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Small Pleasures
- Narrated by: Rachel Lanning
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
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Small Pleasures
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Publisher's summary
"... A book reminding us of all the small moments we overlook when they happen."- Emma Gannon, Ctr Alt Delete podcast
52 overlooked small pleasures, from flirtation and figs to cyprus trees and the pleasant exhaustion that follows an especially productive day.
We exhaust ourselves and the planet in the search for very large pleasures, while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which—if we only pay more attention—can bring us solace and joy on a daily basis. This is a guidebook to life's small pleasures: everything from the distinct delight of holding a child's hand to the joy of watching the evening sky. It's an intriguing, evocative collection that will heighten our senses and return us to the world with newfound excitement and enthusiasm.
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-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 238
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 147
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 147
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
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1 out of 5 stars
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
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It's Not Me, It's You
- Impossible perfectionist, 27, seeks very very very tidy woman
- By: Jon Richardson
- Narrated by: Jon Richardson
- Length: 3 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 164
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 141
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 140
A control freak looks for love (women who leave wet teaspoons in sugar bowls need not apply). ‘I haven’t woken up with a cup of tea by the bed for seven years. It seems such a small thing but it’s one of a thousand things I miss about having someone around to take care of me. I have spent my entire adult life getting things the way I want them and all I want now is someone to give it all up for.’ Jon Richardson. Is your filing faultless? Your CDs, apostrophes, cutlery all in the right places?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Different, surprising comedy
- By Vasilia on 05-14-12
By: Jon Richardson
-
How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 846
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 753
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 757
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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The Three Marriages
- Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
- By: David Whyte
- Narrated by: David Whyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 405
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 282
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 277
According to Whyte, we humans are involved not just with one marriage with a significant other. We also have made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to an inner, constantly developing self. Whyte's thesis is that to separate these marriages in order to balance them is to destroy the fabric of happiness itself; that in each of these marriages, will, effort, and hard work are overused, overrated, and in many ways self-defeating.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
RARE SELF-HELP BOOK THAT ACTUALLY HELPS
- By Elizabeth on 03-05-09
By: David Whyte
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Iris Grace
- How Thula the Cat Saved a Little Girl and Her Family
- By: Arabella Carter-Johnson
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 21
Iris Grace is a beautiful little girl who, from a very young age, barely communicated, avoided social interaction with other people, and rarely smiled. Both before her diagnosis of autism and after, she seemed trapped in her own world, unable to connect with those around her. One day, her mother brought home a Maine Coon kitten for Iris. Thula immediately bonded with Iris, knowing right away how to assuage Iris when she became overstimulated.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Better understanding
- By Amazon Customer on 01-17-18
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It's Easier than You Think
- The Buddhist Way to Happiness
- By: Sylvia Boorstein
- Narrated by: Sylvia Boorstein
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 159
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 123
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 120
Using delightful and deceptively powerful stories from everyday experiences, beloved Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein demystifies spirituality, charts the path to happiness through the Buddha's basic teachings, and presents the means to eliminate hindrances and see clearly to develop a realistic course toward wisdom and compassion. A wonderfully engaging guide, full of humor, memorable insights, and love. Boorstein, known by friends and colleagues as a "Jewish grandmother bodhisattva," is highly-skilled in making the universal wisdom of traditional Buddhist teachings available to all.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Simple and elegant
- By Barbara on 01-11-03
By: Sylvia Boorstein
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This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 58
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
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Freedom Seeker
- Live More. Worry Less. Do What You Love.
- By: Beth Kempton
- Narrated by: Beth Kempton
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 26
This book is a call to action based on one simple concept - that personal freedom is a choice. Beth Kempton went from being a life-loving, risk-taking adventurer to a grown-up, settled down mother-wife-business owner before realizing the life she had built was suffocating her. She set out to find her personal freedom and along the way discovered that many others were also feeling hemmed in, suffering from anxiety, depression, and physical pain, exhausted, disconnected, and sad.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Helpful insight
- By Jes_074 on 10-28-23
By: Beth Kempton
-
Late in the Day
- A Novel
- By: Tessa Hadley
- Narrated by: Abigail Thaw
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 183
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 168
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 168
Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their 20s. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: She is at the hospital. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. The loss warps their relationships.
