The Pleasures of Leisure

The Pleasures of Leisure PDF Author: Robert Dessaix
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143780042
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
In today's crazily busy world the importance of making time for leisure is more vital than ever. Yet so many of us lack a talent for it. We are working longer hours, consuming more than ever before; technology erodes the work-life balance further; increasingly, people feel that only work gives existence meaning. In a world where time is money, what is the value of walking without purpose, socialising without networking, nesting when we could be on our laptops? Robert Dessaix shows, in this thoughtful and witty book, how taking leisure seriously givesus back our freedom - to enjoy life, to revel in it, in fact; to deepen our sense of who we are as human beings. He explains how we can reclaim our right to 'rest well', and to loaf, groom, nest and play, as he looks at leisure from many angles: reading, walking, travelling, learning languages, taking siestas and simply doing nothing. The result is a terrifically lively and engaging conversation that reminds us that at leisure we are at our most intensely and pleasurably human.

The Pleasures of Leisure

The Pleasures of Leisure PDF Author: Robert Dessaix
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143780042
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
In today's crazily busy world the importance of making time for leisure is more vital than ever. Yet so many of us lack a talent for it. We are working longer hours, consuming more than ever before; technology erodes the work-life balance further; increasingly, people feel that only work gives existence meaning. In a world where time is money, what is the value of walking without purpose, socialising without networking, nesting when we could be on our laptops? Robert Dessaix shows, in this thoughtful and witty book, how taking leisure seriously givesus back our freedom - to enjoy life, to revel in it, in fact; to deepen our sense of who we are as human beings. He explains how we can reclaim our right to 'rest well', and to loaf, groom, nest and play, as he looks at leisure from many angles: reading, walking, travelling, learning languages, taking siestas and simply doing nothing. The result is a terrifically lively and engaging conversation that reminds us that at leisure we are at our most intensely and pleasurably human.

The Problem of Pleasure

The Problem of Pleasure PDF Author: Carol Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136598693
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
The tourism and leisure industries are big business. Opportunities for leisure and tourism have escalated as disposable income, technology, travel and education have become increasingly available in recent times. However, this trend has been juxtaposed with an increase in crime, particularly since the early the 1950s. Acquisitive crimes have been facilitated with the development of more portable and valuable commodities; some activities, such as drink driving and disorder, have now been socially defined as crimes and are more readily identified through new technology such as the increasing use of CCTV. The Problem of Pleasure covers them all. The purpose of this book is to inform and enlighten a range of readers, whose interests may be academic or commercial on possible crime events and modus operandi of criminals. The book has a global perspective, bringing together leading academics from the UK, the US, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand who examine several aspects of leisure that are vulnerable to crime, from illegal hunting to street racing, as well as the impact of crime upon tourists and the tourism industry. This book will be a key text for students of tourism and leisure as well as criminology and sociology; people working in the tourism and recreation industry; policy makers and the police.

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like PDF Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039307711X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Engaging, evocative…[Bloom] is a supple, clear writer, and his parade of counterintuitive claims about pleasure is beguiling." —NPR Why is an artistic masterpiece worth millions more than a convincing forgery? Pleasure works in mysterious ways, as Paul Bloom reveals in this investigation of what we desire and why. Drawing on a wealth of surprising studies, Bloom investigates pleasures noble and seamy, lofty and mundane, to reveal that our enjoyment of a given thing is determined not by what we can see and touch but by our beliefs about that thing’s history, origin, and deeper nature.

Pleasures in Socialism

Pleasures in Socialism PDF Author: David Crowley
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810126907
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume shows how the rise of consumer culture took a unique form in Eastern Europe. It investigates the ways in which pleasurable activities were both a space in which these communist governments tried to insinuate themselves and thereby further expand the reach of their authority.

Pleasure and Leisure in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age

Pleasure and Leisure in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110623072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 766

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jan Huizinga and Roger Caillois have already taught us to realize how important games and play have been for pre-modern civilization. Recent research has begun to acknowledge the fundamental importance of these aspects in cultural, religious, philosophical, and literary terms. This volume expands on the traditional approach still very much focused on the materiality of game (toys, cards, dice, falcons, dolls, etc.) and acknowledges that game constituted also a form of coming to terms with human existence in an unstable and volatile world determined by universal randomness and fortune. Whether considering blessings or horse fighting, falconry or card games, playing with dice or dolls, we can gain a much deeper understanding of medieval and early modern society when we consider how people pursued pleasure and how they structured their leisure time. The contributions examine a wide gamut of approaches to pleasure, considering health issues, eroticism, tournaments, playing music, reading and listening, drinking alcohol, gambling and throwing dice. This large issue was also relevant, of course, in non-Christian societies, and constitutes a critical concern both for the past and the present because we are all homines ludentes.

The Problem with Pleasure

The Problem with Pleasure PDF Author: Laura Frost
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231152728
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
A revealing study of the sensual tensions powering the period's formal and ideological innovations.

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction PDF Author: Alan Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019983167X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way. In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices. Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.

The Pleasure Is All Yours

The Pleasure Is All Yours PDF Author: Rachel Allyn
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611808588
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reconnect to your inner sense of pleasure and joy through embodiment practices, which put you in touch with the natural wisdom of your body and enhance your ability to connect with others. In this time of increased fatigue, loneliness, and anxiety, disconnection from our bodies and from each other is at the core of our personal pain and our collective suffering. Women in particular are rewarded for, and expected to participate in self-denial. By weaving together historical and cultural commentary, humorous and poignant anecdotes, and experiential tools backed by science, The Pleasure Is All Yours is a step-by-step guide to help you release barriers to receiving life’s pleasures and deeper connections with others. In this timely guide, holistic psychologist, relationship and sex therapist, and yoga teacher Dr. Rachel Allyn introduces bodyfulness, an embodiment method she developed to help you to awaken into your body's own capacity for healing and deeper connection. Allyn explains how bodyfulness can connect you to four essential and overlooked types of pleasure—sensual, playful, lively, and erotic— which overlap in many ways, and helps you identify what can inspire your own pleasure in each category. Through bodyful activities such as breathing exercises, mindfulness, yoga, auditory release, and dynamic movements, this book helps you reunite with your inherent wisdom and soulful delight.

Sport and the Social Significance of Pleasure

Sport and the Social Significance of Pleasure PDF Author: Richard Pringle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317516575
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
This innovative text's critical examination foregrounds the prime reason why so many people participate in or watch sport – pleasure. Although there has been a "turn" to emotions and affect within academia over the last two decades, it has been somewhat remiss that pleasure, as an integral aspect of human life, has not received greater attention from sociologists of sport, exercise and physical education. This book addresses this issue via an unabashed examination of sport and the moving body via a "pleasure lens." It provides new insights about the production of various identities, power relations and social issues, and the dialectical links between the socio-cultural and the body. Taking a wide-sweeping view of pleasure - dignified and debauched, distinguished and mundane – it examines topics as diverse as aging, health, fandom, running, extreme sports, biopolitics, consumerism, feminism, sex and sexuality. In drawing from diverse theoretical approaches and original empirical research, the text reveals the social and political significance of pleasure and provides a more rounded, dynamic and sensual account of sport.

Seeking Pleasure in the Old West

Seeking Pleasure in the Old West PDF Author: David Dary
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
110 photographs and illustrations in text.