The Tyranny of Pleasure

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Author :
Publisher : Algora Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1892941058
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (929 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tyranny of Pleasure by : Jean Claude Guillebaud

Download or read book The Tyranny of Pleasure written by Jean Claude Guillebaud and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative book stands our sixties' liberation on its head, taking an inventory of its unintended side-effects.--Le Nouvel Quotidien. (Philosophy)

How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book Two

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Author :
Publisher : Vernon Press
ISBN 13 : 1622734165
Total Pages : 1034 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (227 download)

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Book Synopsis How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book Two by : Jon Knowles

Download or read book How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book Two written by Jon Knowles and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2019-03-31 with total page 1034 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ghosts that haunt our sexual pleasure were born in the Stone Age. Sex and gender taboos were used by tribes to differentiate themselves from one another. These taboos filtered into the lives of Bronze and Iron Age men and women who lived in city-states and empires. For the early Christians, all sex play was turned into sin, instilled with guilt, and punished severely. With the invention of sin came the construction of women as subordinate beings to men. Despite the birth of romance in the late middle ages, Renaissance churches held inquisitions to seek out and destroy sex sinners, all of whom it saw as heretics. The Age of Reason saw the demise of these inquisitions. But, it was doctors who would take over the roles of priests and ministers as sex became defined by discourses of crime, degeneracy, and sickness. The middle of the 20th century saw these medical and religious teachings challenged for the first time as activists, such as Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, sought to carve out a place for sexual freedom in society. However, strong opposition to their beliefs and the growing exploitation of sex by the media at the close of the century would ultimately shape 21st century sexual ambivalence. Book Two of this two-part publication traces the history of sex from the Victorian Era to present day. Interspersed with ‘personal hauntings’ from his own life and the lives of friends and relatives, Knowles reveals how historical discourses of sex continue to haunt us today. This book is a page-turner in simple and plain language about ‘how sex got screwed up’ for millennia. For Knowles, if we know the history of sex, we can get over it.

The Pleasure Zone

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Author :
Publisher : Conari Press
ISBN 13 : 9781573241502
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (415 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pleasure Zone by : Stella Resnick

Download or read book The Pleasure Zone written by Stella Resnick and published by Conari Press. This book was released on 1998-12-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the eight core pleasures--primal pleasure, pain relief, the pleasures of play and humor, and mental, emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual pleasure--and how they can enrich one's life

Theories of Tyranny

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Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 9780271044057
Total Pages : 508 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Theories of Tyranny by : Roger Boesche

Download or read book Theories of Tyranny written by Roger Boesche and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ch. 10 (pp. 381-454), "Fromm, Neumann, and Arendt: Three Early Interpretations of Nazi Germany", discusses the views of Franz Neumann and Hannah Arendt on Nazi antisemitism. Neumann, in his "Behemoth" (1942), stated that the Nazis needed a fictitious enemy in order to unify the completely atomized German society into one large "Volksgemeinschaft". The terrorization of Jews was a prototype of the terror to be used against other peoples. Arendt contends in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) that it was imperialism which brought about Nazism, Nazi antisemitism, and the Holocaust. Totalitarianism is nothing but imperialism which came home. Insofar as imperialism transcends national boundaries, racism may be very helpful for it, because racism proposes another principle to define the enemy. Jews and other ethnic groups (e.g. Slavs) became easy targets as groups whose claims clashed with those of the expanding German nation. Terror is the essence of totalitarianism, and extermination camps were necessary for the Nazis to prove the omnipotence of their regime and their capability of total domination.

Unforbidden Pleasures

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374712719
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Unforbidden Pleasures by : Adam Phillips

Download or read book Unforbidden Pleasures written by Adam Phillips and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written of the forbidden pleasures. But what of the "unforbidden" pleasures? Unforbidden Pleasures is the singular new book from Adam Phillips, the author of Missing Out, Going Sane, and On Balance. Here, with his signature insight and erudition, Phillips takes Oscar Wilde as a springboard for a deep dive into the meanings and importance of the unforbidden, from the fall of our "first parents," Adam and Eve, to the work of the great psychoanalytic thinkers. Forbidden pleasures, he argues, are the ones we tend to think about, yet when you look into it, it is probable that we get as much pleasure, if not more, from unforbidden pleasures than from those that are taboo. And we may have underestimated just how restricted our restrictiveness, in thrall to the forbidden and its rules, may make us. An ambitious book that speaks to the precariousness of modern life, Unforbidden Pleasures explores the philosophical, psychological, and social dynamics that govern human desire and shape our everyday reality.

On Tyranny

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022603352X
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis On Tyranny by : Leo Strauss

Download or read book On Tyranny written by Leo Strauss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Tyranny is Leo Strauss’s classic reading of Xenophon’s dialogue Hiero, or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. Included are a translation of the dialogue from its original Greek, a critique of Strauss’s commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, and the complete correspondence between the two. This revised and expanded edition introduces important corrections throughout and expands Strauss’s restatement of his position in light of Kojève’s commentary to bring it into conformity with the text as it was originally published in France.