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4 out of 5 stars
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It's all in the performance
- By RueRue on 02-08-19
By: Tessa Hadley
-
The Power of Kindness 10th Anniversary Edition
- The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life
- By: Piero Ferrucci
- Narrated by: Mitch Horowitz
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 48
When The Power of Kindness first appeared in 2006 it thrilled and challenged listeners with one audacious promise: Your acts of generosity and decency are the secret to a fuller, more satisfying life. Kindness is not some squishy virtue but the very key to your own happiness. With nearly 125,000 copies sold, we're celebrating the book's tenth anniversary with this new edition, featuring a complete new chapter by Piero Ferrucci on the theme of "Harmlessness", which joins his other chapters on virtues such as "Honesty", "Warmth", and "Loyalty".
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Peaceful kindness
- By SR on 07-16-23
By: Piero Ferrucci
-
A Closed Eye
- By: Anita Brookner
- Narrated by: Prunella Scales
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 35
Born to elegant but frivolous parents, Harriet grows up ignored and unguided, and retains a curious innocence that neither her marriage to Freddie Lytton, nor her friendship with the beautiful Tessa can dispel. Freddie is far older than she is - a companion rather than a lover - and slightly disapproving of Tessa and her irresponsible, attractive husband, Jack. Yet all four are bound together: by their backgrounds, their children, by Harriet’s unspoken feelings for Jack and by the tragedy that lies in wait for all of them.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
The Late Great Ms. Brookner
- By David P on 05-15-16
By: Anita Brookner
-
Mr Doubler Begins Again
- By: Seni Glaister
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 25
Baked, mashed, boiled or fried, Mr Doubler knows his potatoes. But the same can’t be said for people. Since he lost his wife, he’s been on his own at Mirth Farm - and that suits Doubler just fine. Crowds are for other people; the only company he needs are his potato plants and his housekeeper, Mrs Millwood, who visits every day. So when Mrs Millwood is taken ill, it ruins everything - and Mr Doubler begins to worry that he might have lost his way. But could the kindness of strangers be enough to bring him down from the hill?
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Fantastic book
- By Cole M Miller on 12-07-19
By: Seni Glaister
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The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied, and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful, and focused on the essentials. But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn’t just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back commitments in our diaries. True simplicity requires that we understand the roots of our distractions – and develop a canny respect for the stubborn reasons why things can grow complex and overwhelming.
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A Therapeutic Journey follows the arc from mental crisis and collapse, to convalescence and recovery. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is both a practical guide and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Deep, intelligent, compassionate
- By Terri Myers on 12-23-23
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The idea that work might be fulfilling rather than just necessary is a recent invention. These days, in prosperous areas of the world, we don't only expect to get paid, we also expect to find meaning and satisfaction. It's a big ask and explains why so many people have an identity crisis in their work lives. A Job To Love is designed to help us better understand ourselves in order to find a job that is right for us. It explores the myths, traps and confusions that get in our way, and shows us how to develop new, effective attitudes and habits.
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Bringing up a child to be an authentic and mentally robust adult is one of life’s great challenges. It is also, fortunately, not a matter of luck. The Good Enough Parent is a compendium of life lessons, including how to say ‘no’ to a child you adore, how to look beneath the surface of ‘bad’ behavior to work out what might really be going on, how to encourage a child to be genuinely kind, and how to handle the moods and gloom of adolescence.
