Re: "The Small Stuff" book review

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:35:45 -0000 (UTC), Tara <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On Jul 31, 2026 at 11:07:43?AM EDT, "Noah Sombrero" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:53:13 -0400, Noah Sombrero <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:12:02 -0000 (UTC), Tara <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> (I haven't read this book yet but I heard the author interviewed on CBC this
>>>> a.m and liked what he said).  Just another self-help book or one of that ilk?
>>>> Nah, I don't think so.
>>>> 
>>>> https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-small-stuff-how-to-lead-a-more-gratifying-life-ian-bogost/bb5309da15426d51?ean=9781668062630&affiliate=12476
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> And -
>>>> 
>>>> The Small Stuff
>>>> How to lead a more gratifying life
>>>> -Ian Bogost -  Atlantic Columnist
>>>> 
>>>> Out summer 2026.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>    ?The world tells us that the path to happiness is to go bigger in
>>>> everything: experiences, success, consumption?all of it. In The Small Stuff,
>>>> Ian Bogost shows us why this is the wrong approach to the good life?that the
>>>> true secret lies in discovering life?s little delights.?
>>>>    ?Arthur C. Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author
>>>> 
>>>>    ?Brilliant
>I loved this profound, witty, and quietly revolutionary book.
>>>> Ian Bogost makes the liberating case that the material world is teeming with
>>>> unexpected opportunities for life-enhancing sensory pleasure?and that all we
>>>> need to do is to allow ourselves to experience them.?
>>>>    ?Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks
>>>>    ?The Small Stuff is a clarion call to rediscover the quiet joys woven into
>>>> everyday routines. Bogost argues that in our rush toward efficiency and
>>>> digital convenience, we?ve lost touch with the tangible world?and its simple
>>>> gratifications that bring real contentment. This wonderful book reminds us
>>>> that happiness isn?t out of reach. Rather, it?s right under our fingertips.?
>>>>    ?Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of Supercommunicators and The Power of
>>>> Habit
>>>> 
>>>> About the Book
>>>> 
>>>> In an era dominated by convenience and efficiency, one would think that life
>>>> would be simpler, easier, and most importantly, happier. After all, shouldn?t
>>>> all the time saved with machines and technology leave us with more time for
>>>> ourselves? The Atlantic columnist Ian Bogost thinks not. From QR code menus
>>>> and digital tickets to automated self-checkout counters, he argues that the
>>>> simple pleasures of daily life have been stripped away, replaced by sleek, but
>>>> soulless, design.
>>> 
>>> In other words, why well off people are not happy.  So they pine for
>>> the good old days, forgetting that they were not happy then either.
>>> 
>>> "sleek, but soulless, design".  Of course that is not satisfying.  On
>>> the other hand, if a person has a satisfying fulfilled life, it won't
>>> matter what knickknacks one includes or not.  Who notices such things?
>>> 
>>> On the other hand, "automated self-checkout counters"?  Who puts up
>>> with such emptiness?  As if people needed another way to avoid
>>> interacting with each other.  But if you have plenty of human
>>> interaction in your life, maybe those counters wouldn't matter so
>>> much.  There it is, we are so isolated from each other in our cars,
>>> and lockable houses that we need to interact with clerks in stores.
>>> 
>>> How do we feel?  Lonely and bored.  Scared of each other, and out of
>>> patience with ideas we don't want to listen to (from other people).
>>> Simple, huh?
>>> 
>>>> Through engaging anecdotes and sharp analysis, Bogost uncovers how modern
>>>> conveniences not only fail to deliver on their promises but also rob us of
>>>> small, satisfying tasks and moments that keep us grounded and human. He
>>>> challenges us to rethink our daily interactions with the material world and
>>>> illuminates how the loss of these tangible interactions has contributed to
>>>> widespread feelings of disconnection and dissatisfaction.
>>>> 
>>>> But all hope is not lost. Bogost guides us to identify and appreciate the
>>>> overlooked joys hidden in everyday life. By reforming how we approach ordinary
>>>> tasks, we can rediscover the gratification embedded in the tactile world
>>>> around us.
>>>> 
>>>> Humorous, thought-provoking, and practical, The Small Stuff reveals that
>>>> finding joy isn?t about achieving monumental happiness or prolonged
>>>> satisfaction. It?s about doing small things, deliberately and with attention,
>>>> to unlock the basic pleasures that flavor our daily lives.
>>>> 
>>>> A Note from Ian, before publication
>>>> 
>>>> I wrote a new book! It will be my first new book in 10 (!) years. I guess I
>>>> needed that long to figure out what was worth sharing in this many words, in a
>>>> way that I felt good asking my readers to buy and carry and so forth.
>>>> 
>>>> It all started when I wrote about the end of the stick-shift transmission for
>>>> The Atlantic in 2022. Millions of people read that story, which I didn't
>>>> expect! I wondered What It Meant, what signal that interest meant to send.
>>>> 
>>>> After thinking about that question for six months or so, I realized that the
>>>> manual transmission is just one of many more ways people have become
>>>> disconnected from their own lives. I don't even start my car with a key
>>>> anymore, I just press a button. Heck, you can't even turn on a restroom faucet
>>>> or dispense a towel by yourself. The sensory world, the world we share with
>>>> things of all kinds, living and human-made, has been withdrawing from our
>>>> contact for years, and for lots of reasons. That loss feels bad?and you
>>>> probably didn't even notice it happening, because it happened so slowly.
>>>> 
>>>> This book explains many of those reasons, among them automation, computation,
>>>> regulatory change, and shifting habits of work and home life. It also offers a
>>>> way out, and one that you can actually achieve, and one that's easy besides.
>>>> If you're thinking, wait, Bogost wrote a happiness book?, then, yeah, I did,
>>>> but I promise it's like no other such book.
>>>> 
>>>> The key idea in The Small Stuff is gratification, a kind of contentment that
>>>> is different from happiness and satisfaction. I rescue this concept from the
>>>> psychologists and economists who have misunderstood or ruined it, and I
>>>> explain how gratification can help make every day of your life just a little
>>>> better. All those little-betters will add up.
>>>> 
>>>> If you've been following my work at all over the years (and decades) I've been
>>>> writing and making stuff, this book is sort of a summation of everything I've
>>>> learned from games, computing, philosophy, design, and the built environment.
>>>> And more. If you've wondered where I took my game-design interests, this is
>>>> the answer. If you wondered what was next for me as a phenomenologist, this is
>>>> the answer. (If you don't know what phenomenology is, don't worry, the word
>>>> does not appear in the book, nor do any other scary words). If you wondered
>>>> what someone who writes about AI, toasters, and lemon-lime soda thinks all of
>>>> those things have in common, this is the answer. It's helpful, and hopeful
>>>> (for real), and useful, and fun and super chill besides. Anybody can read it,
>>>> and I hope everyone will.
>>>> 
>>>> The Small Stuff will be published by Simon & Schuster / Atria in the USA and
>>>> Penguin in the UK in summer 2026
>> 
>> How about this little ditty I came across somewhere:
>> Frustrated desire causes sighs, and nobody sighs more than contented
>> people.
>
>Deep lol
>
>and then there is this from The Guardian
>
>A sigh's not just a sigh - it's a fundamental life-sustaining reflex
>
>Research reveals that sighing is more than a sign of depression or despair:
>it’s a reflex that happens several times an hour and helps preserve lung
>function
>Tim Radford