The Book of Pleasures

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (113 download)

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Book Synopsis The Book of Pleasures by : Raoul Vaneigem

Download or read book The Book of Pleasures written by Raoul Vaneigem and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Tyranny of Perfection

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781734541007
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tyranny of Perfection by : Michael Demkovich

Download or read book The Tyranny of Perfection written by Michael Demkovich and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trust is vital in so many dimension of our private and public life. But why? Well, it is first and foremost about believing. It is a primary attitude one person shows toward another. Before we even learn to understand, our first condition is that of vulnerability which demands trust. Every helpless infant must trust in the good of humanity. Trust, we learn, can be given to persons and things, to an individual or a community, to an ideal, or to an object. It indicates a sense of reliability that both fashions and upholds the relationship. It also names the truth of the relationship, a genuine honesty of things. It can also speak to us of the abilities of another person or of things as trustworthy. That is the question this first in a trilogy on trust explores. It raises for us the question of a kind of default suspicion in society, a trend to assume the negative. Each work in the trilogy will explore the sources of suspicion, the deep seated absolute distrust of all pleasure, wealth, and power regardless of virtuous or noble purpose. The philosophical genesis of this suspicion can be found in the thought of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Together they have been called the "Masters of Suspicion" by Paul Ricoeur for their negative presuppositions in all interpretation. And yet, trust is perhaps as critical to our environment as are clean air and clean water. A climate of trust is vital to human flourishing and skepticism is like a poison that destroys a community's ability to risk and to be vulnerable. We have seen a steady decline in the levels of trust. The Pew Research Center has been studying the question of trust in society for decades. Alarmingly, 71% of adults believe Americans are less confident in each other than they were 20 years ago. "About three-in-four Americans (79%) think their fellow citizens have too little confidence in each other. Relatedly, a fifth of adults (21%) think personal confidence in the country has worsened for little good reason" (29). The question of distrust is alarming and we need to examine its harm and what will heal it. In this work, The Tyranny of Perfection, we see how suspicion has robbed us of the simple delight of being. This Freudian fracturing and critical analysis of the person into id, ego, superego has left us unable to trust pleasure itself. This self-alienation denies that necessary wholeness of life. It compartmentalizes life and how we think about life. Freud is just one player in Modernity's abuse of science, casting it as superior to all other disciplines. Fragmentation and specialization have alienated the disciplines of science, art, and religion. Rather than the three together providing the integration of life and living, science, art, and religion have wrongly been cast as opposed to each other. The tyranny is this undermining of the greatest pleasure, our ability to love life with all its fragile qualities. Wealth and power, we will see, also attack our sense of trust, but for now, we will look at the tragic loss of trust in pleasure. The other two works in this trilogy, The Want of Wealth and The Bondage of Power, examine the seeds of suspicion that have led us to mistrust both economics and politics, both wealth and power. It is this widespread mistrust that has brought us to tragic levels of alienation and isolation, not pleasure, wealth, and power per se. These can be abused as tools of alienation, division and suspicion. As we will see in this trilogy, we must learn to love, to believe, and to hope again as our social corrective. If these three books help to initiate greater interest in our learning to trust once more, then they will have served a good and noble purpose

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

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Author :
Publisher : Emblem Editions
ISBN 13 : 0771026323
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by : Alain De Botton

Download or read book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work written by Alain De Botton and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the international bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life comes this lyrical, erudite look at our world of work. We spend most of our time at work, but what we do there rarely gets discussed in the sort of lyrical and descriptive prose our efforts surely deserve. Determined to correct this lapse, armed with a poetic perspective and his trademark philosophical sharpness, Alain de Botton heads out into the world of offices and factories, ready to take in the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. De Botton spends time in and around some less familiar work environments, including warehouses, container ports, rocket launch pads, and power stations, and follows scientists, landscape painters, accountants, cookie manufacturers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and aircraft salesmen as they do their jobs. Along the way, de Botton tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can pose about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? To what end do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also our planet? Equally intrigued by work’s pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton offers a characteristically lucid and witty tour of the working day and night, in a book sure to inspire a range of life-changing and wise thoughts.

