Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from June, 2009

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Speaking of ways to provide meaning in our lives, I’ve just finished reading Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work . Judging by the holds queue at the Council library it’s currently a very popular book – I joined the queue at somewhere around number 42 (about the same number, incidentally, as for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , for which I’m still waiting). It’s interesting that what is basically a work of sociology cum philosophy should attract such a crowd, and suggests how important our work is to us. It’s also a fascinating and elegantly written book. De Botton takes us on a virtual tour through people’s working lives – the workers in the biscuit factory; the transmission engineer and pylon enthusiast who takes him on a walking tour of the transmission line form Kent to London; the career counsellor who helps workers get in touch with their inner selves along with helping their bosses to fire them; a painter who spends years painting a single oak tree; and my favour