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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
informative
lighthearted
reflective
Sometimes very insightful and moving and sometimes a bit odd
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Cannot recommend enough. It really taught me the importance of politeness: mind you, it is not the same as conformity or being a doormat.
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
The School of Life is a quietly very well written guide to your own inner thoughts and worries which, rather than bringing you an influx of new ideas, reminds you of ideals you already have and brings them back to the foreground with clarity in a way you perhaps hadn’t considered before.
This is a book I’m sure I will refer back to in the future and will be recommending to friends!
This is a book I’m sure I will refer back to in the future and will be recommending to friends!
I was a bit disappointed in ths book. Mainly because I've read several of Bottons other books and really liked them. I realise that this is not a "normal/standard" Alain de Botton book. It seems more like a compilation of other texts. All from The School of Life.
It has some very interesting insights and is therefore well worth reading, but it repeats more or less the same ideas in different ways or with different words. It also often goes into too much detail.
It doesn't have that much concrete advice either which one would expect from this kind of book.
Worth a read but I liked Bottons "own" books better.
It has some very interesting insights and is therefore well worth reading, but it repeats more or less the same ideas in different ways or with different words. It also often goes into too much detail.
It doesn't have that much concrete advice either which one would expect from this kind of book.
Worth a read but I liked Bottons "own" books better.
One of the best books I’ve read so far. It taught me so many things about being a human, and gave me so much to think about. Will definitely reread soon.
Page turner! A wonderful anthology, full of wisdom from fields of psychology and philosophy, to live happier in Western society
Gem after certifiable gem- this book contains some beautifully insightful nuggets of wisdom, communicated in deceptively simple language. I'd love to revisit this every once in awhile.
I definitely think everybody should read it, preferrably at a younger age. I see this book adding heaps of value to the life of a 15 year-old; the use in your late twenties is more limited, as you will have chewed through more or most of those ideas already by then, depending on where you are in life.
I thoroughly enjoyed the section on politeness vs. frankness and the different world views that are carried behind these traits, a section that is worth reading in total and cannot be summed up in a review.
Beautiful use of language by the way! If you are a non-native, this book is a big asset in learning how to speak well.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"The point of art was [...] to nudge our recalcitrant minds towards accepting ideas that we might nod along to but then ignore if they were not stated in especially varnished and graceful terms. Christianity, for example, devoted so much attention to art (architecture, music, paining, etc.) not because it cared for beauty per se, but because it understood the power of beauty to persuade us into particular patterns of thought [...]."
On delivering bad news: "But true niceness does not mean seeming nice, it means helping the people we are going to disappoint to adjust as best they can to reality. By administering a sharp, clean blow, the diplomatic person kills off the torture of hope, accepting the frustration that is likely to come their way: the diplomat is kind enough to let themselves sometimes be the target of hate."
"[...] The weakness of strength: This dictates that we should interpret people's weaknesses as the inevitable downside of certain merits that drew us to them, and from which we will benefit at other points."
"We don't fall in love first and foremost with those who care for us best and most devotedly; we fall in love with those who care for us in ways that we expect. [...] Far more than happiness, what motivates us in relationships is a search for familiarity."
"Two people should see a relationship as a constant opportunity to improve and be improved."
"When we spot apparent perfection, we tend to blame our spectacular bad luck for the mediocrity of our lives, without realizing that we are mistaking an asymmetry of knowledge for an asymmetry of quality: we are failing to see that our partner, home and job are not especially awful, but rather that we know them especially well."
"We start to behave across our whole lives like the people work has required us to be in our productive hours. Along the way, this narrows character."
"In their way, religions addressed a universal problem: they recognized the powerful need to be intimately known and appreciated and admitted frankly that this need could not realistically ever be met by other people. What replaced religion in our imaginations [...] is the cult of human-to-human love we now know as Romanticism, which bequeathed to us the beautiful but reckless idea that loneliness might be capable of being vanquished, if we are fortunate and determined enough to meet the one exalted being known as our soulmate, someone who will understand everything deep and strange about us, who will see us completely and be enchanted by our totality. But the legacy of Romanticism has been an epidemic of loneliness, as we are repeatedly brought up against the truth: the radical inability of any one other person to wholly grasp who we truly are."
I thoroughly enjoyed the section on politeness vs. frankness and the different world views that are carried behind these traits, a section that is worth reading in total and cannot be summed up in a review.
Beautiful use of language by the way! If you are a non-native, this book is a big asset in learning how to speak well.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"The point of art was [...] to nudge our recalcitrant minds towards accepting ideas that we might nod along to but then ignore if they were not stated in especially varnished and graceful terms. Christianity, for example, devoted so much attention to art (architecture, music, paining, etc.) not because it cared for beauty per se, but because it understood the power of beauty to persuade us into particular patterns of thought [...]."
On delivering bad news: "But true niceness does not mean seeming nice, it means helping the people we are going to disappoint to adjust as best they can to reality. By administering a sharp, clean blow, the diplomatic person kills off the torture of hope, accepting the frustration that is likely to come their way: the diplomat is kind enough to let themselves sometimes be the target of hate."
"[...] The weakness of strength: This dictates that we should interpret people's weaknesses as the inevitable downside of certain merits that drew us to them, and from which we will benefit at other points."
"We don't fall in love first and foremost with those who care for us best and most devotedly; we fall in love with those who care for us in ways that we expect. [...] Far more than happiness, what motivates us in relationships is a search for familiarity."
"Two people should see a relationship as a constant opportunity to improve and be improved."
"When we spot apparent perfection, we tend to blame our spectacular bad luck for the mediocrity of our lives, without realizing that we are mistaking an asymmetry of knowledge for an asymmetry of quality: we are failing to see that our partner, home and job are not especially awful, but rather that we know them especially well."
"We start to behave across our whole lives like the people work has required us to be in our productive hours. Along the way, this narrows character."
"In their way, religions addressed a universal problem: they recognized the powerful need to be intimately known and appreciated and admitted frankly that this need could not realistically ever be met by other people. What replaced religion in our imaginations [...] is the cult of human-to-human love we now know as Romanticism, which bequeathed to us the beautiful but reckless idea that loneliness might be capable of being vanquished, if we are fortunate and determined enough to meet the one exalted being known as our soulmate, someone who will understand everything deep and strange about us, who will see us completely and be enchanted by our totality. But the legacy of Romanticism has been an epidemic of loneliness, as we are repeatedly brought up against the truth: the radical inability of any one other person to wholly grasp who we truly are."
Paperback- Genuinely one of the best “self-help” books out there. I’m hooked to the whole movement on psychology and human behavior and the relevance to us in today’s society. The way it is written draws from so many researched examples to support the idea he is explaining, it also feels like a lesson in writing the perfect paper. Many aha moments. I wish everyone could read it at least once.