Book picks similar to
The Pleasures of Leisure by Robert Dessaix
non-fiction
australian
english
self-help
Parting Words: 9 Lessons for a Remarkable Life
Benjamin Ferencz - 2020
PARTING WORDS follows the story of Ben's life, and each chapter includes his learnings on how we can all make the most of ours - from the subjects of ambition and determination, to happiness and love.What a century of life experience can teach us about happiness, ambition, courage, love and how to make the most of the lives we've been given.How many people do you know grew up as a poor immigrant in America during the Great Depression, won a scholarship to Harvard Law School, landed on the beaches of Normandy on D Day, were present at the liberation of concentration camps including Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Flossenburg, held leading Nazis to account at the Nuremberg trials and have fought for an International Criminal Court to hold war criminals to account the world over?Now you know one.Benjamin Ferencz turned 100 in 2020. In this extraordinary book, he shares his remarkable life story and the nine humble, compelling and life-affirming lessons he's learned along the way that we can all harness for ourselves.
The Intuitive Eating Workbook: Ten Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food
Evelyn Tribole - 2017
If you are ready to throw in your hat and give up on dieting for good, take heart. You can enjoy food again—you just need to pay attention to your body’s natural hunger cues. Based on the authors’ best-selling book, Intuitive Eating, this workbook can show you how.The Intuitive Eating Workbook offers a new way of looking at food and mealtime by showing you how to recognize your body’s natural hunger signals. Structured around the ten principles of intuitive eating, the mindful approach in this workbook encourages you to abandon unhealthy weight control behaviors, develop positive body image, and—most importantly—stop feeling distressed around food!You were born with all the wisdom you need for eating intuitively. This book will help you reconnect with that wisdom and ultimately change your life—one meal at a time.
The Art of Memory
Frances A. Yates - 1966
Yates traces the art of memory from its treatment by Greek orators, through its Gothic transformations in the Middle Ages, to the occult forms it took in the Renaissance, and finally to its use in the seventeenth century. This book, the first to relate the art of memory to the history of culture as a whole, was revolutionary when it first appeared and continues to mesmerize readers with its lucid and revelatory insights.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
Lori Gottlieb - 2019
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.
Being an Adult: the ultimate guide to moving out, getting a job, and getting your act together
Lucy Tobin - 2018
What should you check before renting a flat? How do you ask for a pay rise? Does anything really need to be dry cleaned? And why does everyone else seem to know these things except you?(They don’t, but this book will help.)Being an Adult is a practical and entertaining guide to the life skills you didn’t learn at school, from when to ask for a discount or send a condolence card, to how to save money, and what you need to know before your first day at work.If you've ever wondered when you’re going to become a ‘real’ grown-up, this book — with top tips from 20- and 30-somethings, and proper adults including a plumber, a doctor, and a personal finance expert — will give you the answers you need.
Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Danny Danziger - 2007
It is an enormous place that takes up five city blocks and has more than two million square feet of space, filled with treasures everywhere the eye can see. There are exquisite vases, jewelry, tapestry, baseball cards, Egyptian mummies, sculptures, and furniture, and many of the most famous and recognized paintings in the world, from Van Gogh to Rembrandt, Monet, and El Greco. But this famous institution, which attracts four million visitors a year, is not just about objects. This is a place that is supported and maintained by people, which is what this wonderful book celebrates. In the fifty-two interviews in "Museum," we meet some of the people who have given their lives to making the Met the success that it is. We are introduced to curators with endless knowledge who look after the collections; as well as cleaners; florists; police and security staff who maintain and secure the building; plus the philanthropists and millionaires who donate their money for new and wonderful art works, including well-known people like Henry Kravis and Annette de la Renta. Danziger has a rare touch for getting just the right detail, and these interviews are informative, moving, and compulsively readable. Oral history at its best, "Museum" will appeal not only to the millions who visit the Met every year, but also to anyone with an interest in museums and art.
How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't
Lane Moore - 2018
But her story has had its obstacles, including being her own parent, living in her car as a teenager, and moving to New York City to pursue her dreams. Through it all, she looked to movies, TV, and music as the family and support systems she never had.From spending the holidays alone to having better “stranger luck” than with those closest to her to feeling like the last hopeless romantic on earth, Lane reveals her powerful and entertaining journey in all its candor, anxiety, and ultimate acceptance—with humor always her bolstering force and greatest gift.How to Be Alone is a must-read for anyone whose childhood still feels unresolved, who spends more time pretending to have friends online than feeling close to anyone in real life, who tries to have genuine, deep conversations in a roomful of people who would rather you not. Above all, it’s a book for anyone who desperately wants to feel less alone and a little more connected through reading her words.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
Matthew Walker - 2017
Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.
