Re: "The Small Stuff" book review

On Jul 31, 2026 at 12:13:40 PM EDT, "Noah Sombrero" <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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.

Weariness
Relief
Exasperation



> 
>> 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.”