Alain de Botton – Cannonball Read 17

Alain de Botton (1)

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

February 23, 2023 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

“There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness.” I like a book like this sometimes, as it replaces or mimics (even fleetingly) the feeling of reading a long and difficult book. It’s not a reading guide, but more of a mini-biography and dissemination of some of the ideas and events from Marcel Proust’s life and work. I have read the first three volumes in In Search of Lost Time, so while I haven’t read all of it, I am close to the […]

In search of found time: a short introduction to Proust

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

August 14, 2022 by Wanderlustful Leave a Comment

How Proust Can Change Your Life is Alain de Botton’s often tongue-in-cheek ‘lifestyle guide’ based on lessons from the life of canonical author Marcel Proust, the author of In Search of Lost Time. Although Proust is a canonical author, I have not yet had the pleasure of reading him, nor was I very familiar with his life and background. De Bouton’s guide is interesting- and somewhat heartening- in illustrating how this great author had an inglorious start, wasn’t very good at getting or keeping a […]

Mixed Bag II

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

How it Ends by Rachel Howzell Hall

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

April 7, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Mapping the Interior – Stephen Graham Jones – 3/5 Stars This short novella by Stephen Graham Jones takes two familiar genres, or sub-genres, and puts them together in a space that is interesting, if limited. For one, we have a haunting. In this novella, a 12 year old boy becomes increasingly aware of some kind of supernatural manifestation in his house. Through guesswork and experience, he determines it must be the ghost of his dead father. This guesswork leads the book into its secondary genre, […]

Helping Us Figure Out Why Buildings Cause Such Visceral Reactions

July 8, 2017 by ASKReviews Leave a Comment

Best for: People not that familiar with architecture who are interested in learning about it in a philosophical way. In a nutshell: Author de Botton takes the reader through a lovely journey exploring how the buildings we inhabit can help fill missing pieces in our lives, and impact how we feel. Line that sticks with me: “The buildings we admire are ultimately those which, in a variety of ways, extol values we think worthwhile.” (p 98) Why I chose it: I bought this long ago. […]

Art is an incitement to look at our world through another’s eyes

November 12, 2016 by Halbs Leave a Comment

While Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life is nearly twenty years old, the first I heard of it was on a 2015 episode of the Tim Ferriss Podcast. If you’re unfamiliar with Ferriss, he is outwardly a life-hacking blogger and podcaster. However, his deeper drive seems to be helping others live an examined life. I like that, so even though I’m not a life-hacky guy I listen to his show. On that 2015 episode, I found Botton to be especially charming, and I was […]

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Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
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Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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