A Recipe For Dreaming
Bryce Courtenay - 1992
Illuminating these musings are the superb visual poems of Anie Williams.
The Little Book of Mindfulness
Tiddy Rowan - 2013
Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline, you have to practise it.' Steve Jobs More and more of us are suffering from the stresses and strains of modern life. Mindfulness is an increasingly popular discipline that can not only help alleviate the symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression brought on by the pressures of our daily existence but can actually bring calm, joy and happiness into our lives. The practice has found champions in all walks of life from the Search Inside Yourself classes run by Google, to the importance Arianna Huffington puts on mindfulness in the workplace and the schools which are encouraging mindfulness to reduce exam stress. In The Little Book of Mindfulness, Tiddy Rowan, herself a practitioner for over 30 years, has gathered together a seminal collection of over 150 techniques, tips, exercises, advice, meditations and further resources that will enable people at every level to follow the breath, still the mind and relax the body, whilst generating and boosting a feeling of well-being and contentment that will permeate every aspect of everyday life. The exercises in The Little Book of Mindfulness will lighten the mind and the spirit. The perfect little gift to bring lasting happiness and peace for friends and family.
When Life is Not Peachy: Real-life lessons in recovery from heartache, grief and tough times
Pip Lincolne - 2020
Who even am I, and how will I keep going? We need someone in our corner to travel this journey with us and help keep our spirits up. This book is a gentle guide for navigating loss, grief or other sad times - a resource both for those who are downhearted and those supporting a loved one. With thoughtful advice on dealing with friends and family; healthy tips for eating and exercise when you don't feel like it; and a just-keep-yourself-going '101' for when you're feeling very low. It's the bolstering force we need to feel a bit closer to ourselves, or find a bit of peace. For years Pip Lincolne has had a dedicated readership through her blog Meet Me At Mike's and frankie magazine. She wrote When Life is Not Peachy during some tough times of her own, in the hope that what she learned might help someone else feel a little better some day.
College Hacks
Keith Bradford - 2015
Filled with hundreds of ways to simplify nearly every college situation, this guide tells you just what to do when your professor assigns you a twenty-page paper or you run out of clean dishes in your dorm room (chip bag bowl, anyone?).So stop making college harder than it should be! With these everyday hacks, you'll breeze through each semester as you finish assignments and tasks quicker than ever before!
You're Not the Boss of Me: Brat-proofing Your Four- to Twelve-Year-Old Child
Betsy Brown Braun - 2010
Filling a critical void in parenting manuals, revered childhood development and behavior expert Betsy Brown Braun, bestselling author of Just Tell Me What to Say, dispenses invaluable advice on how to brat-proof kids during the formative ages 4 through 12.
The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose
Oprah Winfrey - 2019
And, according to Oprah Winfrey, "Your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you are meant to be, and begin to honor your calling in the best way possible."That journey starts right here.In her latest book, The Path Made Clear, Oprah shares what she sees as a guide for activating your deepest vision of yourself, offering the framework for creating not just a life of success, but one of significance. The book's ten chapters are organized to help you recognize the important milestones along the road to self-discovery, laying out what you really need in order to achieve personal contentment, and what life's detours are there to teach us.Oprah opens each chapter by sharing her own key lessons and the personal stories that helped set the course for her best life. She then brings together wisdom and insights from luminaries in a wide array of fields, inspiring readers to consider what they're meant to do in the world and how to pursue it with passion and focus. These renowned figures share the greatest lessons from their own journeys toward a life filled with purpose.Paired with over 100 awe-inspiring photographs to help illuminate the wisdom of these messages, The Path Made Clear provides readers with a beautiful resource for achieving a life lived in service of your calling - whatever it may be.
The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption
Clay A. Johnson - 2011
Not eating, but gorging on information ceaselessly spewed from the screens and speakers we hold dear. Just as we have grown morbidly obese on sugar, fat, and flour—so, too, have we become gluttons for texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets.We're all battling a storm of distractions, buffeted with notifications and tempted by tasty tidbits of information. And just as too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much junk information can lead to cluelessness. The Information Diet shows you how to thrive in this information glut—what to look for, what to avoid, and how to be selective. In the process, author Clay Johnson explains the role information has played throughout history, and why following his prescribed diet is essential for everyone who strives to be smart, productive, and sane.In The Information Diet, you will:Discover why eminent scholars are worried about our state of attention and general intelligenceExamine how today’s media—Big Info—give us exactly what we want: content that confirms our beliefsLearn to take steps to develop data literacy, attention fitness, and a healthy sense of humorBecome engaged in the economics of information by learning how to reward good information providersJust like a normal, healthy food diet, The Information Diet is not about consuming less—it’s about finding a healthy balance that works for you