I’ve just judged two literary prizes and reading for both numbed my brain with bleakness. Like the misconception that comedic acting is somehow easier than Ibsen, so has “happy” literature somehow become equated with lightweight.
I didn't particularly agree with JoJo Moyes' suggestions for 'something that’s not a romcom in book form. Are there any ( Read more... )

- but just exhorting people to *SMILE* is not going to do the job.
Honestly, this one keeps coming up in various forms again and again, and it may say something that I'm almost inclined to say about this one, well, at least he's not advocating spontaneous *HUGS*:
#SmilesOnTheLines: 'Angry' commuter launches campaign to get Londoners smiling on the ( Read more... )

We will concede that in our opinion, Tim Lott has significant form for codfishery-worth columns. In the latest, he discovers that A new NHS survey shows women to be unhappier than men for almost their entire lives - until their mid-80s, by when the men with whom they have often shared those lives have usually dropped dead.
So - please to ( Read more... )

While Oliver Burkeman's column today appears to be about the canard that denying oneself small treats in the presents means that Some Time In The Future you will be able to afford to buy your own place, it's actually and more interestingly about the value of small pleasures, and that thing of things that promise to be indulgent pleasures but don't ( Read more... )

Article about the value of boredom for children during school holidays
Am of the opinion that, if not actual boredom, a certain amount of days that are quiet and routine and even monotonous can be a very good thing for the grown person, as well.
And on the matter of over-scheduling stuff, I was pretty much aaaaargh at this:
Want to Be Happier? ( Read more... )

"When Did Optimism Become Uncool?
We are inclined to depose that it has always been uncool.
Well, I discover that the line 'Call no man happy until he is dead', is from Aeschylus, and we very much doubt that he was the first to realise that you sound cooler and deeper if you voice existential despair and a general sense that the glass is falling ( Read more... )

It crossed my mind, reading this piece about the anomie of Modern Life (oh, please) versus the life of ye primeval hunter-gatherers, that the latter are indeed, a very long time dead and therefore may be called 'happy'.
My introvert Bludd Thikkt With Cold: Humans lived in close-knit communities, and friends were people with whom you went hunting ( Read more... )

Somebody at my habitual Tube station has taken to writing up daily poems or inspirational thoughts on one of the whiteboards adjacent to the lifts usually reserved for Bad News About The Service.

I seldom have time to actually read these, as I am usually either trying to get into the lift or heading for the stairs/exiting the lift and heading for ( Read more... )

I didn't know if I'd get it done before the Bank Holiday break, but I did.

One moderately-sized collection of personal papers, catalogued - everything in its file with its reference, in its box, and with an entry in the database.

Mission accomplished in well under 2 months, gratifying as this collection has been on my guilt list for a long time - ( Read more... )

Saturday interview: Aung San Suu Kyi

Suzanne Moore speaks for me: Despite all its encouraging homilies and self-help jargon, I don't want the new organization Action for Happiness. I want Action for Things to Be Basically OK.

Soho pub which ejected gay couple for 'obscene' kissing closes in bid to thwart protest - but kiss-in continues right ( Read more... )