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Changed me a lot as a father
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Deep, intelligent, compassionate
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Changed me a lot as a father
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We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learned intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Middle Ages, and the tenses of foreign languages. But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and trouble our lives: who to start a relationship with, how to trust people, how to understand one’s psyche, how to move on from sorrow or betrayal, and how to cope with anxiety and shame?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
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On Confidence
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We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence - one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world. This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it and how we can acquire more of it in our lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Poignant and timeless
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By: The School of Life, and others
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The School of Life: On Failure
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- By: The School of Life
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- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story5 out of 5 stars 5
This is a hopeful, consoling, gentle book about failure. Our societies talk a lot about success, but the reality is that no one gets through life without failing–in small and usually also in large ways. Sometimes our failures are very obvious, at other times, we feel we have to conceal them out of shame. This book encourages us to accept the role that failure plays for all of us and to feel compassion for ourselves for the messes we can’t help but make as we go through our lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The second part of the book was really good perceived failure.
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The School of Life
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience to our social success. It is arguably the single most important skill for surviving the twenty-first century. But what does it really mean? One decade ago, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life, an institute dedicated to understanding and improving our emotional intelligence. Now he presents the gathered wisdom of those ten years in a wide-ranging and innovative compendium of emotional intelligence that forms an introduction to The School of Life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The school of life needs to be in schools.
- By Angela pope on 02-03-23
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On Being Nice
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- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Much of today's media tells us to be thinner, richer, and more successful. This book tells us how to be nicer. Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but we can all benefit from practical advice on how to be more patient, better at listening, less irritable, and less defensive. This is a guidebook to the uncharted landscape of niceness, gently exploring the key themes of this often overlooked quality.
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Anxiety
- Meditations on the Anxious Mind
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
This is a guide to anxiety: why we feel it, how we experience it when it strikes, and what we can do when we come under its influence. Across a series of essays that look at the subject from a number of angles, the tone is helpful, compassionate, and in the best sense, practical.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Insightfulness
- By Anonymous User on 06-10-23
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How to Stay Sane
- The School of Life
- By: Philippa Perry
- Narrated by: Zoe-Anne Phillips
- Length: 3 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 32
Years of working as a psychotherapist showed Philippa Perry what approaches produced positive change in her clients and how best to maintain good mental health. In How to Stay Sane, she has taken these principles and applied them to self-help. Using ideas from neuroscience and sound psychological theory, she shows us how to better understand ourselves. Her idea is that if we know how our minds form and develop, we are less at the mercy of unknown unconscious processes. In this way, we can learn to be the master of our feelings and not their slave.
By: Philippa Perry
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Varieties of Melancholy
- A Hopeful Guide to Our Sombre Moods
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Rachel Lanning
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2
This is a book that celebrates the most neglected but valuable emotion we can feel: melancholy. Melancholy isn’t depression, rage, or bitterness. It’s a serene, wise, and kindly response to the difficulties of being alive. It helps us navigate a wise and rational middle ground between extreme despair and naïve optimism. But melancholy is a well-kept secret. It isn't celebrated or recommended. It remains relatively unexplored in a hyper-competitive, noisy, frantic age.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hurt locker
- By beecroft on 02-21-24
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Essays in Love
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 299
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 256
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 258
Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Every relationship you've ever analyzed
- By Maria L. Lantin on 05-07-12
By: Alain de Botton
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How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
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Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
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On Self-Hatred
- Learning to Like Oneself
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Rachel Lanning
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall2 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance1 out of 5 stars 1
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Story3 out of 5 stars 1
Behind many of our problems lies an often ignored factor: we don’t like ourselves very much. We are sufferers of self-hatred. We tell ourselves the meanest things. It’s because of self-hatred that we tend to neglect our potential at work and get entangled in unfulfilling relationships, that we lack confidence in our social lives and suffer from anxiety, despair and imposter syndrome.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Brain numbing narration
- By Darren Priest on 12-25-23
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The Architecture of Happiness
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 443
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Story4 out of 5 stars 359
One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of chairs, walls, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet, a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Many elegant words used for a simple topic.
- By Spirit on 08-15-17
By: Alain de Botton
What listeners say about Small Pleasures
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 08-12-23
An underrated treasure
The team of the school of life always deliver solid food-for-thought material for_my_leasure_time.This_was_a_nice_discovery_of_hidden_day_to_day_pleasures_to_make_your_life_more_fullfilling.Thank you again
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