Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness
Willard Spiegelman, . . Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23 (197pp) ISBN 978-0-374-23930-5
Some books are easy companions, and this essay collection, in which Spiegelman speaks affectionately of them, can join their ranks. His top seven picks for happiness are reading, walking, looking, dancing, listening, swimming and writing—activities that are free and accessible to anyone with a library card and a pair of comfortable shoes. As old-fashioned, and occasionally charming, as a Lawrence Welk waltz, Spiegelman proclaims his suspicion of new technology that might replace the book and regrets dancing that doesn't involve a partner and a prescribed step. “To today's sufferers, melancholics, and ordinary neurotics, can we safely say, 'Throw out your Prozac, pick up your Wordsworth?' The advice would revolutionize the health industry.” Spiegelman, editor of the
Reviewed on: 03/02/2009
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 208 pages - 978-1-4299-5870-7
Paperback - 208 pages - 978-0-312-42967-6