Rating: 3 out of 5

I liked the idea of this book much more than the actual book. I didn’t expect the 52 listed small pleasures listed to hit home and inspire me, and feel like they were written for me. But I’d hoped that a decent amount would. I don’t feel that the writing style generally suited me that well. I am trying to savour more small things tho, so it’s not been without merit.

Highlighted passages:

What do I really want from this brief life?

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well

The best way to be a calmer and nicer person is to give up on everyone. No one will appreciate you as you deserve; you will never fully satisfy the needs of another

on A book that understands you: To be generously understood is nice of course - hence the pleasure - but its a bigger thing than that. Its helpful. Because feeling alone with difficult parts of oneself increases the trouble. We’re haunted by the worry that no reasonable person could feel anything but derision or contempt for our problems. We fear to share them with our friends because we anticipate bewildered rejection. The book that understands is like an ideal parent or friend who makes it acceptable to suffer in the way we do. Our weirder sorrow - or enjoyments - are recast as valid parts of human experience, which can be met with sympathy and kindness

on Crying cathartically over the death of a fictional character: death reorganises our priorities; it changes our scale of assessment

Small pleasures need rituals. The irony (as it were) of the small pleasure is that it isn’t intense enough usually to force itself upon us - we don’t become addicted or obsessed; the pull is much weaker than that of sex or video games or drinking wine or wolfing down a bar of chocolate; these are pleasures we need no reminding of, and we often have to painfully struggle to limit their sway in our lives. With small pleasures its the opposite. We’re more likely to lose touch with them. They easily get crowded out. We actively need to build up their presence in our lives.

Life has its endless pains and sorrows, but so often there is also something charming and sweet to be appreciated; you don’t depend on the endorsement of others - though that would be nice.

We try to capture a little more of what it is about these things that we like so much. We try to remember what this made us think of, how we felt, and try to understand why it touched us so deeply

Small pleasures seem small until we pay them greater and more systematic attention. We are trying to educate ourselves in a central part of life: that of discovering how to make the most of the opportunities for satisfaction that came our way and through them to create for ourselves and others more flourishing and less pained and lonely lives.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account