Monday, June 15, 2009

My Mailbox Overfloweth

Today was a horrid day at work.
Quite…… pleasureless!
I can’t even talk about it.
So after work I went to Starbucks for coffee and started reading the new novel from Colm Toibin, Brooklyn.
Then I got home and had such a pleasurable surprise in the mailbox!
Well, aside from various bills [how do they find you so regularly?]… I received my brand new Harpers magazine and a parcel from Random House.
I love getting review-stuff from Random House.
So, about two seconds after taking the above snapshot I was already leafing through this beautiful beautiful new book from one of my favorite authors, Alain de Botton.


The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
Wow!
I myself could probably write quite a book about the latter half of that title!
But of the former part, I’m afraid I know little!
This will be the sixth book by Alain de Botton that I have read.
If you have not yet discovered this author, I encourage you, oh do read him.
He is brilliant, witty, insightful, and several of his books [as this one is] are filled with photographs that serve as wonderful Sebald-like footnotes to his musings.
The guy is wonderful. I’m convinced he is a genius. I’ve corresponded with him several times, and he is always so gracious and humble. And wise.
I love Alain de Botton.
I love Random House.
I hate work.
I love my mailbox.

Find out more about this book
HERE.
**********

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's lovely that you had a good mailbox day, although ironic that you should be excited about a book that includes "pleasures" and "work" in the same title.

But if you didn't work, you couldn't go to Starbucks! (Except maybe as a barrista) And if you didn't live in Canada, you would not have access to Sun-rype Fruitsource 30 Bars, which I love so much and which you CANNOT EVEN GET in the U.S. I even wrote to Sun-rype out of desperation and they rebuffed me! Now we have to figure out a way to trundle up to Vancouver this summer so I can load up a suitcase full of these bars and probably get arrested at customs and sent to Guantanamo. And I can't imagine they let people read blogs at Guantanamo! So I won't be sending you my snarky comments anymore and that's YET ANOTHER thing for which you can be thankful!

So as you can see you are actually a very fortunate fellow, in spite of working in a horrid place with no air conditioning, and spiders. AND, if all that weren't enough, you have a sister who makes tarts!

Stefanie said...

Sorry about your bad day, but oh, what a great thing to find in your mailbox!

ralph mackay said...

I hope you enjoy de Botton's new work. I very much enjoyed it. He is such a wonderful writer. Cheers!