The Tyranny of Virtue

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Author :
Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 198212718X
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tyranny of Virtue by : Robert Boyers

Download or read book The Tyranny of Virtue written by Robert Boyers and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From public intellectual and professor Robert Boyers, “a powerfully persuasive, insightful, and provocative prose that mixes erudition and first-hand reportage” (Joyce Carol Oates) addressing recent developments in American culture and arguing for the tolerance of difference that is at the heart of the liberal tradition. Written from the perspective of a liberal intellectual who has spent a lifetime as a writer, editor, and college professor, The Tyranny of Virtue is a “courageous, unsparing, and nuanced to a rare degree” (Mary Gaitskill) insider’s look at shifts in American culture—most especially in the American academy—that so many people find alarming. Part memoir and part polemic, Boyers’s collection of essays laments the erosion of standard liberal values, and covers such subjects as tolerance, identity, privilege, appropriation, diversity, and ableism that have turned academic life into a minefield. Why, Robert Boyers asks, are a great many liberals, people who should know better, invested in the drawing up of enemies lists and driven by the conviction that on critical issues no dispute may be tolerated? In stories, anecdotes, and character profiles, a public intellectual and longtime professor takes on those in his own progressive cohort who labor in the grip of a poisonous and illiberal fundamentalism. The end result is a finely tuned work of cultural intervention from the front lines.

Out of Nowhere Into Nothing

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Publisher : Fiction Collective 2
ISBN 13 : 1573661864
Total Pages : 165 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (736 download)

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Book Synopsis Out of Nowhere Into Nothing by : Caryl Pagel

Download or read book Out of Nowhere Into Nothing written by Caryl Pagel and published by Fiction Collective 2. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the apparitional, the incomprehensible, and the paranormal in conversation with art, travel, and storytelling The ghosts—literal and figurative—that drive our deepest impulses, disturb our most precious memories, and haunt the passages of our daily lives are present in this collection of sublime meditations on the unbelievable, the coincidental, and the apparitional. Often containing reflections on the art of storytelling, Caryl Pagel’s essays blend memoir, research, and reflection, and are driven by a desire to observe connections between the visual and the invisible. The narrator of Pagel’s essays explores each enigma or encounter (a football coach’s faked death, the faces of women walking, historical accounts of hallucinations, a city’s public celebration gone wrong) as an intellectual detective ascending a labyrinthine tower of clues in pursuit of a solution to an unreachable problem: always curious, and with a sense of profound wonder. Out of Nowhere Into Nothing is a sprawling, highly associative consideration of the ways in which the observed material world recalls us to larger narrative and aesthetic truths. Interspersed with documentary-style photographs, Pagel’s first collection of prose is a radiant, obsessive investigation into the mysteries at the center of our seemingly mundane lives.

The Tyranny of Metrics

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691191263
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tyranny of Metrics by : Jerry Z. Muller

Download or read book The Tyranny of Metrics written by Jerry Z. Muller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government—and the quality of our lives Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself—and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.

Law and Enjoyment

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317598415
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Law and Enjoyment by : Daniel Hourigan

Download or read book Law and Enjoyment written by Daniel Hourigan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advocates, and develops, a critical account of the relationship between law and the largely neglected issue of ‘enjoyment’. Taking popular culture seriously – as a lived and meaningful basis for a wider understanding of law, beyond the strictures of legal institutions and professional practices – it takes up a range of case studies from film and literature in order to consider how law is iterated through enjoyment, and how enjoyment embodies law. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, this book addresses issues such as the forced choice to enjoy the law, the biopolitics of tyranny, the enjoyment of law’s contingency, the trauma of the law’s symbolic codification of pleasure, and the futuristic vision of law’s transgression. In so doing, it forges an important case for acknowledging and analyzing the complex relationship between power and pleasure in law – one that will be of considerable interest to legal theorists, as well as those with interests in the intersection of psychoanalytic and cultural theory.

A Tyranny of Queens

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Publisher : Watkins Media Limited
ISBN 13 : 0857665898
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (576 download)

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Book Synopsis A Tyranny of Queens by : Foz Meadows

Download or read book A Tyranny of Queens written by Foz Meadows and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embark on another “nerve-biting and explosive” adventure between worlds in this refreshingly intersectional portal fantasy for adult readers (Tor.com) Saffron Coulter has returned from the fantasy kingdom of Kena. Threatened with a stay in psychiatric care, Saffron has to make a choice: to forget about Kena and fit back into the life she’s outgrown—or pit herself against everything she’s ever known and everyone she loves. Meanwhile, in Kena, Gwen is increasingly troubled by the absence of Leoden—the cruel ruler of the kingdom—and his plans for the captive worldwalkers. Elsewhere, Yena must confront the deposed Kadeja in Veksh. What is their endgame? Who can they trust? And what will happen when Leoden returns?

The Tyranny of Merit

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Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374720991
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tyranny of Merit by : Michael J. Sandel

Download or read book The Tyranny of Merit written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

Four Thousand Weeks

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374715246
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Four Thousand Weeks by : Oliver Burkeman

Download or read book Four Thousand Weeks written by Oliver Burkeman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

Small Pleasures

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Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063091003
Total Pages : 403 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (63 download)

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Book Synopsis Small Pleasures by : Clare Chambers

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.