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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
 
 
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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work [Paperback]

Alain de Botton
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (25 Mar 2010)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141027916
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141027913
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Alain De Botton
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

To some degree, what the reader takes way from Alain de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work will be influenced by what that particular reader brings to it. If you are looking for a serious and exhaustive analysis of work and how it affects both our psychological equilibrium and general sense of well-being, you may be disappointed; although de Botton draws on a variety of examples (some straightforward and illuminating, others eccentric and whimsical), his strategy here is more subtle and allusive, not something which can be demonstrated by adducing a carefully marshalled tranche of facts. Secondly, of course, anyone familiar with the author's approach will hardly be expecting a linear demonstration of a thesis, as might be gathered from his delightful How Proust Can Change Your Life. Alain de Botton is offering something at once insightful and idiosyncratic: a practical guide to a better quality of life through an off-kilter approach to the subject of work. In the earlier book, we were offered a (not entirely serious) method of extrapolating from the brilliant (and famously difficult) French writer a host of unconventional insights into dealing with our own personal emotional and intellectual fulfilment. Here, the notion of work is addressed with a similarly light/serious touch, following a variety of processes (such as the trajectory of a fish from the ocean to its final destination on the shelves of a supermarket) to examine the multiplicity of possible approaches to work.

The real insights here, however, relate to the way in which work (as de Botton sees it) is both a validation of the true purpose of our existence – and the most assertive way to 'rage against the dying of the light' – in other words, to keep at bay the daunting realisation of what a brief flicker of existence we have. It's a book that is both affirmative and (in its eccentric fashion) quietly persuasive. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Why do so many of us love or hate our work?

How has it come to dominate our lives?

And what should we do about it?

Work makes us. Without it we are at a loss; in work we hope to have a measure of control over our lives. Yet for many of us, work is a straitjacket from which we cannot free ourselves.

Criss-crossing the world to visit workplaces and workers both ordinary and extraordinary, and drawing on the wit and wisdom of great artists, writers and thinkers, Alain de Botton here explores our love-hate relationship with our jobs. He poses and answers little and big questions, from what should I do with my life? to what will I have achieved when I retire?

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work will not only explain why it is we do what we do all day, but through its sympathy, humour and insight will seek to help us make the most of it.


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Customer Reviews

36 Reviews
5 star:
 (15)
4 star:
 (13)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (36 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Meaning of our Labour, 7 April 2009
By 
Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Something about Alain de Botton's writing captivates me. Though great chunky paragraphs of this photo essay are taken up with things which are banal on the surface like detailed descriptions of how biscuits are manufactured or the workings of electricity lines, the author's pithy observations about the individuals involved and his asides about the nature of being are engrossing. This author investigates an eclectic range of professions such as tuna fishing, career counselling, painting and accountancy. He begins the book by pondering the complex network of work involved which delivers to us goods in our everyday lives and how we are largely blithely unaware of these goods' origins. He then investigates a series of professions as a base point, engaging with the professionals involved in order to try to understand how this labour relates to their place in the world. The result is a sort of travelogue, each section containing a large amount of photographs to accompany the text, created with the help of photographer Richard Baker. Many of these pictures are beautiful and poignant in themselves, adding an even greater depth and understanding to the text which runs alongside them.

Many of the people the author encounters are treated with a good deal of sympathy and one feels his observations to be largely accurate based on his personal impressions of them. I grew to feel admiration, respect and envy for people who are emphatically engaged in their professions and passionate about the importance of their labour. However, at some points de Botton's prose lapse almost too far into a novelistic approach so that individuals he meets are fitted into the author's schematic understanding of certain workers' reality. Thus he might make presumptions about real people by speculating about their consciousness and how they feel about their position in the world. For instance, he summarizes the end of the day for an employee from an accountancy's advisory services and concludes how this man contemplates what has been "difficult, unnecessary and regrettable" about the effort of his labour for that day. The author doesn't specify whether he gleaned this understanding of this individual's inner-existence from a revealing interview or following him home to unobtrusively observe his private life. But one can't help but feel some liberties were taken. This makes me wonder why this author who is so brilliant at investigating the liminal spaces of our existence and the most crucial issues of our lives doesn't write more novels like his first published works.

The author also touchingly interjects elements of himself in the book. This might include finding a likeness of his father in a portrait of the president of the Maldives or a melancholic mood he falls into following the launch of a satellite into space. However, though always taking himself and his enquiries seriously, one can feel a great deal of humour laden in his emphatic pondering especially when he relates this to people he encounters. At one point he desperately asks a girl working on a document about brand performance why "in our society the greatest sums of money so often tend to accrue from the sale of the least meaningful things" and at another point in the Majove desert implores the groundskeeper of an airfield populated by dilapidated airplanes to grant him closer access out of his "preoccupation with the remnants of collapsing civilisations." What is so engaging about de Botton's style is how evidently immediate and crucial the concerns he writes about are to the author himself. Yet, at the same time, he understands that life shouldn't be taken too seriously. This makes the book very personal and enjoyable as well as including profound thoughts about the nature of being. Life is full of questions and, even if no satisfactory answers can be found, Alain de Botton is bravely determined to at least explore the meaning of it all with great eloquence and wit.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Gain an insight into why you love or hate your job!, 19 Nov 2010
This review is from: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Paperback)
This is a great book, well written and thoughtful. Alain raises points that have certainly gone through my mind at various times. What I found good about Alain's book is that he manages to take all of these points, discuss them, bond them and cohere them into a meaningful observation on modern day working life. It is compelling reading if you work for a large organisation.

I should explain maybe that I'm a professional engineer, so maybe see some of his points from a different perspective to other potential readers. I've lent the book to my dad now (retired, used to work as a finance auditor for the Council) and he's reading it avidly too - and he NEVER reads books!

Hope this review is useful to you.


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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Keeping us out of greater trouble, 12 Jun 2010
By 
Steven Buckley (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Paperback)
Easily Alain De Botton's best book so far, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is a collection of essays examining the minutiae of work and the satisfaction - or otherwise - it brings to each of us. De Botton starts with a detailed look at logistics; how the things we consume come to be, and how they get to us. He revels in the majesty of an unsung industry and challenges the reader to pause for a moment 'the next time one is confronted by an object that has been transported mysteriously and at an implausible speed halfway round the planet.'

The book goes on to look at an eclectic mix of workplaces; everything from a Belgian biscuit factory, to an aviation trade fair, to a guy who runs the pylon appreciation society. Alongside probing questions as to why each profession should exist, the common thread throughout the book is our relationship with work - why we do it, the challenges / benefits of endless professional specialisation, and what purpose can be found in our lives from what we do. Along the way De Botton joins us in realising his own obsessions, weaknesses and failures in the profession he has chosen, yet at the same time he helps the reader to define for themselves the meaning of what it is that they do.

Throughout, De Botton mixes an intellectual - yet accessible - approach with laugh out loud humour. My favourite line coming late in the photo essay that has traced a tuna from being caught in the Maldives all the way through to it's purchase from Sainsbury's fish counter; "... [she] stops and picks up some tuna steaks for her family's supper. The photographer and I stand up and explain our story. We tell her about our journey and about Karl Marx's theory of alienation as defined in his economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. We ask if we might follow her home. She calls her husband for a second opinion."
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