of urban modernism. Assessing the cultural and literary history of the concept of the flaneur, the urban observer/writer traditionally gendered as masculine, the author advances critical space for the discussion of a female 'flaneuse', focused around a range of women writers from the 1880's to World War Two. Cutting across period boundaries, this wide-ranging study offers stimulating accounts of works by writers including Amy Levy, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Rosamund Lehmann, Jean Rhys, Janet Flanner, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin, Elizabeth Bowen and Doris Lessing, highlighting women's changing relationship with the social and psychic spaces of the city, and drawing attention to the ways in which the perceptions and experiences of the street are translated into the dynamics of literary texts.

American Flaneur

Author : James Werner
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135879850
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis American Flaneur by : James Werner

Download or read book American Flaneur written by James Werner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-04-15 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Flaneur investigates the connections between Edgar A. Poe and the nineteenth-century flaneur - or strolling urban observer - suggested in Walter Benjamin's discussion of Baudelaire. This study illustrates the centrality of the flaneur to Poe's literary aims, and uses the flaneur to illuminate Poe's intimate yet ambivalent relationship to his surrounding culture. While James V. Werner concentrates on Poe's fiction, this book treats many areas of nineteenth-century intellectual and popular culture, including science and pseudo-science, the American magazine marketplace, urban topology, the grotesque, labyrinths, narratives of exploration and discovery, and cosmological treatises. Werner draws on Marxist, reader response and periodical theories while reconstructing Poe through examinations of ephemeral texts of the time.

The Book of Idle Pleasures

Author : Tom Hodgkinson
Publisher : Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0740785087
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (47 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Book of Idle Pleasures by : Tom Hodgkinson

Download or read book The Book of Idle Pleasures written by Tom Hodgkinson and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Doing Nothing meets The Dangerous Book for Boys in this charming celebration of simple delights. In The Book of Idle Pleasures, the United Kingdom's expert Idlers Tom Hodgkinson and Dan Kieran stand up for the simple pleasures in life . . . by lying down for a nap. With its tongue firmly in its cheek, The Book of Idle Pleasures renounces our world of ever-growing consumer overload in favor of the timelessly true adage that the best things in life really are free. Clever and sometimes all too true in its reflections on 100 simple pastimes--among them slouching, skipping stones, staring out the window, doodling, and, natch, taking a nap--The Book of Idle Pleasures is a charming celebration of simple pleasures for the sake of pleasure itself, making it a soothing antidote for our nonstop culture and an ideal restorative against the costly confusion of our daily existence.