Now, about that other kind of sigh, which is also not a sign of
depression or despair, in fact it can even be a metaphorical sigh.

>Californian scientists have identified the source of the sigh. It is not just
>a response to sadness, depression or despair: it is, also, they report, a
>life-sustaining reflex that helps preserve lung function.
>
>And a control system in the brain keeps humans sighing about a dozen times an
>hour, even when they aren’t thinking about the future of the NHS, the European
>referendum or the latest pronouncements of Donald Trump.
>
>Researchers report in Nature that two tiny clusters of nerve cells in the
>brain’s stem – the region that, unbidden, automatically takes charge of
>breathing, sleeping and heart rate – orchestrate the sigh. They do this in a
>response to an unconscious command to reinflate as necessary the myriad tiny
>sacs in the lungs called alveoli, which control the body’s traffic in oxygen
>and carbon dioxide, and which sometimes collapse.
>
>“Unlike a pacemaker that regulates only how fast we breathe, the brain’s
>breathing centre also controls the type of breath we take,” said Mark Krasnow,
>a biochemist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and one of the
>authors.
>WP hiccup graphic
>Has science solved the mystery of the hiccup? Don't hold your breath
>
>
>“It’s made up of small numbers of different kinds of neurons. Each functions
>like a button that turns on a different type of breath. One button programmes
>regular breaths, another sighs, and the others could be for yawns, sniffs,
>coughs and maybe even laughs and cries.”
>
>The research illuminates a puzzle about ventilation for patients with injuries
>or chronic lung disease: unless clinicians get the mechanical breathing rates
>exactly right, the patient is at risk of further injury. The new study
>delivers a better understanding of why a sigh – in effect an extra breath for
>an already inflated lung – is an important survival mechanism. The surprise
>lies in its simplicity.
>
>“Sighing appears to be regulated by the fewest numbers of neurons we have seen
>linked to fundamental human behaviour,” said Prof Jack Feldman, a
>neurobiologist at University College Los Angeles and another author. “One of
>the holy grails in neuroscience is figuring out how the brain controls
>behavior. Our finding gives us insights into mechanisms that may underlie much
>more complex behaviours.”
>
>The research team worked with laboratory mice, which sigh as often as 40 times
>an hour: they screened 19,000 patterns in the mice brain cells that could be
>linked with genetic activity, and zeroed in on 200 neurons in the brain stem
>that make and release one of two peptides, protein fragments important in
>brain signalling. The same family of peptides is at work in human brains, and
>known to be important in breathing and sighing: what the mouse research
>exposed was the genes and the nerve cells that controlled them.
>Swimmers can train themselves to last more than five minutes without
>breathing.
>What’s the secret to holding your breath?
>Read more
>
>The two laboratories co-operated to discover that the peptides triggered
>another set of nerve cells to activate the mice muscles and heave a sigh. If
>the scientists blocked one set of peptides, the animals sighed at half the
>rate. If they silenced both, the sighs stopped altogether. Since the function
>of the sigh was to reinflate collapsed alveoli with twice the normal intake of
>air, sighing becomes part of the survival machinery. “If you don’t sigh every
>five minutes or so, the alveoli will slowly collapse causing lung failure.
>That’s why patients in early iron lungs had such problems, because they never
>sighed,” said Feldman.
>
>So a kiss may be just as kiss, as the song from the Hollywood classic
>Casablanca has it, but a sigh is not just a sigh. However the Californian
>study offers no answers as to why people might sigh when anxious, melancholy,
>or exasperated.
>
>“There is certainly a component of sighing that relates to an emotional state.
>When you are stressed, for example, you sigh more,” said Feldman. “It may be
>that neurons in the brain areas that process emotion are triggering the
>release of the sigh neuropeptides – but we don’t know that.”
-- 
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian  shrinks in horror and warns others away